New CIA report criticizes investigation into Russia’s support for Trump in 2016
CNN
A declassified CIA memo released Wednesday challenges the work intelligence agencies did to conclude that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election because it wanted Republican Donald Trump to win.
A declassified CIA memo released Wednesday challenges the work intelligence agencies did to conclude that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election because it wanted Republican Donald Trump to win. The memo was written on the orders of CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist who spoke out against the Russia investigation as a member of Congress. It finds fault with a 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded the Russian government, at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, waged a covert influence campaign to help Trump win. It does not address that multiple investigations since then, including a report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, reached the same conclusion about Russia’s influence and motives. The eight-page document is part of an ongoing effort by Trump and close allies who now lead key government agencies to revisit the history of the long-concluded Russia investigation, which resulted in criminal indictments and shadowed most of his first term but also produced unresolved grievances and contributed to the Republican president’s deep-rooted suspicions of the intelligence community. The report is also the latest effort by Ratcliffe to challenge the decision-making and actions of intelligence agencies during the course of the Russia investigation. A vocal Trump supporter in Congress who aggressively questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller during his 2019 testimony on Russian election interference, Ratcliffe later used his position as director of national intelligence to declassify Russian intelligence alleging damaging information about Democrats during the 2016 election even as he acknowledged that it might not be true.
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