{"id":33884,"date":"2025-07-03T00:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/33884\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T00:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:02:12","slug":"cia-report-criticizes-us-probe-into-russias-support-for-trump-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/33884\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA report criticizes US probe into Russia’s support for Trump in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 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<\/a> to win.<\/p>\n

The memo<\/a> 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<\/a> to help Trump win.<\/p>\n

It does not address that multiple investigations since then, including a report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee<\/a> in 2020, reached the same conclusion about Russia\u2019s influence and motives.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s deep-rooted suspicions of the intelligence community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

A vocal Trump supporter in Congress<\/a> who aggressively questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller<\/a> during his 2019 testimony on Russian election interference, Ratcliffe later used his position as director of national intelligence to declassify Russian intelligence<\/a> alleging damaging information about Democrats during the 2016 election even as he acknowledged that it might not be true.<\/p>\n

The new, \u201clessons-learned\u201d review ordered by Ratcliffe in May was meant to examine the tradecraft that went into the intelligence community\u2019s 2017 assessment on Russian interference and to scrutinize in particular the conclusion that Putin \u201caspired\u201d to help Trump win.<\/p>\n

The report cited several \u201canomalies\u201d that the authors wrote could have affected that conclusion, including a rushed timeline and a reliance on unconfirmed information, such as Democratic-funded opposition research about Trump\u2019s ties to Russia compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The report takes particular aim at the inclusion of a two-page summary of the Steele dossier, which included salacious and uncorroborated rumors about Trump\u2019s ties to Russia, in an annex of the intelligence community assessment. It said that decision, championed by the FBI, \u201cimplicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even as Ratcliffe faulted top intelligence officials for a \u201cpolitically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process,\u201d his agency\u2019s report does not directly contradict any previous intelligence.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s support for Trump has been outlined in a number of intelligence reports and the August 2020 conclusions of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio<\/a>, who now serves as Trump\u2019s secretary of state. It also was backed by Mueller, who in his 2019 report said that Russia interfered on Trump\u2019s behalf<\/a> and that the campaign welcomed the aid even if there was insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis report doesn\u2019t change any of the underlying evidence \u2014 in fact it doesn\u2019t even address any of that evidence,\u201d said Brian Taylor, a Russia expert who directs the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University.<\/p>\n

Taylor suggested the report may have been intended to reinforce Trump\u2019s claims that investigations into his ties to Russia are part of a Democratic hoax.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood intelligence analysts will tell you their job is to speak truth to power,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cIf they tell the leader what he wants to hear, you often get flawed intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intelligence agencies regularly perform after-action reports to learn from past operations and investigations, but it\u2019s uncommon for the evaluations to be declassified and released to the public.<\/p>\n

Ratcliffe has said he wants to release material on a number of topics of public debate and has already declassified records relating to the assassinations of President John Kennedy<\/a> and his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy<\/a>, as well as the origins of COVID-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A declassified CIA memo released Wednesday challenges the work intelligence agencies did to conclude that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11744,28188,28187,15533,69,90,57,22940,410,50,80,28186,28185,257,3658,22941,61,274,93,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-33884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-brian-taylor","10":"tag-christopher-steele","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-john-ratcliffe","16":"tag-marco-rubio","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-robert-f-kennedy","20":"tag-robert-mueller","21":"tag-russia","22":"tag-russia-government","23":"tag-u-s-central-intelligence-agency","24":"tag-u-s-news","25":"tag-vladimir-putin","26":"tag-washington-news","27":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114786372508760860","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}