CIA Ignored Evidence That Russia Favored Hillary Clinton To Win 2016 Election, Ex-Intelligence Officer Claims
Fred Fleitz, who served as Donald Trump‘s White House National Security Council chief of staff in 2018, penned an op-ed for Fox News in which he claimed former CIA director John Brennan ignored intelligence that suggested Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election.
According to Fleitz, House Intelligence Committee staff members told him they found “conflicting intelligence” on Russia’s motivations for interfering in the 2016 election, which ran parallel to an FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign. In addition, the officials allegedly told Fleitz that Brennan “suppressed facts or analysis” that suggested it was in Russia’s interest for Clinton — who the country reportedly believed was ” more predictable and malleable” — to win the election.
“They also told me that Brennan suppressed that intelligence over the objections of CIA analysts,” Fleitz wrote.
The House Intelligence Committee staff reportedly claimed Brennan’s team opted out of using “high-quality” intelligence that hinted at a Russian preference of a Clinton win and instead relied on “low-quality” information to support the theory that Russia wanted Trump to win.
Fleitz claimed Democratic lawmakers were “fanatically united” in promoting the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia, which he claimed was false.
“If information ever reached the Senate Intelligence Committee about Brennan suppressing intelligence in the intelligence community assessment that Putin favored Clinton instead of Trump, its Democratic members and staff certainly would have demanded that those crucial facts never be known.”
As reported by Breitbart, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has tapped federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe. Fleitz alleged that Durham is currently examining the possibility of drafting the findings of the intelligence community assessment as part of his investigation into possible federal government abuse both before and after the 2016 election.
Durham, Fleitz wrote, will be able to determine whether the 2017 intelligence community assessment under Brennan was “rigged to hurt Trump politically.”
As The Inquisitr previously reported, recently declassified footnotes from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report revealed that the FBI was aware at some point in 2017 that Christopher Steele’s dossier, which played a role in driving the Russia investigation forward, contained Russian disinformation.
#FISA READ footnote 350 FBI effort to verify Steele Dossier “The (redacted) stated that it did not have high confidence in this subset of Steele’s reporting and ASSESSED that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate US foreign relations” pic.twitter.com/7aVvNkx3BV
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) April 10, 2020
According to Fleitz, the 2017 U.S. intelligence community assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win was aligned with the “basic premise” of the Steele Dossier, which he said has been “widely discredited.”
Former FBI Director James Comey — who held his position while Brennan was with the CIA — previously assured that the Steele Dossier was accurate. However, it’s unclear if he was aware of the presence of Russian disinformation at the time of his claims.
