Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified two documents showing President Obama’s CIA feared in summer 2016 that Hillary Clinton was “stirring up” a false Russia collusion narrative to “vilify” Donald Trump and distract from her own controversies heading into the election.
The memos indicate the CIA first received the information through the monitoring of Russian sources and deemed it credible enough to brief Obama on it in July 2016 and to refer the intelligence to the FBI in September 2016 for possible investigation.
The warnings came as the FBI was just starting its Crossfire Hurricane probe into now-disproven Trump-Russia collusion, aided by the Clinton campaign-funded dossier by Christopher Steele. They are likely to bolster GOP claims the James Comey’s FBI ignored clear evidence that the allegations were a political dirty trick and not evidence of a counterintelligence threat.
“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the September 2016 referral from the Agency to the bureau read. “An exchange [redacted] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public form her use of a private email server.”
Two months earlier, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama, according to handwritten notes written after the briefing.
“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [redacted],” Brennan notes read. “CITE alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”
The documents provide corroboration to a letter Ratcliffe first sent Congress last week with the explosive revelation…
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