The U.S. intelligence community relied on a single ‘scant, unclear, unverifiable’ report to allege that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump.
The Trump administration released three batches of records in July that shed new light on the decade-long controversy over Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The three lots of records concern the creation, at the behest of President Barack Obama, of an intelligence community assessment (ICA) that featured an allegation that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the presidential election in order to help then-candidate Donald Trump.
The public release of the assessment on Jan. 6, 2017, sparked a media wildfire that consumed the early days of the Trump presidency and fed the political controversy that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. The sprawling Russia collusion inquiry hamstrung the Trump administration for years before Mueller ended the probe. Mueller concluded that there was no collusion.
The release of the records this month has created a political flashpoint of its own, as Trump has accused Obama of treason and Obama has issued a rare public statement to dismiss the claims.
The Department of Justice has subsequently formed a task force to review the records to determine whether any crimes were committed. Meanwhile, more whistleblowers are coming forward, emboldened by the release of the records, according to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Here are the revelations from the documents.
Steele Dossier
CIA Director John Brennan testified under oath to Congress in 2017 that the infamous Steele dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done.”
But according to two of the records released this month, the CIA director overruled those who objected to the inclusion of the Steele dossier in the ICA.
The Steele dossier, which has since been debunked, was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and composed by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
The dossier was cited in the main body of the assessment, and a summary of it was included in the highest-classification version of the dossier that was used to brief both Trump and Obama.
