A still-classified staff report compiled by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) found the John Brennan-led 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (“ICA”) on Russian Election Interference significantly worse and significantly more corrupt than conveyed in the memorandum released last week by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to sources familiar with the report. The HPSCI staff report also reveals more details of the corruption, the sources told The Federalist.
Revelations that the ICA crafted by Brennan was even more corrupt than exposed last week in CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s release of the internal “tradecraft review” of the ICA suggests Brennan may finally face justice for his role in the Russia-collusion hoax. In fact, sources familiar with closed-door testimony Brennan provided to Congress suggest perjury charges are in the offing.
According to Breitbart News, members of Congress and senior staff maintain that “Brennan had testified behind closed doors that he did not advocate for the dossier to be included in the ICA.” That testimony, however, conflicts with the findings from the newly released CIA review, which detailed how Brennan included the Steele Dossier in the ICA “over the objections of career intelligence officials.”
The CIA report released last Tuesday by Director Ratcliffe includes many more problems with both the procedure and the substance of the ICA — a report then-Director John Brennan took the lead in drafting. Among other things, the CIA concluded the ICA report should not have attributed “high confidence” to the conclusion that “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” Nor should the ICA have included the Steele Dossier in its annex or referenced it in the text of the report, the CIA concluded.
But those problems and the others detailed in the CIA report pale in comparison to the real corruption at play, according to sources familiar with a separate HPSCI staff report. Those sources told The Federalist that HPSCI, under the leadership of then-Chair Devin Nunes, “found the ICA significantly worse and significantly more corrupt than was conveyed in the CIA report.” The staff report also reveals more details related to the ICA’s report on Russia’s 2016 influence campaign.
The HPSCI staff report, however, remains classified. In a letter to President Trump last week, current HPSCI Chair Rick Crawford, R-Ark., noted there was a strong public interest in the report being declassified. A HPSCI spokesperson told The Federalist that “it is the Committee’s view that the information in this report should be released to the public.” The spokesperson added that Chairman Crawford has raised this issue with CIA leadership.
When reached for comment, CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons told The Federalist that “no one has done more to expose the truth and confront politicization in the intelligence community than Director John Ratcliffe.” Lyons added that “from leading the charge on uncovering COVID-19 origins to exposing the gross political bias behind the 2016 Election ICA, Director Ratcliffe has consistently pushed to make critical information public and has put transparency and accountability first.”
Given his record, there is no reason to doubt that Director Ratcliffe will ensure the HPSCI staff report will be declassified when the time is right. Here, the public would be well advised to remember that transparency and accountability may sometimes be at cross purposes: It may well be that Director Ratcliffe or the other members of the Trump Administration working to rid D.C. of the Augean-stable levels of corruption have not yet finished investigating the additional details and/or individuals implicated in the HPSCI staff report. And if that is the case, perjury may be the least of Brennan’s worries.