by Shipwreckedcrew
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified and released two documents today which reveal that the Obama Administration possessed information in the summer of 2016 suggesting the alleged relationship between Russian election interference and members of the Trump Campaign was a plan devised by a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton.
The first document are handwritten notes of CIA Director John Brennan taken during a White House briefing. Notations indicate that persons who spoke during the briefing were “POTUS”, “JC” (presumably FBI Dir. Jim Comey), “Denis” (presumably White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonogh), and “Susan” (presumably National Security Advisor Susan Rice).
The comments reflecting the existence of a Russian plan are attributed to someone whose name is redacted in the margin on the left side of the notes. That is likely a CIA or NSA official who is reporting the intelligence information.
Brennan’s notes regarding that person’s comments read:
We’re gaining additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED]
CITE alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 28 July of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.
POTUS — Any evidence of collaboration between Trump campaign and Russia?
The comments of JC, Denis, and Susan reflected in the notes are all redacted.
A second document released by DNI Ratcliffe is a Referral from the CIA to the FBI with regard to this information. The Memorandum was directed to “Director” and to Peter Strzok, identified as “Deputy Assistant Director for Operations Branch 1, Counterintelligence Division.”
The Memorandum is heavily redacted, but the following passage is disclosed:
“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo continued. ““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.”
Last week DNI Ratcliffe disclosed the existence of these two documents, and their contents, to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democrats and media began immediately trying to kill the story by claiming that the information DNY Ratcliffe was passing on was actually Russian disinformation that was part of the campaign by the Russians in the summer of 2016 to discredit Clinton as a candidate in order to benefit Pres. Trump in the contest against her.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, called the information released by Ratcliffe in his letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee “baseless b*llsh*t”.
In response to the claim that the Trump Administration was publishing Russian disinformation, DNI Ratcliffe issued a letter stating without qualification that this information was not Russian “disinformation,” and he would be briefing Congress in more detail about the information.
The documents released today show exactly why Ratcliffe’s clarification is correct, and why the effort to discredit the release of information reflects fear by President Trump’s opponents’ about this development.
First, the lack of a date on Brennan’s notes creates the possibility that this information came to the Obama Administration in the early stages of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the allegations of a link between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. This is certainly NOT disinformation because it would not have received the high-level disclosure by the Intelligence Community to POTUS, Comey, Brennan, and Rice that it did. If the IC believed this was disinformation, it would not have gone to that trouble but would have used the disinformation as part of its counterintelligence operation then underway to combat against the ongoing Russian efforts to interfere in the election.
Second, POTUS asks if the same intelligence collection effort — presumably against Russian communications — had uncovered any evidence of collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. The fact that he would ask this question certainly suggests the very strong inference that this briefing took place after the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was underway to establish whether such collaboration was taking place. Evidence of such collaboration would call into doubt the accuracy of the interception alleging a “plan” by the Clinton campaign.
The CIA who cannot legally operate within our borders gets the skinny and advises the FBI on the plot, then they advise the White House , they all knew it was fake every claim was a big fat lie cooked up by Stinky Clintons campaign, so they helped her along.
Biggest news of the day and you wont see it on Cable opinion shows, Hardly that the Democrats set it up as Russian disinformation even though it was Barrys top CIA spooks notes.
How much more is the CIA and Wray at the FBI holding?