A new CIA assessment was released on Wednesday that shows how far the Obama administration went to stand up the Russian collusion hoax. John Ratcliffe announced that "all the world will finally see the truth" before name-dropping James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey as those primarily implicated in the scheme.
All three men took "unusual" direct roles in shaping the now-infamous ICA that was released during the presidential transition following the 2016 election. It was that report that would form the building block of the Russian collusion narrative and eventually lead to a special counsel investigation.
ALSO SEE: John Ratcliffe Torches John Brennan As 'One of the Worst Things' Ever to Stain Agency
The review identified “multiple procedural anomalies” that undermined the credibility of the ICA, including “a highly compressed production timeline, stringent compartmentation, and excessive involvement of agency heads.”
It also questioned the exclusion of key intelligence agencies and said media leaks may have influenced analysts to conform to a false narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.
“The rushed timeline to publish both classified and unclassified versions before the presidential transition raised questions about a potential political motive behind the White House tasking and timeline.”
The review found that Brennan directed the compilation of the ICA, and that his, Comey’s and Clapper’s “direct engagement in the ICA’s development was highly unusual in both scope and intensity” and ”risked stifling analytic debate.”
The CIA assessment went on to note that 13 of the 17 intelligence agencies were excluded from the report, with Brennan having "handpicked" the analysts who produced the ICA. The former Obama lackey also mandated that the discredited (then and now) "Steele Dossier" be included over the objections of the agency's top Russia experts.
Brennan handpicked the CIA analysts to compile the ICA and involved only the ODNI, CIA, FBI and NSA, excluding 13 of the then-17 intelligence agencies.
He sidelined the National Intelligence Council and forced the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier despite objections of the authors and senior CIA Russia experts, so as to push a false narrative that Russia secured Trump’s 2016 victory.
“This was Obama, Comey, Clapper and Brennan deciding ‘We’re going to screw Trump,’” said Ratcliffe in an exclusive interview.
“It was, ‘We’re going to create this and put the imprimatur of an IC assessment in a way that nobody can question it.’ They stamped it as Russian collusion and then classified it so nobody could see it.
In short, Obama personally ordered top officials to manufacture a pretense to destroy Trump's presidency, and while they didn't wholly succeed, there is no doubt he was severely hamstrung throughout his first term. To this day, the false claim that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election remains the predominant belief among Democrats. Of course, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were more than willing to follow Obama's order while sanctimoniously lecturing everyone else about respecting the very institutions they were bastardizing for political gain. Call it a soft coup or something else, but it was a direct attempt to undermine the votes of the American people.
None of this is shocking, and much of it has been reported over the years at RedState. I suppose it's better late than never to see the government officially acknowledge this stuff. Still, the million-dollar question is going to be what comes next. Was it legal for Obama, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey to purposefully manipulate intelligence to try to take down a duly elected president? It would seem odd if it were, and if it wasn't, when do the arrests start? Because I'm pretty sure Republicans aren't going to be satisfied with just an assessment that will be forgotten in a few days.
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