Internal emails released on Friday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reveal that after former President Barack Obama ordered an intelligence assessment of Russia’s election influence, a top official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence scuttled the release of an already-completed intelligence report that concluded Russian had not hacked the 2016 presidential election.

On Friday, Director Gabbard released newly declassified documents, including scores of emails related to a 7-page draft President’s Daily Brief or PDB. That draft PDB, dated December 8, 2016, concluded “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” But hours before the planned publication of the PDB, the ODNI’s deputy director pulled the report, purportedly due to “some new guidance.”

However, the email threads declassified last week indicate the ODNI instead buried the PDB to provide the intelligence community cover to issue a contrary assessment concerning Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election — and did so, against the recommendations of a wide array of intelligence professionals. 

Specifically, on Thursday, December 8, 2016, the “Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Issues” for ODNI responded to an earlier email from the Deputy Director of ODNI concerning the publication of the PDB. “The room’s thoughts (EEMC, NIO Russia, CTIIC, NSA, FBI, CCI) were that it was worth going ahead with the pdb if possible now to provide our current understanding of what happened during the election, and that worst case the ICA has some language and an associated briefer note explaining any changes between the products.” 

So, according to a high-level ODNI intelligence officer, representatives from the Europe Eurasia Mission Center (“EEMC”), National Intelligence Officer(s) (“NIO”) for Russia, the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (“CTIIC”), the National Security Agency (“NSA”), the Federal Bureau of Investigations (“FBI”), and the Center for Cyber Intelligence (“CCI”), believed the PDB should go forward “to provide our current understanding of what happened during the election, . . . ”

That email came in response to an email the Deputy Director of ODNI had sent out late in the afternoon on December 7, 2016, suggesting the PDB be distributed at the same time as the ICA report “to make sure they have the same bottom lines.”

In response, not only did the ODNI intelligence officer stressed that the “room” of analysts believed the PDB should go forward, but he (or she) also stressed that “the ICA probably won’t be done until mid-January,” adding “[w]e are tentatively shooting for 9 January to send a possibly draft, possibly final, version to POTUS.” 

The ODNI intelligence officer added that the team was “hoping for final agreement on scope/length/classification to come out of [the National Security Council Principals Committee] on Friday.”  The email then concluded by explaining that the PDB was “an issue of high level of congressional and WH interest right now,” and that holding for the ICA “would postpone its publication for a month.”

The email thread released by Director Gabbard did not include a response from the Deputy Director of the ODNI. However, another email thread established that as of the afternoon of Thursday, December 8, 2016, analysts planned to publish the PDB on Friday due to “high administration interest.” And just the day before, the ODNI had drafted talking points regarding the PDB, including that “[f]oreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and that “[w]e have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”

But then at 3:48 p.m. on Thursday, December 08, 2016, the FBI emailed other members of the intelligence team that the “FBI will be drafting a dissent this afternoon” to the PDB. “Please remove our seal an annotations of co-authorship,” the email from the FBI concluded.

The FBI’s email caught the DHS officer responsible for coordinating the publication of the PDB by surprise, with the analyst responding at 4:32 p.m. that “[u]ntil receiving the email below, the only difference that I was aware of between FBI and [DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis] over this transparently developed product was over confidence level on the attribution, which we have adjusted (to the FBI’s view) upon review of the recent redacted collection.” “Rather than drafting a dissent,” the DHS email continued, the “FBI could share their concerns with the most recent draft (attached).”

A 4:47 p.m. email from the FBI — possibly from a different agent — said the Bureau would “take a closer look at it tomorrow.”

Six minutes later, at 4:53 p.m. on December 8, 2016, the deputy director of the ODNI dispatched an email stating: “Based on some new guidance, we are going to push back publication of the PDB. It will not run tomorrow and is not likely to run until next week.” 

That was the same deputy director who only a day earlier had floated publishing the PDB and the ICA ordered by Obama on Russian election interference at the same time “to make sure they have the same bottom lines.” And she pulled that PDB over the contrary view of multiple other intelligence officers.

The decision by the Deputy Director of the ODNI to pull the PDB — and not merely for a month, but permanently — proves even more telling when coupled with the FBI’s last-minute effort to thwart its publication by, out of nowhere, promising a dissent to the report. And now that Director Gabbard has released a declassified version of the PDB, it becomes clear why select members of the intelligence community buried the report: The PDB contradicted the narrative the deep state planned to unleash the next day following then-President Obama’s meeting with his  National Security Council Principals Committee.

At that meeting, James Clapper, the then-Director of National Intelligence, provided then-President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, and then-CIA Director John Brennan a proposal for completing the Intelligence Community Assessment (“ICA”) on Russian election. “[T]hey were okay with the proposal,” according to an email sent by Clapper’s assistant after Obama’s meeting the National Security Council.

The email from Clapper’s assistant included one additional significant passage: An introductory note revealed that on Monday, December 5, 2016, then-President Obama had tasked Clapper with drafting a proposal for preparing the ICA for consideration during the Friday gathering of the National Security Council Principals Committee. It appears, however, that Clapper only “broached” the proposal with McDonough and Brennan, both of whom approved the plan.

That the ODNI scuttled the planned December 9, 2016 release of the PDB only after President Obama, on December 5, 2016, had tasked the DNI with the creation of the ICA on “Russia’s election meddling” reeks of corruption. And so does the FBI’s decision to dissent from the conclusions reached in the PDB — conclusions it had apparently previously agreed with.

The stench is even worse when you consider that following President Obama’s December 9, 2016, meeting, corrupt members of the intelligence community immediately began feeding their partners in the press fake intel that Russia interfered in the presidential contest to help Donald Trump. 

Thanks to Director Ratcliffe, we know that isn’t true and that the intelligence community under Obama’s lead manipulated the ICA. And now, thanks to Director Gabbard, we know more about the depth of the conspiracy.