Two former Obama administration officials tied to the Trump-Russia investigation are pushing back as speculation grows that they could soon face criminal charges for their actions during the 2016 election.
In a New York Times op-ed, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper attempt to “set the record straight” amid allegations that they manipulated U.S. intelligence agencies to portray President Donald Trump as a Russian-controlled Manchurian candidate.
In the piece, Brennan and Clapper accuse Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of trying to “rewrite history” by asserting there was a coordinated effort between the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, despite newly declassified documents that directly refute their denial.
Brennan and Clapper’s 2017 assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered interference in the 2016 election was later “validated” by several extensive, years-long investigations—including a review by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, then chaired by Marco Rubio, who now serves as Trump’s secretary of state.
They similarly spin the findings of special counsel John Durham as a vindication of their work, claiming he “found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy against Mr. Trump.”
“Every serious review has substantiated the intelligence community’s fundamental conclusion that the Russians conducted an influence campaign intended to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election,” they added.
Elsewhere in the op-ed, the former Obama intelligence officials defended the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier in the final report on the 2016 election. However, Brennan notably sidestepped a key criticism raised by DNI Tulsi Gabbard—that he pushed for the dossier’s inclusion despite objections from other intelligence agencies, which were reportedly sidelined from contributing to early drafts of the assessment. They also dismissed Trump’s claims that the report accused him of “collusion” with Russia as “wild and baseless.”
Of note, regarding the Rubio-led Senate report, Gabbard and others have said that his committee did not have all of the evidence when coming to their conclusion, including most of what has been declassified by Gabbard and released this week. Most of the new discoveries are contained in an annex to Durham’s report that the DNI declassified this week.
The Trump administration on Thursday released additional documents recovered from FBI “burn bags,” which officials say confirm that Hillary Clinton approved efforts by the intelligence community to link Donald Trump to Russian activity. Some of the communications were authored by Leonard Benardo, an official at an outside group aligned with George Soros that supported Clinton during the 2016 election.
