Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have strongly denied Trump’s allegations that they manipulated intelligence in the Russia probe, calling them ‘patently false.’ In a New York Times essay, the duo asserted that their assessments were thoroughly validated by bipartisan reviews, including the Senate Intelligence report, and rejected claims of treason, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging Russian interference in U.S. elections.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has alleged former President Barack Obama and members of his administration, including Clapper and Brennan, promoted a ‘contrived narrative’ that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump, which led to the sprawling collusion investigation that consumed Trump’s presidency. Trump has described the alleged actions by Obama, Clapper, Brennan and Comey as ‘serious treason.’ Despite these claims, Brennan and Clapper argued that 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.
Brennan and Clapper emphasized that their assessment made ‘no judgment’ about the impact of the Russian operation on the outcome of the 2016 election, noting that while the influence operations may have shaped the views of Americans before they entered the voting booth, they found no evidence that the Russians changed any actual votes. They also denied using the Steele Dossier, which was authored by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC, as a basis for their analysis, though it was included as a ‘separate annex only to the most highly classified version of the document that contained the assessment,’ at the direction of the FBI.
Clapper appeared on CNN to dispute the allegations, telling host Kaitlan Collins that the claims were false. Brennan joined MSNBC earlier this month and said he was ‘clueless’ as to why he would be investigated. The pair insisted that the ‘real politicization’ was coming from members of Trump’s administration, specifically Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. They concluded by calling on the administration to acknowledge the reality of Russian interference in U.S. elections and to take bipartisan action to stop it.