Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassifies a Russian intelligence assessment that has already been declared part of a Russian disinformation campaign by a bipartisan Senate committee.
The assessment claims that Hillary Clinton was personally responsible for attempting “to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”
The extraordinary disclosure, released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) earlier Tuesday, rankled Democrats, who said the move effectively put Russian disinformation into the public sphere in order to boost President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the government’s efforts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.
And several former senior intelligence officials described Ratcliffe’s move as incendiary and irresponsible, given the manner in which he was publicly releasing unverified information from a foreign adversary…
The Senate Intelligence Committee issued five reports on Russia’s sweeping effort to meddle in the 2016 election to boost Trump, ranging across thousands of pages. The panel was made aware of that allegation early on in its investigation, and quickly dismissed it, the sources said.
Politico
John Ratcliffe is also responsible for blocking Congress from future briefings on election interference and blacklisting The New York Times.
Source
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/29/john-ratcliffe-hillary-clinton-russia-423022
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