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Why the Obama intelligence assessment on Russia collusion is under investigation
By John Solomon | June 15, 2020

(justthenews.com) - John Durham, the special prosecutor, is examining the Intelligence Community Assessment as evidence that conflicts with one of its key conclusions keeps mounting.

A recently declassified annex to the Obama administration’s intelligence report on Russian election interference took great pains to make clear it did not use Christopher Steele’s deeply flawed dossier to make any assessments about Moscow’s intentions.

The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) found Steele’s evidence “highly politically sensitive” and minimally corroborated and thus not worthy of including in its analysis of Russian election interference, the annex stated.

“We have only limited corroboration of the source reporting in this case and did not use it to reach the analytic conclusions of the CIA/FBI/NSA assessment,” the memo added.

In retrospect, the exclusion of the Steele dossier in assessing Russian intentions may have been a consequential mistake, since evidence emerged just two weeks after the assessment was made public in early January 2017 that directly conflicted with one of the ICA’s key conclusions.

The outgoing Obama administration’s intelligence community leaders — FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, NSA Director Mike Rogers and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — declared on July 5, 2017 that Moscow was specifically trying to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election and to defeat Hillary Clinton.

An official with direct knowledge told Just the News that U.S. Attorney John Durham, the prosecutor named by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the investigators in the Russia collusion case, is currently reviewing the conduct of officials in the ICA and their subsequent testimony to Congress.

The official said that not all intelligence community analysts felt comfortable with the conclusion about Russia’s intent to help Trump. “There was some dissent and concern that has been hidden all this time,” the official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

One reason for that dissent may have emerged just two weeks later. Recently declassified footnotes from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report reveal U.S intelligence provided multiple warnings that some of Steele’s dossier was Russian disinformation fed by Moscow’s intelligence service.

Footnote 350, for instance, revealed that the FBI received a U.S. intelligence report on Jan. 12, 2017 warning of an inaccuracy in the dossier related to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and warning that the material was “part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations.”

That same day, the FISA warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page was renewed for the first time.

Another U.S. intelligence report on Feb. 28, 2017 contradicted another key allegation in the Steele dossier against Trump, declaring the claims were false and the product of Russian intelligence services “infiltrat[ing] a source into the network” that contributed to the dossier...

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