A former CIA attorney who goes by the moniker "Secrets and Laws" revealed on X that the CIA ordered another report related to Russian involvement in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump has maintained there was no Russian intervention to help him win in 2016 and frequently repeats the phrases "no collusion" and "witch hunt" about the matter.
The ex-CIA lawyer noted that the new report "is a very important document, as it shows that the leadership of the CIA's Directorate of Analysis is now engaging in politics, undermining all trust in it."
The lawyer alleged that John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, and Michael Ellis, deputy CIA director, "have used the report to reinvigorate all their favorite grievances about the 'Deep State' and the 2016 election. They are doing this even though the report itself does nothing to undermine the conclusion that Russia actively sought to harm Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, an unprecedented attack on our sovereignty by an enemy of the United States."
The lawyer cited a July 2 post on X in which Ratcliffe stated that Trump "trusted me with helping to end weaponization of US intelligence. Today's report underscores that the 2016 IC Assessment was conducted through an atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments of former Dir. [John] Brennan & former FBI Dir. [James] Comey."
Intelligence found dozens of Russians working in a kind of content farm to generate pro-Trump posts and memes. Trump's former campaign advisers were also convicted or admitted to several crimes. Paul Manafort, for example, pleaded guilty to "conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering." He also confessed to seven other crimes from his first trial that were left undecided, The Washington Post reported at the time.
The FBI still has a "wanted" poster on its website for those linked to a "conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States."
"Ratcliffe and Ellis have also touted the fact that the report was written by 'career' CIA officers -- the head of the Directorate of Analysis, normally a career official, is listed as the author," the former CIA lawyer wrote on X.
"That may be the case. But if true, it shows that the leadership of that office has now chosen to be pawns in a partisan political debate. Given this, I'm not sure we can trust any future analysis coming out of that office. If they'll bend their standards for Trump and Ratcliffe here, why wouldn't they do it on any other topic?" they asked.
The lawyer then walked through a "rundown" of how an individual can tell whether a "CIA report was a deliberate hatchet job."
"1. Rush Job: Ratcliffe asked for the report in May, so it was completed in less than 2 months. That's simply not enough time to review the reams of evidence on this topic and write a detailed report, especially while those same analysts were likely working on other important topics like, I dunno, a WAR WITH IRAN! What makes this funnier is that a key criticism of the 2016 ICA in this report is that it was rushed (see below). Pot meet Kettle," the lawyer said.
Secondly, they explained that the report overlooks the final report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was under the leadership of then-Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R-FL) at the time. In his case, the committee investigated all of these same issues for over two years and had a very different conclusion.
"The Director of Analysis is led by the nation's top intelligence analysts," the individual said. "And they didn't once mention any of this competing evidence, most of which is public? They would get an F for this fact alone if they were being graded on analytic rigor."
Third, they said that a typical CIA report acknowledges its own limitations. In this case, the only information reviewed was the documents produced to the Senate committee and nothing else.
"That's not a real investigation! A real investigation involves, among other things, interviews with key witnesses. The SSCI did that for its detailed report. The CIA clearly did not for its more recent hatchet job," the lawyer said.
So, not only did they not conduct any interviews of witnesses, but they also failed to acknowledge in the report that they had only used those documents to draw conclusions. The former CIA lawyer showed an example of what a disclaimer like that might look like by showing it in the "torture report," which detailed the interrogation done by the United States for the war in Iraq.
"These three flaws alone are significant enough to demonstrate that this report was a hit job designed to fulfill a political agenda, and therefore, it cannot be trusted," they noted.
"Ratcliffe and Ellis also used this shoddy report to baselessly accuse John Brennan of perjury, deliberately ignoring publicly available evidence to the contrary. If CIA leadership will lie about this, what else will they lie about?" the lawyer added.