US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe has released a Russian intelligence report dating to July 2016 that claimed then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “approved” the spreading of a conspiracy theory linking then-Republican candidate Donald Trump to Moscow, which became the Russiagate scandal.
On Tuesday, Ratcliffe passed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) a report compiled by Russian intelligence in July 2016 and then obtained by US intelligence agencies “alleging that US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee,” according to a letter from Ratcliffe to Graham which was published by the Senate.
Ratcliffe notes that former CIA Director John Brennan had briefed then-US President Barack Obama and “other senior national security officials” on the report’s contents on July 26, 2016, including that one of Clinton’s foreign policy advisers had cooked up the idea.
“This is Russian disinformation,” Rachel Cohen, a spokesperson for Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), tweeted on Tuesday, adding that it had been “laundered by the Director Of National Intelligence and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
Indeed, after Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails were hacked in June 2016, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, contracted by the FBI to examine the DNC server, accused Russian intelligence operatives of being behind the break-in – including hacker Guccifer 2.0, after that person claimed responsibility. Then, when WikiLeaks published the emails in the following months, the accusation of collusion with or control by Moscow was extended to it and co-founder Julian Assange as well.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the accusations, and the severe problems with the evidence behind the FBI’s conclusions of a Russian operation have been extensively dissected. After Trump won the 2016 election that November, Brennan presented a report short on evidence concluding a “Russian influence campaign” had swayed the vote, and the “Steele dossier” appeared, supposedly proving Trump was controlled by the Kremlin because Putin had compromising information about the real estate mogul which he was threatening to release.
The credibility of former British spy Christopher Steele’s report, paid for by Clinton’s campaign and the FBI, has also been severely undermined.
“This latest information provided by DNI Ratcliffe shows there may have been a double standard by the FBI regarding allegations against the Clinton campaign and Russia,” Graham said in a Tuesday statement. “Whether these allegations are accurate is not the question. The question is did the FBI investigate the allegations against Clinton like they did Trump? If not, why not? If so, what was the scope of the investigation? If none, why was that?”
Sourse: sputniknews.com
