Two top House Republicans issued a rallying call on Sunday to combat resistance from intelligence agencies to disclose classified information that they argue will blow wide open a controversy surrounding Russia’s role in disrupting the 2016 election.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, went so far as to raise the possibility of an overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community if leaders are not more forthcoming with their findings, even as national security experts warn of sources and methods being put at risk and Democrats charge Republicans with pushing Russian disinformation to boost President Trump ahead of the 2020 election.
“We want every damn bit of evidence that every intelligence agency has, or it’s maybe time to shut those agencies down,” the California Republican said on the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures. “Because, at the end of the day … our liberties are more important than anything else we have in this country. And they have been stampeded over by these dirty cops.”
Nunes and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, another California Republican who also appeared on the show hosted by Maria Bartiromo, both confirmed they have seen underlying evidence to a letter released last week from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe that said in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies received “insight” into a Russian intelligence analysis alleging that Hillary Clinton, then a candidate for president, approved a campaign plan to “stir up a scandal” against Trump tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
“Every member of Congress should read the underlying information behind this,” McCarthy said. “This is really a bombshell of what we have wasted so much time on, that it was created by Hillary Clinton.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that officials at the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned Ratcliffe that the disclosure of the Russian report would give undue credibility to claims tied to the Kremlin, but he released details about this information anyway. Republicans in Congress, which included Ratcliffe until he became Trump’s spy chief in May, have complained for years about government agencies slow-walking document disclosures for their oversight investigations, particularly those related to Russia and the 2016 election.
Nunes argued that suppressing this sort of information emboldens Democrats, giving presidential nominee Joe Biden, for instance, latitude during the first debate on Tuesday to call Trump “Putin’s puppy.” The congressman also blames the media for going overboard in their reporting on unproven collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, and ignoring the prospect that Clinton created a “sick fantasy” to distract investigators from finding deleted emails from an unauthorized private email server during her time as secretary of state.
In his letter, made public by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Ratcliffe laid out just how far up the chain of command in the Obama administration word of the Clinton allegations traveled. Ratcliffe said handwritten notes by former CIA Director John Brennan show he briefed former President Barack Obama and other top national security officials on the Russian intelligence analysis. In addition, Ratcliffe reported that U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to former FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.
Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing on Wednesday that this revelation “doesn’t ring any bells.”
Perhaps the most controversial comment Ratcliffe made in his letter was his admission that the intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”
After critics accused him of releasing Russian disinformation, the spy chief released a follow-up statement to assert those claims are untrue. “To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the intelligence community. I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days,” he said.
Still, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff charged Ratcliffe with irresponsibly disclosing dubious allegations with the purpose of helping Trump’s electoral prospects. “Ratcliffe’s decision to release Russian intelligence he concedes may be false is an obvious domestic political errand with an election weeks away,” the California Democrat said. “But his acknowledgment that it was derived from sensitive sources and methods — which he may now have compromised — is just inexcusable.”
McCarthy said Schiff, who has long claimed there is evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia in “plain sight,” has good reason to want to keep this information under wraps.
“We’re finding now Hillary Clinton’s campaign created this, Adam Schiff propelled it, even though underlying facts prove that the president knew about it, Obama, that CIA knew about it, and the FBI knew about it. And they withheld that information from the House and the Senate,” the congressman said.
