A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee “totally validated” the 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference, according to one of its chief authors.
Former CIA Director John Brennan made the emphatic declaration of vindication as U.S. Attorney John Durham is said to be increasingly focused on the Obama-era spymaster in a review of possible misconduct by federal law enforcement and intelligence officials during the Russia investigation.
“I’m just very glad that the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday came out with a report that totally validated the intelligence community’s assessment about Russian interference in the election in 2016 to help Donald Trump,” Brennan told Politico on Wednesday. “Donald Trump continues to call all these things hoaxes. They’re not. The only hoax is his representation of the facts. That’s the hoax. It’s because, I think, he has this quite understandable insecurity about what he’s done — well, this is what others have done.”
He was referring to the Senate intelligence panel’s 158-page bipartisan report, released on Tuesday, which defended the assessment that was issued in the waning days of the Obama administration. The heavily redacted report said Senate investigators found no evidence of political pressure to reach a specific conclusion and determined the assessment by the CIA, FBI, and NSA “presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
The intelligence community assessment released in January 2017 determined with “moderate” to “high” confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin sought to boost then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 election chances.
The Senate panel’s findings run counter to those in the House Intelligence Committee report released in 2018 — a product that was not bipartisan.
The GOP-led effort in the House concluded, “The majority of the Intelligence Community Assessment judgments on Russia’s election activities employed proper analytic tradecraft,” but found the “judgments on Putin’s strategic intentions did not.” The Democrats on the panel released their own assessment that said they found “no evidence” to cast doubt on the assessment.
Brennan’s emphasis on being “totally validated” comes as Durham, Connecticut’s top federal prosecutor, is reportedly looking into highly sensitive issues, including whether the former CIA director took politicized actions to pressure the rest of the intelligence community to match his conclusions about Putin’s motivations during the 2016 presidential election.
Durham, who was handpicked by Attorney General William Barr, drove to Washington, D.C., in March to ensure the investigation stayed on track during the coronavirus outbreak. According to CNN, Durham has expanded his team of prosecutors and investigators in recent weeks.
