by Paul Sperry, Real Clear Investigations:
The floodgates holding back long-buried classified documents exposing government efforts to claim Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to manipulate the 2016 U.S. presidential election might finally be opening.
Trump administration officials held an urgent meeting Sunday to discuss “new information on Russiagate,” which they might use to build a criminal conspiracy case against Obama and Biden administration political appointees who allegedly weaponized the government against Trump, two Trump administration officials told RealClearInvestigations.
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The documents are said to contain long-classified information, including a secret 200-page congressional audit that reveals details about how an intelligence community assessment on Russia ordered by President Obama after the 2016 election was framed in a way that portrayed Trump as being beholden to the Kremlin.
Sources told RCI that emails and other records tying the CIA’s controversial drafting of the Intelligence Community Assessment [ICA] to the FBI’s discredited “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation targeting Trump could be released as part of an Office of the Director of National Intelligence report as early as Thursday. The White House was briefed on the development Tuesday, the sources said.
Participants in the Sunday meeting involving intelligence officials and their Department of Justice counterparts also discussed declassifying investigative notes and depositions taken by Special Counsel John Durham during his probe of the CIA’s and FBI’s handling of the ICA, which relied in part on an anti-Trump dossier financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Strengthening Case for Conspiracy
The information could strengthen a criminal case against Obama’s top intelligence officers, including former CIA Director John Brennan, who allegedly gave false testimony to Congress about their role in using the dossier in the ICA, according to the officials who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Although the five-year statute of limitations on perjury means much of the testimony given about the ICA cannot be prosecuted, officials could still be charged with a conspiracy to commit perjury.
Sources said the meeting, which was arranged by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was held in a secure room known as a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). The meeting also focused on the release of a highly restricted appendix to Durham’s final report that details intelligence Brennan intercepted exposing a plan by the Clinton campaign in July 2016 to stir up an election scandal involving Trump and Russia to distract from her email investigation. Instead of investigating the Clinton plot, the FBI opened an investigation into Trump and his campaign advisers for allegedly colluding with Russia.
Officials attending the meeting also discussed the need to declassify another classified annex, which was attached to an inspector general’s review of the FBI’s probe of Clinton’s unsecured email server. Sources say it details how then-Secretary of State Clinton’s improper email activity gave “foreign actors” access to classified material. Yet the FBI neglected to investigate the security breach, fitting a pattern of then-FBI Director James Comey letting Clinton off the hook while gunning for Trump.
Sources say the meeting was attended by senior staff of both ODNI and DOJ and also involved the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, but did not include Trump’s intelligence czar, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, or Attorney General Pam Bondi.
ODNI, which declined comment, has the authority to declassify documents across the intelligence community. Gabbard has tasked a group of analysts to comb through the explosive House Intelligence Committee’s 2019 review of the ICA and other still-secret documents to identify sensitive “sources and methods” and make redactions where necessary before declassifying them for possible use in court.
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