by WorldTribune Staff, October 6, 2020
President Donald Trump was not wasting time or energy during his stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while recovering from coronavirus. Among other initiatives, he worked on declassifying documents related to the Russia investigation that the CIA may not want released.
“This morning we’ve already had a couple of discussions on items that he wants to get done,” Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told “Fox & Friends.”
“Candidly, he’s already tasked me with getting declassification rolling in a follow up to some of the requests that Devin Nunes and others have made.”
Analysts noted that Meadows was almost certainly referring to the classified interviews with former Brookings Institute researcher Igor Danchenko, who was the primary source for the discredited Christopher Steele dossier.
Related: Primary source for ‘Dossier’ recruited his drinking buddies, July 26, 2020
Nunes, California Republican and ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a Fox News interview on Monday that some of the documents that he wants released to the public include memos from interviews that the FBI conducted with Steele and the release of the underlying intelligence for the information Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released to the Senate Judiciary Committee late last month.
Nunes floated the possibility of temporarily shutting down U.S. intelligence agencies until they turn over those documents.
“We want every damn bit of evidence that every intelligence agency has, or it’s maybe time to shut those agencies down. 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 said.
Ratcliffe provided the following information to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
• In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russians’ alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee. Ratcliffe said 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.”
• According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan subsequently briefed President Barack Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”
• On Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding “U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.”
Meanwhile, co-founder of The Federalist Sean Davis noted in an Oct. 5 report that current CIA Director Gina Haspel is “banking on” Trump losing in November in order to keep Spygate documents hidden.
Citing intelligence community officials, Davis noted that Haspel, who served under former CIA Director John Brennan as the spy agency’s station chief in London in 2016 and 2017, “is concerned that the declassification and release of documents detailing what the CIA was doing during the 2016 election and the 2017 transition could embarrass the CIA and potentially even implicate Haspel herself.”
One senior intelligence official told The Federalist: “Haspel and [FBI Director Christopher] Wray both want Trump to lose, because it’s the only chance they have of keeping their jobs. They’re banking on Biden winning and keeping them where they are.”
“It’s far more important for Haspel to block any embarrassment of herself or her agency than to have full transparency and accountability,” another senior intelligence official told The Federalist. “She’s just hoping she can get past the election so the documents will never come out.”
“This is not a source protection issue, it’s an embarrassment issue,” the intelligence official added.
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