{"id":148103,"date":"2025-07-22T15:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldtribune.com\/?p=148103"},"modified":"2025-07-22T15:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:59:09","slug":"report-brennan-overruled-cia-dissent-on-russian-role-in-2016-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/report-brennan-overruled-cia-dissent-on-russian-role-in-2016-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Brennan overruled CIA dissent on Russian role in 2016 election"},"content":{"rendered":"

by<\/em><\/span> WorldTribune<\/strong> Staff<\/em><\/span><\/span>, July 22, 2025 <\/em>Real World News<\/span><\/a>
\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Records show that intelligence officials who found there was “no intelligence” to support claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit then-GOP candidate Donald Trump were overruled by then-CIA Director John Brennan, a report said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
President Barack Obama and his CIA chief John Brennan. \/ Pete Souza \/ Obama White House photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The records are related to ongoing criminal investigations into Brennan and other top intelligence officials for their roles in launching the Russia collusion hoax,” Mollie Hemingway reported<\/a> for The Federalist on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The dispute was over the \u201ckey judgment\u201d in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that Russia had interfered in the election specifically because Putin and the Russian government \u201caspired to help President-elect Trump\u2019s election chances.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no intelligence to directly support this \u2018aspiration\u2019 point,\u201d said one member of the small group of individuals working with Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the assessment of Russian activity in the lead-up to the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

The records show one official asking in December 2016: \u201cCan you really prove Moscow was trying to get Trump elected?\u201d<\/p>\n

On Dec. 30, 2016, Brennan called the dissenting individuals into his office and had a lengthy meeting in which they articulated their serious concerns about the veracity of the Trump-Russia claims.<\/p>\n

The assessment of Russian collusion on Trump’s behalf “will stay the same,\u201d Brennan reported at the end of the meeting.<\/p>\n

Hemingway noted:<\/p>\n

The paper trail about this dispute posed a problem for Brennan, who had presented the information as being universally held with a high degree of confidence. The CIA review noted that the key judgment was given a \u201chigher confidence level than was justified.\u201d It further noted the ICA had been drafted under an unusually rushed timeline, had been preceded by leaks to The Washington Post and New York Times improperly claiming \u201cdefinitive conclusions\u201d had already been reached, and had indications of a \u201cpotential political motive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brennan later threw the dissenting officials under the bus when he recounted the events. Explaining his decision to ignore the concerns of the career intelligence experts, he said, \u201cI came to the conclusion that the two officers had not read all the available intelligence,\u201d Brennan wrote in his 2020 book Undaunted, of his decision to keep the key judgment despite the concerns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To this day, Brennan has never publicly shared what secret knowledge he had that led him to make the claim that Russia sought to help Trump.<\/p>\n

\n

Beat The Press <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by WorldTribune Staff, July 22, 2025 Real World News Records show that intelligence officials who found there was “no intelligence” to support claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit then-GOP candidate Donald Trump were overruled by then-CIA Director John Brennan, a report said. “The records are related to ongoing criminal investigations into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":148106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,10,18,24,12,5],"tags":[209,6],"class_list":["post-148103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusives","category-rest-of-the-best","category-top-stories","category-top-story","category-u-s-intelligence","category-world-links","category-world-tribune","tag-report-brennan-overruled-cia-dissent-on-russian-role-in-2016-election","tag-worldtribune-com","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldtribune.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}