National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he declassified documents from 2016 revealing that Russian intelligence believed that Hillary Clinton may have approved a plan to falsely defame her opponent Donald Trump, claiming he had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I have declassified the following: In late July 2016, US intelligence agencies became aware of a Russian intelligence analysis that argued that US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a planned campaign to unleash a scandal against the candidate Donald Trump, linking him to Putin,” Ratcliffe wrote in the letter addressed to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham.
According to his notes, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama (2009-2017) and other top national security officials on intelligence, Ratcliffe wrote.
The report to Obama included the “presumed endorsement by Hillary Clinton, on July 26, 2016, of a proposal by one of her foreign policy advisers to defame Donald Trump by sparking a scandal based on the argument of interference from the Russian security services,” the letter says.
On September 8, 2016, US intelligence officials submitted an investigative recommendation to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey, and to the Deputy Director of Counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, regarding “Presidential candidate Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning Presidential candidate Trump and Russian hackers hampering the US elections as a way to distract the public.”
The intelligence community offers the Senate Judiciary Committee a classified report with additional details, Ratcliffe said.