CIA Russia report leader still embraces Steele dossier, says Trump a 'dictator' and MAGA 'Nazis'

The retired CIA spy who says she led the team that helped draft the controversial 2016 U.S. intelligence community assessment on Russian election meddling has called Donald Trump a “dictator” and MAGA supporters “Nazis” — and insists that the now-discredited Steele dossier “might be true.”

Susan Miller, a recently-retired CIA counterintelligence officer, has taken to social media and news media interviews in recent days to tell the story of how she was hand-picked by former CIA Director John Brennan to lead the team which helped draft the ICA in late 2016, gleefully exposing her anti-Trump sentiments.

She has repeatedly suggested that Trump might be a “Russian asset” or a “Kremlin asset” without providing any evidence, despite recent reports showing that calmer, less politically-driven voices in the intelligence community at the time cast doubt on such allegations, but were squelched by Brennan.

No proof, but it "might" be true?

Miller has also repeatedly claimed in recent weeks that British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier might be true, despite the dossier having been thoroughly discredited for years now by a special prosecutor, congressional probes, and even the CIA itself.

She has also claimed that some officials inside the CIA — whom she refused to name — had wanted her ICA team to declare that Trump’s win was illegitimate due to Russian meddling. She has admitted that although the ICA did not come to that conclusion, she has suggested that her team may have been able to reach that finding if it had been able to poll every single voter to see if they had been swayed by Russian meddling. 

According to the University of California at Santa Barbara, 136,787,187 people voted in the 2016 election.

Miller has also sent mixed messages, saying that the ICA team had found “no collusion” when they were writing their assessment in late 2016, and even claimed that this “no collusion” finding was made clear in the ICA. In fact, the ICA’s major reference to collusion was a direct citation to a two-page annex on the Steele dossier. 

The 2016 ICA was written at the direction of President Barack Obama and largely overseen by Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and since-fired FBI Director James Comey. It was finished in December 2016, with a publicly declassified version released in early January 2017 and a more extensive classified version declassified and released last week.

Miller said she led the 2016 ICA draft team.

Trump collusion, Russian meddling, and the 2016 outcome claims get blurred in denials

Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had pushed in December 2016 to include Steele's debunked dossier in the 2016 ICA on alleged Russian meddling. The dossier was included in an annex to the assessment and was directly referred to in the most highly-classified version of the ICA.

A newly-declassified House Intelligence Committee report and a recent CIA review referred to as the "lessons learned" report by current CIA Director John Ratcliffe sharply criticized Brennan for joining with avowed anti-Trump forces in the FBI by pushing to include Steele’s dossier in the 2016 ICA. That inclusion was made over the objections of Russia experts in the Obama administration's intelligence community. 

Similarly, the House report also sharply criticized the failure in analytic tradecraft behind the ICA’s conclusion that Putin had personally “aspired” to help Trump win in 2016.

Miller has also said she doesn’t remember basic facts about the ICA timeline, including when Trump was first elected and when the CIA and her ICA team allegedly first received purportedly key intelligence about Putin’s motivations. Miller even forgot whether the intelligence had come in before or after Trump’s win. 

She also couldn’t remember if her ICA team had access to intelligence on a personal directive from Putin himself or not.

Miller decried Ratcliffe’s lessons-learned review as a political hit job and claimed that none of it was true, before admitting that key allegations in Ratcliffe's report, including about Brennan insisting that the dossier be included in the ICA, were probably accurate.

Miller told the SpyTalk podcast in July that “I headed up the report team. … I wanted people who would speak truth to power.” She contended that “all of us went in with a completely open mind” but that “they [the Russians] definitely wanted him [Trump].”

Miller’s anti-Trump posts were unearthed by Just the News after the chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Just the News that he wants to make sure that spies who abused their powers are stripped of their security clearances.

Miller’s LinkedIn profile lists her as a “Retired Senior … CIA Officer with full clearance.”

Just the News asked Miller detailed questions about her claims that Trump is a dictator and might be a Russian or Kremlin asset, that MAGA supporters are Nazis, that the Steele Dossier might be true despite being debunked. Just the News also asked her about her clear anti-Trump bias, whether that bias may have impacted the drafting of the ICA, what her relationship is with a number of Hunter Biden laptop letter signers with whom she had interacted on LinkedIn, whether she believed it was irresponsible to be suggesting the Steele Dossier was legitimate, whether she acknowledged that the dossier was cited in the ICA, and whether she was involved in any analysis related to foreign influence in the 2020 election as well.

Miller’s full statement to Just the News was as follows: “I was originally pro Trump and a solid Republican since I could start voting….i even voted for him in his first election. Your comments are mean spirited and uninformed.. Our constitution limits the president to two terms, Trump is already talking about a third. I refused to put the dossier in our report as it could not be corroborated. Sorry to ruin your view of me as a left wing Republican hater. I was overseas for a tour from 19-22. I k ow [sic] nothing about the laptop letter, but will look it up.”

“Dictator” Trump and MAGA “Nazis” 

Miller has used her LinkedIn account to repeatedly attack Trump since leaving the CIA last year.

The New York Times wrote an article in May titled, “FBI Dismantles Elite Public Corruption Squad.” Miller’s response on LinkedIn? “This is awful! Further proof that Trump is a dictator.”

Miller also supported analogies between Trump and Adolf Hitler. An ABC News article from February said that “The Diplomatic Security Service is being targeted for firings. Why that matters: Analysis.” A commenter from the United Kingdom said, “I’m just a Brit (you know, that little island off the coast of Europe that stood up to Hitler) but I have to say that harming DSS would be equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot.” Miller replied, “Yes….the Hitler analogy is not lost on a bunch of us…..sadly….”

Miller referred to an attempt in February to stop FBI Director Kash Patel from being confirmed as “a righteous effort” but that “I fear it will fall on deaf ears. Sigh.” That month, she also commented on a New York Times article about the DOJ’s newly-formed weaponization group, with Miller saying that “this is terrifying for our democracy.”

The Washington Post wrote in March that “Trump terminates program tracking mass abductions of Ukrainian children.” Miller commented, “As if we needed more proof of his lack of empathy …. and his high regard for a dictator. He has dictator envy, clearly….”

An article by The New York Times in May said that the “CIA Fires Top Doctor Targeted by Far-Right Activist.” Lawyer Kevin Carroll quoted from the article, writing, “‘Plaintiff and her family suffered terrible injustice only because her good service to our country made her a target for a political extremist who defamed her and called for the termination of her employment and even her death,’ Mr. Carroll wrote in his complaint.”

Miller replied, “Good grief.  As if we needed proof that MAGA types are nazis….calling for her death??! So wrong. I hope she is okay.”

Miller sarcastically referred to Trump as “Our Dear Leader” earlier this month when criticizing the State Department’s decision to fire numerous employees. She made it clear in a June post that “[I] am not a Trump fan.”

“This is disturbing indeed … Good grief….that’s terrible,” Miller said in response to a New York Times article in June on a longtime friend of disgraced FBI special agent Peter Strzok resigning from the FBI after he said the bureau intended to polygraph him about his ties to Strzok.

Miller agreed in February with the sentiments of a commenter who said that “the cruelty and sadistic pleasure is the point of this crew [Trump and Musk] …about as unAmerican and unpatriotic as you can get….” Miller replied, “Yup.”

Despite this, Miller has repeatedly claimed that she is a Republican, including on LinkedIn where she said in June that “I’m a Republican. I am not a fan of the Democratic Party.” Miller also told Times Radio earlier in July that “I’m still a registered Republican, I’m gonna be honest, I like their policies better than the Democrats, and I would vote for Trump if it wasn’t for some of his actions.”

Miller repeatedly suggests Trump is a “Kremlin asset” based on internet chats

The self-described ICA team leader has repeatedly suggested that Trump is a “Russian asset” or “Kremlin asset” — although she has not appeared to have provided evidence for her allegations.

“There’s a number of times he’s acting like one [a Kremlin asset],” Miller said in a Times Radio interview posted earlier in July. “And I give an example of back in 2015, 2016 when my team and I were writing, finding in the paper, in our intelligence I should say, that there was clear evidence that the Russians were trying to influence it on President Trump, towards President Trump that year… Within about a month after he took office, he tried to put me and my team in jail. He put us on trial. We still don’t know what the crime was supposed to be, but it was harassment at a minimum.”

When asked directly again during that interview whether Trump is a Kremlin asset, Miller replied, “I have seen some things. I don’t — I’m still working out whether or not it is true. But yes, there has been some information that has been out there that has been on the web and some other things like that that make it look like he could be […] There was some posting I want to say a month or two ago that made it sound like there might be something there.”

“Trump wants to be very much like Putin, sort of a president for life. I think that he likes the power Putin has. And that’s about all I can say for sure right now,” Miller added.

Miller told The New York Times in March that Trump has “autocrat envy” and that “Trump likes Putin because Putin has control over his country. And Trump wants control over his country.”  John Sipher, a former CIA officer who signed the notorious Hunter Biden laptop letter crafted by Biden campaign operatives, commented on LinkedIn in May that “not giving Ukraine enough weapons is bad. Siding with the Kremlin and screwing our allies is something altogether worse.” Miller replied, “John Sipher yes. This president is siding with the Russians.”

An article by Mediaite in May was headlined “Trump Orders Hegseth and Bondi to ‘Determine How Military’ Can Be Used in Domestic Law Enforcement.” Miller replied, “Good grief….as if we need more proof that Trump is in love with Russia.”

A user posted on LinkedIn in March that “the Sino-Russiranian Axis has been waging war against us for longer than anyone can imagine.” Another user posted a crudely-done Photoshop of Putin walking a child-sized Trump on a leash with the caption that “Washington is now part of it [the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian axis].” Miller replied to the fake photo with approval saying, “yup…picture is worth a thousand words as they say…..”

When asked if Trump was a Russian agent during a May episode of the SpyTalk podcast, Miller had said that back in 2016 “I remember saying, hey, we don’t have any information on that.”

Miller repeatedly says the Steele dossier "might" be true despite any evidence

Miller joined the SpyTalk podcast in mid-July, where she repeatedly suggested the collusion claims in the Steele dossier might be true, despite the dossier having been debunked and discredited for years. The podcast hosts were Jeff Stein and Michael Isikoff, the latter being a journalist who had cited Steele as a source in a Yahoo News story in September 2016.

She said that “we had looked at the Steele dossier, and the problem with it — it might be true, I don’t know. The bottom line is—” Isikoff interjected to say that “I should say nothing in it, other than what was already out there, has ever been verified after years of investigation by Mueller and others.” Miller replied, “True, but, yeah, but, yeah exactly, but the thing is—” Isikoff then asked, “So is it responsible at this point to say it might be true when no evidence has come forward that supports any of it?”

Miller would go on to again suggest the dossier might be true.

“I would say at this point that we don’t have any new information. I mean that’s the bottom line. And the Steele Dossier did come out, and they insisted that it be attached to the report, and those of us that were on the team were like, ‘Absolutely not.’ Because it’s not that it’s … Maybe, maybe it’s true. We had not looked at it. We hadn’t looked at it. This came in very late. We hadn’t looked at it. We hadn’t thought about it,” Miller said. “I shouldn’t say we hadn’t looked at it. There were some people that looked to see if there was anything that we had in our own files that could corroborate it. We had nothing at the time.”

Isikoff asked her what the FBI’s argument was for including the dossier in the ICA.

“I think they believed that the Steele Dossier — well let me back up. I asked them if they had any corroborating information regarding the Steele Dossier at the same time when we talked to them. And they said they did not, but they felt that it was from good sources that probably knew what they were talking about,” Miller said. 

“And I said it’s really hard, A, to change the paper right now, and B, um, if we are going to use that dossier, we need to put this down and probably spend another year seeing if any of it is true.”

After a question from Stein, Miller said that “I’m not saying it was rogue [intelligence]. It was that it came out to us… It was so late in the game, we have not looked into this at all. And we can’t tell you with high confidence, medium confidence, low confidence, is this true? And at that time, we couldn’t do that.”

Stein asked her if Comey was trying to include the dossier in the ICA because he wanted to smear Trump, and Miller took the opportunity to again suggest the dossier might be true.

“I don’t know Comey well enough… No, I don’t think it was so much that he wanted to smear Trump,” Miller said. “I think it was more that he had a belief that it might be true — that he felt it very well could be true. And frankly, it could be. We never looked into it, because that’s not our job, you know, that’s the FBI’s job.”

Later in the interview, Miller again suggested the dossier might be legitimate, saying, “This was not something that we could find any evidence of having been truthful or real. Maybe it was real. I’m just going to say it. Maybe it was real. I have no idea. But the bottom line is we couldn’t figure it out at the time.” She said again, “Could it be real? Maybe. I just don’t know.”

Miller said that she believed a mid-level FBI official on the ICA drafting team who told her, “Hey, you know, the FBI has taken a look at this, and they don’t want to sign off on this unless you put this at the end of the, you know, as an addendum.” Miller said that “and that’s what we did.” Miller said she believed the annex had a “covering paragraph” that said something like, “This has been included at the FBI’s request. This information has not been looked at by this particular team, or something to that effect. … This has been put in for readers to review.”

Miller's claim of a caveat is false. The ICA’s “Annex A” did not contain a line saying what Miller claimed. Near the top of the annex, it stated merely that “we have only limited corroboration of the source’s [Steele’s] reporting in this case and did not use it to reach the analytic conclusions.”

She had said in a May episode of the SpyTalk podcast that “I look back now at the Steele Dossier and I wonder, did we miss something? … Maybe. … Trump is acting, at a minimum, like a dictator, and he’s acting like Putin. And so that’s why I’m reserving my thoughts on that now until I can figure out if there’s any more information out there.”

Claims insiders at CIA wanted to declare Trump’s 2016 win illegitimate

Miiller claimed in the interview that some inside the U.S. intelligence community “were a little bit angry when we came out with what we did, because they were hoping we’d be able to say — not they, not all of them — there were some people that were really hoping we’d be able to say, ‘and therefore, Trump is not, you know, the president,’ and other people wanted us to say, ‘nothing to see here,’ and it was in between that.” 

Miller pointedly refuses to say who in the CIA had been pushing for such an extreme conclusion.

Miller was then asked about Ratcliffe’s report, with Isikoff saying Brennan essentially "put his thumb on the scale."

“He did not," Miller replied. "We never even consulted with Brennan until we gave him the final version. … We did tell Brennan what we found, and that was exactly what I said, ‘The Russians tried to influence. I can’t tell you that this election is — somehow has to be done over because we can’t tell you how many people were influenced by this.’ And people wanted us to say that,” Miller replied.

Isikoff again pressed her on who wanted her to say that, but Miller stumbled, saying “Oh, I can’t remember. There were people that — I’m not going to go into that. But basically there were people that were like, um, not — on my team we just decided to be straightforward — but there were some that were like, you know, ‘yes there’s something to see here,’ and there’s others that are saying ‘nothing to see here’ and I never asked them why they wanted to hear that or see that, I just assumed that one was from one party and one was from another, and I didn’t really care, because we decided to be absolutely alone in our process.”

Miller also said on the podcast that Trump was going after the ICA team “who dared to write a report that simply said the Russians tried to influence the election towards Trump, we can’t tell you if it worked, and therefore Trump is our president, is what it said. And that’s a crime?”

Miller says CIA knew there was no collusion in 2016, but falsely claims ICA said that

Miller wrote on LinkedIn in June that “We investigated, and yes, the Russians did try, but we could not prove that the influence op worked and we found no collusion at that time between Trump and the Russians and we clearly stated this in the paper.”

Nowhere in that ICA was there any such statement, and left such a conclusion ambiguous, allowing the narrative to take root in the anti-Trump camps and the legacy media.

“The director of national intelligence and the White House are lying, again,” Miller also told NBC News over the weekend. “We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected.”

She added: “At the same time, we found no two-way collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at that time.”

Miller said she was not interviewed for the CIA's "lessons-learned" review, telling the SpyTalk podcast in July that “I got together with other members of my team and we’re all rolling our eyes because none of it was true.”

“My team, we would’ve walked away if Brennan had been telling us, ‘I want you to find something in Trump’s favor or against Trump.’ We would’ve absolutely all walked away,” Miller said. “I would never be a part of that, nor would my team.”

Isikoff pointed out that “you didn’t walk away when [Brennan] directed you to include it [the dossier] in the report.”

“So when he told us he wants to add it as an addendum, um, and we noted to him that we had not had any chance to look at it … We’ll put it in as an addendum, but the key is that we’re not gonna use that as any piece of our analysis… We did not have any corroboration of the Steele documentation at that time,” Miller replied.

Miller claimed that “the Ratcliffe thing” was “yes, 100%” a political hit job by Ratcliffe, arguing that “he’s doing Trump’s bid to go after those of us” who drafted the ICA. Yet the ICA team leader admitted that multiple assertions in the CIA lessons-learned review were true.

Miller said that “that’s true” when asked about the CIA review's finding that the FBI’s participation in the ICA hinged on the dossier’s inclusion and that the FBI repeatedly pushed to weave references to the dossier through the body of the ICA.

“It wasn’t to me,” Miller said. “I think it was between Brennan and the FBI director, it must’ve been.”

The CIA review found that the CIA’s Deputy Director for Analysis had warned Brennan that including the dossier in the ICA in any form risked “the credibility of the entire paper” in a December 29, 2016, email. Miller admitted that “is true.”

The recent CIA memo also said that “Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness," and that Brennan was motivated by the Dossier's general conformity with existing anti-Trump theories rather than by "legitimate tradecraft concerns.” 

Miller admitted that “that’s probably true” too.

She said that “yeah it was [blackmail]” by Comey to force the inclusion of the dossier in the ICA, and that “they [the FBI] were definitely using coercion, yeah.”

Miller can’t remember important details

Miller has repeatedly said the intelligence was overwhelmingly strong that Putin had aspired to help Trump win the election, including telling The Washington Post in July that “we had very, very exquisite access. There’s no doubt.”

But in her interview with the SpyTalk podcast this month, Miller was unable to recall basic facts about the timeline, including when Trump was first elected and when the CIA and her ICA team allegedly first received this key intelligence about Putin’s motivations, even forgetting whether the intelligence had come in before or after Trump’s win. She also couldn’t remember if the ICA team had access to intelligence on a directive from Putin himself or not.

“It was the last days of the Obama administration — it was in 2016 when we, we, um — 2016, 2017, I guess, is — when was Trump first elected, it was—?” Miller said, having to be told it was in November 2016. “2016. So it was 2015, 2016 when we were working on this.”

When asked about other key elements, Miller repeatedly shifted her story.

“Uh, it would’ve been, I can’t remember exact dates or anything, but it would’ve been probably in the December [2016] timeframe … Yeah. … Yeah ‘16, or even … Yeah ‘16 I’m saying, but even November or maybe even earlier. The thing is is what happens with these reports is we just put them out and let people look at them. And so it was definitely in December-ish that — or November and December I would say — is where we were working on it and trying to look into what we could find.”

Miller asked if the ICA team had direct intelligence of a directive from Putin himself. “That was asked by us too. ‘Do you think Putin knew about it?’ I’m like, ‘It’s a dictatorship. He had to know about it.’ Ya know?” Miller replied. When Isikoff said that sounded like an analytic judgment rather than direct intelligence, Miller stumbled again, saying she couldn’t recall. 

“Yeah, it — mmm, I can’t remember if it was direct or analytic, but the bottom line is 100% Putin was behind it. Because if Russia is trying to influence president, you know, the election, it’s not going to be some GS-13 in the Ministry of Interior that’s decided to do that, it has to go from the very tippy-top, just like it would be for us if we were doing this somewhere else.”

Her trouble with facts and timelines extended even to who was CIA director then.

Miller said in a July interview with Times Radio that Trump said “thank you, Gina, for that” after he was briefed on the ICA in January 2017, seemingly mixing up the fact that it was Brennan and not future CIA Director Gina Haspel who briefed Trump on the ICA at Trump Tower in January 2017.

Miller also posted on LinkedIn in May that “the DCIA herself tasked us to do” the ICA. Brennan, a male, was the CIA director in 2016. Haspel would become CIA director under Trump.

Miller claims that Trump, Barr, and Durham “put me on trial”

Miller has also claimed that she was “put on trial” by then-Attorney General William Barr and then-Special Counsel John Durham at Trump’s behest. Miller was, in fact, never charged, nor put on trial.

Miller claimed to Times Radio in July that Trump got Barr and Durham “to open a trial on us.” She said she was interviewed by Durham “for eight hours.”

“I spent 8 hours on trial; other team members also had trials, Not unexpectedly, nothing criminal was found, of course but how on earth could a US ATTORNEY not stand up to him and say….no….there is no crime, so I’m not going to charge them,” Miller said on LinkedIn in March. 

“Instead Barr went ahead with it So I’m worried….not about me/ my team as that’s long over; but about the fact that he thinks he is above the law…but willing to manipulate the law.”

Miller said again in June that “Trump put me on trial….criminal complaint after inauguration.” No such criminal complaint has surfaced, and Miller has not produced a copy of one.

“Say hi to Leon for me”

Miller’s political posts on LinkedIn began in August 2024 with praise for former CIA Director Leon Panetta — a signer of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter — related to his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where then-Vice President Kamala Harris received her party’s nomination after then-President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid.

Jeremy Bash, former chief of staff at the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense under Obama, shared a Washington Post article on LinkedIn in August 2024 titled, “Harris foreign policy is rooted in pro-democracy internationalism. Just ask former secretary of defense Leon Panetta.” Bash commented: “One more analysis of Secretary Panetta’s DNC speech. In 7 minutes, he laid out the stakes in this election.” Miller commented, “I so love Panetta!” Bash was also a signatory to the Hunter Biden laptop letter.

Bash also shared pictures of himself at the DNC with Panetta captioned, “At DNC2024, Beacon Global Strategies Senior Counselor Leon Panetta spoke about the Commander-in-Chief qualities for our next President.” Miller replied, “Nice pic….and say hi to Leon from me….my favorite Director EVER.”

The International Spy Museum has selected Miller for the “Hidden Heroes Award” for 2025, which she is slated to receive later this year. Many of the Hunter Biden laptop letter signers now help run that museum.

Miller’s biography posted on the spy museum website states that she was “both a Division Chief and Chief of Station several times in CIA, Assistant Director of CIA for Counterintelligence, and a Mission Chief overseeing the China Mission Center before becoming Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Operations.”

Miller told the SpyTalk podcast in May that “I was the deputy chief of the counterintelligence mission center and then I was the chief. And this was between 2016 and 2020.”

She told the Global Intelligence Knowledge Network podcast in April that she had been a CIA case officer in the Soviet Union and Russia, and that she was the CIA’s chief of station in Malaysia after 9/11.

Miller told the podcast that Biden CIA Director William Burns visited Israel in August 2021 when she was station chief there and that he then asked her to run the CIA’s newly-formed China Mission Center, which was formally launched in October 2021. Miller also told the Cipher Brief podcast in July that Burns recruited her to run the China mission center after visiting Israel.

She told Times Radio earlier this month that she was the station chief in Israel when the U.S. carried out its strike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

Since retiring, Miller told the podcast that “I’ve been doing some training in CIA schools.”