Smoking gun? Obama endorsed bogus CIA claims on Trump and Putin before analysis was even finished

President Barack Obama made public statements as early as mid-December 2016 indicating that he was endorsing a predetermined CIA view about Vladimir Putin allegedly wanting Donald Trump to win and Hillary Clinton to lose. The intelligence community assessment (ICA) had not even been completed and was still being debated and drafted.

The record — bolstered by newly-declassified documents — shows that Obama was a central figure at key points throughout the Russiagate saga. Obama directed the creation of a new ICA on Russian meddling only after Trump was victorious in November 2016. Well before the ICA was finalized, Obama repeatedly endorsed the controversial and inaccurate conclusion from the CIA, run at the time by Director John Brennan. That conclusion was spun into a widely-adopted narrative that Putin had allegedly ordered election meddling in 2016 to hurt Clinton’s chances and to help Trump win.

Obama endorsed an anonymously-leaked CIA assessment on Russian meddling in mid-December 2016 during an interview with NPR, roughly two weeks before the ICA was finalized in late December 2016. Obama said during the interview that no one should be “surprised by the CIA assessment that this was done purposely to improve Trump's chances” — a claim he was making following anonymous leaks to the media about the CIA’s alleged position, preempting the completion of the formal ICA later that month.

Obama's pre-judged outcome

Obama similarly hinted that he had already come to the conclusion that Russia had allegedly meddled to hurt Clinton and help Trump during a mid-December 2016 White House press conference and a mid-December 2016 appearance on The Daily Show — both roughly two weeks prior to the ICA being completed.

Despite Obama’s perpetuating the falsity in mid-December 2016, a recent CIA review ordered by Director John Ratcliffe stated that the most-highly classified version of the ICA would not be completed until December 30, 2016. A less declassified version of the ICA would be dated January 5, 2017 — with the public version of the ICA dated the following day.

The post-election January 2017 ICA was put together by just the CIA, FBI, and NSA — led at the time by Brennan, since-fired FBI Director James Comey, and former NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers — with input from then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Gabbard: Proof that Obama knew it was false

“There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false,” Gabbard asserted from the podium at the White House press briefing room last month. “They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.”

A spokesperson for Obama released a statement in response to Gabbard’s allegations, where he sought to deny Gabbard’s claims.

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” the Obama statement read.

“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio," the former president's statement said.

Obama did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him by Just the News to the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama.

Reliance on anonymous leaks to frame the Trump-Russia narrative

Leaks purportedly from the CIA in the wake of Trump’s win over Clinton in November 2016 would emerge following Obama’s early December 2016 directive that the ICA on Russian meddling be drafted and completed before he left office on January 20, 2017.

The New York Times had reported on Halloween 2016 that “law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government” and that “even the hacking into Democratic emails, FBI and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.”

The leaks would soon shift in tone, and Putin's alleged preference for Trump was injected into the anti-Trump media landscape.

The Washington Post reported on December 9, 2016 that “the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” The outlet cited a “senior U.S. official” who contended that “it is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected” and that “that’s the consensus view.”

The outlet hedged its bets by backtracking and then reported the next day “the FBI is not sold on the idea that Russia had a particular aim in its meddling” and quoted a U.S. official who said that “there’s no question that [the Russian] efforts went one way, but it’s not clear that they have a specific goal or mix of related goals.”

Despite the seemingly conflicting leaks, the CIA’s alleged anonymous claims in early December 2016 set off a political firestorm, and were embraced by Obama.

Gabbard released a July report criticizing the leaks from December 2016.

“Deep State officials in the IC begin leaking blatantly false intelligence to the Washington Post, as proven by the unpublished PDB and previous IC products, claiming that Russia used ‘cyber means’ to influence ‘the outcome of the election.’ … Later that evening, another leak to the Washington Post falsely alleges that the CIA ‘concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened’ in the election to help President Trump,” the ODNI report from last month said. “At this point, there is no official IC assessment that contains that conclusion.”

The media would seize on these purported CIA leaks in December 2016 — and so would Obama.

Obama endorses CIA leaks — then tries to walk it back

NPR's Steve Inskeep asked Obama about his prior critiques about Trump’s stance toward Russia and questioned to what extent Obama was suggesting that there had been cooperation between Trump and the Russians. Obama denied he was hinting at collusion, but then endorsed the CIA’s leaks about Putin’s motivations.

“Well, I'm, I'm not suggesting cooperation at all. Keep in mind that those statements were in the context of everyone now acting surprised by the CIA assessment that this was done purposely to improve Trump's chances. And my only point was that shouldn't be treated as a blockbuster because that was the worst-kept secret in this town. Everybody understood that. It was reported on,” Obama said. 

“Steve, if you go back and look at your stories, if you read any mainstream publication, you would see that if you have a hack of the DNC and a hack of Hillary Clinton's most senior advisers' e-mails, and those things are then released in drip-drip-drip fashion over the course of months, and that seem to generate consistently negative coverage … then it's a pretty clear inference that people would draw, and did draw, that this was helping the Trump campaign and it was hurting the Hillary campaign.”

Obama added: “That doesn't mean that the Trump campaign was coordinating. It just means that they understood what everybody else understood, which was that this was not good for Hillary Clinton's campaign. And when you combine that with the fact that the president-elect has been very honest about his admiration for Putin and that he hopes to forge a more cooperative relationship with him and focus on the threat of Islamic terrorism, then my only point was we shouldn't now suddenly act as if this is a huge revelation.”

Both the NPR transcript and the NPR video of the interview then stated that “after the conversation, Obama returned to the room to say one more thing about the CIA.” Obama then sought to unwind his endorsement of CIA leaks even as the ICA was still being drafted.

“You had something you wanted to add,” Inskeep said.

“When we're discussing the issue of the Russia hack, I think it is worth noting that when it comes to the motivations of the Russians, that there are still a whole range of assessments taking place among the agencies,” Obama said. “And so when I receive a final report, you know, we'll be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations. But that does not in any way, I think, detract from the basic point that everyone during the election perceived accurately that, in fact, what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton administra[tion] — the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign.”

Inskeep said that “I think you're stopping short of endorsing the CIA conclusion that the hack was designed to help Donald Trump as opposed to some other objective.”

“Well I think the point I'm making is that right now what you've had are CIA leaks, not of an official document. And I think it's important for the process of various agencies comparing notes and thinking about these assessments,” Obama said. “Because it's not as if in any of these circumstances, you know you just have a signed letter regarding Russian intentions that's floating around. These are all assessments made based on a wide range of evidence and different agencies are still looking at all that stuff gathering it together and hopefully putting into a single package. That's precisely why I've asked that report to be issued before the 20th so that those aspects of — at least that are not classified — can be presented in some form to the public.”

Obama endorsed CIA’s phony view multiple times

The NPR interview was not the only time that Obama provided public statements in December 2016 suggesting the outcome of the ICA was predetermined and that he was preemptively endorsing the CIA’s view that Putin had ordered the hack of the DNC and that Russia had meddled to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

Obama had discussed alleged Russian meddling during a mid-November 2016 press conference — but at that time gave no hint that Russia’s actions were designed to hurt Clinton and help Trump.

“I indicated, there has been very clear proof that they have engaged in cyberattacks. This isn’t new. It’s not unique to Russia. There are a number of states where we’ve seen low-level cyberattacks and industrial espionage and other behavior that we think should be out of bounds,” Obama said on November 17, 2016. 

“And I delivered a clear and forceful message [to Putin] that, though we recognize Russia’s intelligence-gathering will sometimes take place even if we don’t like it, there’s a difference between that and them either meddling with elections or going after private organizations or commercial entities, and that we’re monitoring it carefully and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening.” Obama never issued any executive order responding to the allegations.

This all changed in December 2016, when Obama’s directive to create an ICA was issued, and the CIA’s alleged position that Putin had sought to defeat Clinton and elect Trump was leaked.

Obama appeared on the Daily Show on December 12, 2016, where Trevor Noah said that “we heard that the CIA assessed with high confidence that the Russians were involved in the hacking of the DNC and the RNC with the specific intent of swaying the election in favor of Donald Trump” and that Obama had “ordered a review of this from all intelligence agencies.”

“Right,” Obama replied.

Obama pointed to the early October 2016 assessment and claimed that “it was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies and law enforcement that organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked.”

Obama then held a White House press conference on December 16, 2016 where he again seemed to preempt the completion of the ICA by again suggesting that Russia had favored Trump over Clinton. The then-president repeated that “based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC” as he again referenced the early October 2016 assessment by the ODNI and DHS. 

“Once we had clarity and certainty around what, in fact, had happened, we publicly announced that, in fact, Russia had hacked into the DNC,” Obama said in reference to the statement by ODNI and DHS. “And at that time, we did not attribute motives or any interpretations of why they had done so.”

Obama added that “part of why the Russians have been effective on this is because they don't go around announcing what they're doing. It's not like Putin is going around the world publicly saying, ‘look what we did, wasn't that clever?’ He denies it. So the idea that somehow public shaming is going to be effective I think doesn't read the thought process in Russia very well.”

Jumping to conclusions that he ordered

Obama then strongly suggested that Russia had meddled to help Trump — something the ICA had not assessed yet.

“Some of the people who historically have been very critical of me for engaging with the Russians and having conversations with them also endorsed the President-elect, even as he was saying that we should stop sanctioning Russia and being tough on them, and work together with them against our common enemies. He [Trump] was very complimentary of Mr. Putin personally,” Obama said. “That wasn’t news. The President-elect during the campaign said so. And some folks who had made a career out of being anti-Russian didn’t say anything about it. And then after the election, suddenly they’re asking, ‘well, why didn’t you tell us that maybe the Russians were trying to help our candidate?’ Well, come on.”

When asked if he believed Putin had ordered the hack of the DNC, Obama replied, “I’d make a larger point, which is, not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin. This is a pretty hierarchical operation. Last I checked, there’s not a lot of debate and democratic deliberation, particularly when it comes to policies directed at the United States. We have said, and I will confirm, that this happened at the highest levels of the Russian government.”

Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest also spent multiple trips to the podium in December 2016 strongly hinting it was the Obama White House’s view that Putin had sought to undermine Clinton’s candidacy and to help Trump emerge victorious, despite the ICA not yet having reached any such conclusion.

“You didn't need a security clearance to figure out who benefitted from malicious Russian cyber activity,” Earnest told reporters on December 12, 2016.

The Obama White House spokesman pointed to the early October 2016 statement by ODNI and DHS — wrongly claiming that it came from all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies — and argued that “it was obvious to everyone who was paying attention” including Trump “that the impact of that malicious activity benefitted the Trump campaign and hurt the Clinton campaign” during the December 15, 2016 briefing.

“It wasn’t a secret. It’s obvious what the impact was. There’s a separate question about intent, and there are anonymous figures in the intelligence community that are weighing in all over the place, and I’m not at liberty to do that from here,” Earnest said. “We’re going to rely on intelligence assessments to try to get to the bottom of that if they can. But it’s not — the impact of this operation is not in doubt. It’s not in doubt. It benefitted the Trump campaign, and it hurt the Clinton campaign [...] There’s no security clearance required to figure out what happened.”

When asked about Putin’s role, Earnest again pointed to the early October 2016 statement by ODNI and DHS, specifically the part about the DNC hack being ordered by the highest levels of the Kremlin, and said, “I guess the reference to senior-most officials in Russia would lead me to conclude that, based on my personal reading and not based on any knowledge that I have that may be classified or otherwise, pretty obvious that they were referring to the senior-most government official in Russia [Putin].”

Timeline of Obama's involvement

The timeline is key to understanding how Obama’s public and preemptive pronouncements fit into the broader shift of the Obama administration’s official stance on Russian meddling.

Prior to Obama’s directive in early December 2016 to create the ICA, Obama had been briefed on “Clinton Plan intelligence” which indicated Clinton was seeking to falsely link Trump to Russia to distract from her own classified email server scandal, but the FBI pursued its "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation against Trump anyway. The then-president was also later part of key discussions in January 2017 related to the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and the targeting of Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn.

A recently-declassified September 2016 ICA made no mention of Russia’s alleged animosity towards Clinton nor of its supposed preference for Trump, included no discussion of the Kremlin allegedly seeking to sink Clinton’s candidacy and elevate Trump’s chances, and generally attributed Russian efforts to a generalized desire to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. election or the legitimacy of the next presidential administration, sowing chaos rather than a desire to pick a winner and a loser.

The September 2016 ICA stated that “we assess that the Russian services probably orchestrated at least some of the disclosures of DNC and DCCC documents from June to August” but that the “FBI and NSA, however, have low confidence in the attribution of the data leaks to Russia.” The assessment from September 2016 added that “the Kremlin probably expects that publicity surrounding the leaked party data will raise questions about the integrity of the U.S. political process, as Putin hinted in a recent interview.”

At no point did the September 2016 ICA hint that Putin was acting to hurt Clinton’s election chances nor to help Trump win the presidency.

Whistleblower tried to warn them

A former deputy national intelligence officer at the National Intelligence Council, whom Gabbard’s office has dubbed a whistleblower, stated that “through my role in leading production of the prior 2016 ICA, I also knew that as recently as September of 2016, other elements of the IC had pushed back during analytic coordination on warnings of Russian intent to influence the 2016 presidential election, stating that such a judgement would be misleading.”

The whistleblower added that “as for the 2017 ICA’s judgement of a decisive Russian preference for then-candidate Donald Trump, I could not concur in good conscience based on information available, and my professional analytic judgement.”

As the election drew closer, Johnson at DHS and Clapper at ODNI released an early October 2016 joint public statement arguing that “the U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations."

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the joint statement concluded.

The statement by DHS and ODNI similarly did not claim the efforts were aimed at helping Trump win and making Clinton lose, but following Trump’s electoral victory over Clinton, Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence community to put together a new ICA on Russian meddling — and this intelligence assessment would specifically claim that Putin had worked to defeat Clinton and to secure victory for Trump.

Obama orders a re-write of intel

The newly-declassified House report said that “Obama orders a rewrite of 10 assessments on Russian activities during the election” on December 6, 2016.

“The President directed the IC to review their work to date on the Russian influence campaign, and quickly produce the new ICA for release in early January, before President-elect Trump took office,” the report said. 

“The President directed that the report include everything the IC knew about Russian interference in the 2016 elections,” the Senate report said. “The instruction was to have a version available to brief Congress, and also a declassified version releasable to the public.”

The Senate report said that Obama “requested this product be completed by the end of his Administration” — January 20, 2017. Mysteriously, for such an important tasking, “there was no document memorializing this presidential direction,” according to the Senate report.

The same day as Obama’s directive, the Senate report said, “Clapper passed the President's verbal direction to the National Intelligence Council.”

Gabbard’s office said that the Obama intelligence community was “working on a new PDB [presidential daily brief] examining the potential impact of cyber hacks on the election results” on December 7, 2016. Gabbard’s office said that, that day, “Clapper’s office develops talking points based on the PDB’s findings” including that “foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and that “we have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”

Her office said that the next day — December 8, 2016 — “IC officials discuss the draft PDB” which found that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” Gabbard’s office said that the group “also decides the PDB will be published the following day” due to “high administration interest.”

“​​A few hours later, after initially coauthoring the PDB, the FBI (led by FBI Director James Comey) inexplicably withdraws from coordinating on the product and notifies other IC officials that the FBI will be drafting a dissent,” Gabbard’s office said. “Later in the afternoon, a senior PDB official kills the PDB ‘based on some new guidance.’ The postelection PDB, which once again assessed that Russia did not hack the election, was never published.”

A press release from Gabbard’s ODNI said that the next day — on December 9, 2016 — “President Obama’s White House gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting … to discuss Russia.”

Declassified documents about the meeting in the White House Situation Room labeled it the “PC [Principals Committee] Meeting on a Sensitive Topic” — Russia and the 2016 election.

The meeting was chaired by Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice and included Brennan, then-DNI Clapper, disgraced FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, and many others.

After the meeting, in an email titled “POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling,” Clapper’s assistant sent an email to ODNI leaders stating that “pursuant to the POTUS tasking at Monday’s [December 5, 2016] meeting on Russia election meddling for a comprehensive assessment, the DNI broached the TPs [talking points] below with Denis McDonough and DCIA [Brennan] at the Russia PC [Principals Committee] this afternoon.”

Clapper’s executive assistant said that “the IC is prepared to produce an assessment per the President’s request, that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities, and how Moscow’s approach has changed over time, going back to 2008 and 2012 as reference points. ODNI will lead the effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.”

The declassified House report said that, the same day, “DCIA Brennan Orders Publication of Substandard Reporting on Russian Activities During the Election.”

“Acting on President Obama's orders, DCIA Brennan directed a ‘full review’ and publication of raw HUMINT [human intelligence] information that had been collected before the election,” the House report said. “CIA officers said that some of this information had been held on the orders of DCIA, while other reporting had been judged by experienced CIA officers to have not met longstanding publication standards. Some of the latter was unclear or from unknown subsources, but would nonetheless be published after the election — over the objections of veteran officers — on orders of DCIA and cited in the ICA to support claims that Putin aspired to help Trump win.”

Clapper later told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "I don't think we would have mounted the effort [creating the ICA] we did, probably, to be honest, in the absence of presidential direction, because that kind of cleared the way on sharing all the accesses."

Gabbard last month issued a press release stating that her office had “revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

Declaring "high confidence" despite U.S. experts' objections

The impact that Obama seemingly putting his thumb on the scale had on the work conducted by the drafters of the ICA may never been fully understood.

The election meddling assessment from the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA — made public in early January 2017 — concluded with “high confidence” that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016” and that Russia worked to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency” and “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Admiral Rogers, then the leader of the NSA, diverged from Brennan and Comey on one key aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” rather than “high confidence” that Putin had “aspired to help” Trump’s election chances in 2016 by “discrediting” Clinton" and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”

The CIA’s recent review critiqued the “high confidence” assessment by the FBI and the CIA that Putin had “aspired” to help Trump win in 2016. The CIA review stated that “NSA and a few other participants were not comfortable with ascribing ‘high confidence’ to the ‘aspired’ judgment. They cited the limited source base, lack of corroborating intelligence, and ‘the possibility for an alternative judgment’ as driving their discomfort.”

A bombshell House Intelligence Committee report declassified last month contended that “the ICA did not cite any report where Putin directly indicated helping Trump win was the objective.”

The ICA also apparently ignored dissenting evidence from experts on Russian intelligence showing that the Russian leader may have actually favored (or at least fully expected) a Clinton victory instead, according to the declassified House report.

The dissenting declassified House report critiqued the “high confidence” assessment by the FBI and CIA that Putin had “aspired” to help Trump win in 2016. The declassified report said that “the judgment that Putin developed ‘a clear preference’ for candidate Trump and ‘aspired to help his chances of victory’ did not adhere to the tenets of the Intelligence Community Directive 203, Analytic Standards.”

Brennan released a 2020 memoir, Undaunted, where he wrote in his book that Rogers “wasn’t the only one who questioned the confidence level on the judgment in the assessment related to Russia favoring Mr. Trump’s candidacy” and that “two senior managers in the CIA mission center responsible for Russia—one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background—visited me in my office and said that they had the same view as Mike Rogers.” 

Brennan wrote that “I came to the conclusion that the two officers had not read all the available intelligence. I said that I would not overturn the judgment of the CIA analysts who, as a team, were deeply familiar with all the relevant intelligence and had made the high-confidence judgment. I encouraged the two officers, who said that they raised their concerns with the drafters of the assessment, to discuss their concerns again with the authors.”

Key role played by Steele Dossier finally revealed

Obama made his public declarations endorsing the CIA view that Putin had meddled to hurt Clinton and help Trump even as significant battles were raging inside the ICA draft team, including those related to the Steele Dossier.

Comey and McCabe had pushed in December 2016 to include British ex-spy Christopher Steele's debunked dossier in the 2016 ICA on alleged Russian meddling. The recent CIA review sharply criticized Brennan for allegedly joining with these anti-Trump forces in the FBI in pushing to include Steele’s baseless anti-Trump dossier in the assessment.

The CIA’s recent eight-page “lessons learned” review — released in July — concluded that “the decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”

The CIA’s then-deputy director for analysis warned in a late December 2016 email to Brennan that including the dossier in any form risked “the credibility of the entire paper," Ratcliffe's review found.

“Despite these objections, Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two mission center leaders — one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background — he appeared more swayed by the Dossier's general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns,” the CIA said in the recent review, stating that Brennan had written that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

The recently-declassified House analysis provided further detail on how Brennan ensured the Steele Dossier — bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign — would be included in the ICA, despite objections from others at the CIA. The report stated that “the DCIA rejected requests from CIA professionals that the dossier be kept out of the ICA.”

The report cited a senior intelligence officer present at a meeting with Brennan where “two senior CIA officers — one from Russia operations and the other from Russia analysis — argued with DCIA that the dossier should not be included at all in the ICA, because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards.”

The same officer said that Brennan refused to remove the reference to the dossier and, when Brennan was confronted with the dossier's significant problems, said that Brennan reportedly replied, "Yes, but doesn't it ring true?"