Margot Cleveland of the Federalist highlights the latest bad news for the 44th president.
Documents released over the last month have exposed a post-election plot designed to derail President Donald Trump’s first term. The recently declassified material reveals former President Barack Obama sought to continue the Russia-collusion hoax Hillary Clinton had launched during the presidential campaign by directing select members of his intelligence community to craft the deceptive Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. However, a close reading of these documents reveals Obama holds even more culpability than previously discussed.
As The Federalist reported earlier, the CIA’s review of the ICA established Obama not only knew of and “condoned the politicalization of the intelligence community, but that the former president directed the politicalization.” According to the CIA’s “lessons learned” analysis of the deceptive ICA released by the Obama Administration, on December 6, 2016, then-President Obama directed “then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper to conduct a comprehensive review of all available intelligence and provide the IC’s best assessment of Russian activities related to the election,” ordering Clapper to complete the review before Trump’s inauguration. And according to former CIA Director John Brennan, the White House worked with him to “established crucial elements of the process,” including directing the CIA to take “the lead drafting the report.” …
… However, the recently declassified HPSCI report also revealed a more subtle — but equally significant — detail, namely Obama’s role in hiding intel from the analysts responsible for drafting the ICA.
“Investigators as well as the ICA authors were denied access to a trove of information on grounds of executive or congressional privilege,” the HPSCI report explained. According to the report, one FBI analyst argued the intel should be shared with analysts, but “that the Obama Administration denied ICA drafters access to this intelligence on grounds of Executive or Congressional privilege.”
While it is unclear what intel would be protected by congressional privilege, executive privilege rests in the president of the United States, meaning Barack Obama prevented the drafters of the ICA from reviewing relevant information.
