The launch of FBI and CIA documents previously classified this week illustrates how those appointed President Donald Trump in both agencies are trying to use the government’s levers to underpin their long statements that intelligence agencies conspired against him.
The FBI published Electronic Correos on Tuesday that they intended to show an effort of the office leaders in 2020 to cover up the statement of a source that there was a Chinese plot to launch the presidential elections to Joe Biden. In a statement to Daily Mail, Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel said the emails reveal that office leaders “chose to play politics and retain key information from the US people.”
And the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, published an internal agency analysis related to the 2020 elections The fact that he argued that the appointed Democrats “manipulated the intelligence and the professionals of the silenced career, all to get Trump.”
Patel and Ratcliffe statements went beyond the information contained in the published documents. The documents do not describe definitive evidence that any official acted for political reasons or is dedicated to anything beyond the debate in good faith that is typical of the process of verification and intelligence analysis.
The emails show that at least one FBI official raised the concern that the report entered into conflict with the testimony of the Congress at that time of director Christopher Wray, who said that the FBI was not aware of any Chinese attempt to interfere with the presidential elections. A former FBI official told NBC News that Wray does not remember to have been informed of the report.
A former FBI official said he was not aware of the report either. The former official, who requested anonymity, said the office produces hundreds of reports every day based on such councils, which do not always work.
Patel also promoted an article by Journalist John Solomon of what he mentioned that Customs and the US border protection had seized false licenses that were arriving mainly from China and Hong Kong around the moment when the FBI received the tip.
According to a press release from CBP 2020, 20,000 false licenses in Chicago between January and June were seized. He said that “most were for students of university age,” a population that has historically sought licenses with false birthdays so that minor students can buy alcohol.
The FBI did not respond to a request for Patel comments on false licenses.
Dozens of judges, including Trump’s appointed ones, have not found evidence of generalized or systemic electoral fraud that affects the 2020 elections, despite the accusations promoted by Trump and his allies since he lost the presidential career of that year.
However, the day after Patel issued the emails, Trump seemed to mention them during a press conference in which he talked about “China and the plates” and said that “tens of thousands of cards” were used to vote in the 2020 elections.
Concerns about the reliability of the tip
The emails published by Patel offer a window to the deep concern among the FBI analysts of their senior career about an intelligence report of an agent in the Albany field office based on a single non -vetted source that makes a historical accusation: that the Chinese government sent thousands of false identifications to help people vote fraudulently by biden.
The report finally retired about concerns about his veracity. Two FBI officials familiar with the matter told NBC News that the Council was not credible intelligence and that should never have been sent in an intelligence report.
The analysis of the CIA cited by Ratcliffe found procedure failures with how the agency elaborated its evaluation that Russia tried to denigrate Hillary Clinton and help Trump be chosen. In 2016. But he did not question that broad conclusion, a resounded by two thorough investigations of the Congress.
However, Trump’s named and the allies quickly argued that the documents claimed Trump’s long -term statements that the intelligence agencies that investigated the interference of the elections abroad had harmed him.
The CIA review found that “the Trump-Russia collusion report of Obama was corrupt from the beginning,” read the head of a New York Post article of the conservative columnist Miranda Devine.
A press release from the President of the Judicial Committee of the Senate, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that the Electronic FBI of the FBI of “Bomba” showed “the headquarters of the FBI interfered with [an] Alleged Chinese electoral interference research “to protect the then director Christopher Wray” from political setback. “
A new source without name
FBI’s emails show that public career public servants in the office had concerns about the reliability of the information of a confidential human source that stated that the Chinese Communist Party planned to use false ID to cast votes for Biden in the 2020 elections.
The information came from a source that an FBI agent based in Albany, New York, had just known, who in turn obtained it from a separate nameless source. Electronic emails say that the source in Albany also repeated a claim on social networks that the Chinese government was intentionally spreading Covid in the United States, an accusation that has never been corroborated. An email published by the FBI said the information had not been verified through other intelligence collection methods.
The emails say that the intelligence analysts of the Top Nikki Floris and Tonya Ugoretz office ordered that the intelligence report recalled because it lacked corroboration. Floris was expelled from the FBI earlier this year, and Ugoretz, who was promoted to become the main intelligence official of the FBI, was recently placed licensed. The FBI has not said why. Floris and Ugoretz did not respond to requests for comments.
Electronic emails establish an internal debate on the reliability of intelligence, which according to former FBI agents is typical. Albany’s office, supporting its agent, sought to prevent the report from being withdrawn from the market. Meanwhile, FBI’s senior officials pressed for corroboration of the source accusations.
In an email of September 25, 2020, a head of the assistant section in the Criminal Intelligence branch said that the claim on Chinese electoral interference was “to receive close attention from all HQ divisions.”
The head of the Assistant Section added: “We know that the source is the first contact and has not been delivered again. Are you considering remembering the [intelligence report] Until you can track the source down and deliver again? The whole choice is receiving scrutiny, and we just want to make sure we have a reliable supply. ”
In an email of September 28, another official said that the accusation that China was trying to influence the elections in favor of Biden, as well as the previous convulsions of the false driving licenses imported from China, “were somehow documented in open sources.”
The official added that “given the lack of details we received in the initial reports, my first opinion was that the [confidential human source] He wants to help and is probably complementing his reports through open sources. “
Ultimately, the emails show, an FBI official who specializes in foreign interference China instructed Albany’s office that “we have not approved a reissue” of the report “specifically due to our concerns that the report is not authorized.”
Electoral denial at the FBI
The new head of the FBI Congress Affairs Office is Marshall Yates. A former Republican assistant in Capitol Hill, Yates has links with the figures that Trump’s false statement has long supported that the 2020 elections were stolen.
Yates was head of the Cabinet of former representative Mo Brooks, R-an. Then, Yates went to work for the electoral integrity network, a project headed by Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in efforts to cancel the 2020 elections.
In a 2022 speech in New Mexico, Yates said that “electoral objection was not as we wanted in 2020, on January 6,” but that “fortunately” it had “caused a base movement throughout the country for electoral integrity.”
The FBI did not respond to a request for comments on the participation of Yates.
A nuanced analysis of the CIA
The internal review published by Ratcliffe examined last week how the CIA organized a 2017 intelligence evaluation that concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
The review found some deviation from the standard procedures, but defended the general findings of the evaluation. The report revealed that two senior leaders of a CIA mission center that focused on Russia opposed the conclusion that Russia’s goal was to help ensure Trump’s victory, but agreed that Putin hoped to denigrate Clinton and undermine the democratic process of the United States.
The review also cited complaints from some CIA officers who felt hurried for an adjusted deadline to produce the evaluation. The director of the CIA at that time, John Brennan, was a designated Democratic politician who has since become a burning critic of Trump.
In a second publication in X, Ratcliffe argued that complaints about the process were evidence that the “evaluation was carried out through an atypical and corrupt process under the politically charged environments” of Brennan and the then director of FBI James Comment. The CIA declined to comment when asked to explain the basis of Ratcliffe’s accusation.
A special lawyer designated during the first Trump administration considered how the CIA created its evaluation, but did not present criminal charges and did not report clear evidence that political bias contaminated the process. A bipartisan investigation of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 agreed with the 2017 intelligence evaluation and found no reason to dispute its conclusions.
