CIA Director John Ratcliffe said there could still be indictments and prosecutions tied to the so-called Russian collusion hoax that targeted President Donald Trump — and he named names.
Appearing on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo, Ratcliffe accused Hillary Clinton of orchestrating the scheme to falsely link Trump to Russia through what became the now-discredited Steele Dossier. He also said former President Barack Obama and top officials from his administration — including FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan — lied under oath about their involvement.
“This was a Hillary Clinton campaign scheme,” Ratcliffe said, accusing her of pushing false claims of Russian collusion to damage Trump’s 2016 campaign. Clinton served as Obama’s secretary of state.
Bartiromo asked directly: “So, what I think I hear you saying is, there is still an opportunity for indictments, potential prosecutions, accountability from those people who may have lied under oath like John Brennan, James Comey, and perhaps Hillary Clinton.”
Ratcliffe responded: “Well, that’s why I’ve made the referrals that I have.”
He continued: “[Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard] has made referrals. And why we’re going to continue to share the intelligence that would support the ability of our Department of Justice to make fair and just, bring fair and just claims, against those who have perpetrated this hoax against the American people and this stain on this country.”
Just last week, Gabbard publicly accused Obama of being the architect behind the operation, calling it a “treasonous conspiracy.” She has submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.
While the release of two key documents about Russia’s role in 2016 election interference grabbed headlines from Gabbard’s document drop last week, buried in the report is an eerie email exchange about the so-called “Steele dossier” and how it got into intelligence assessments.
The conversation arises from Kimberly Hermann’s (the conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation’s) 2019 Freedom of Information Act request, which sought references to the dossier on specific government platforms.
A September 18, 2019, email from a redacted person with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence voiced concerns about the Steele dossier’s involvement in the ODNI’s operations.
The first portion of the email was primarily about technical issues—the quantity of results that fit the query and how, owing to their location, going through all his emails would be “impractical.”
However, it gets more problematic from there: “Second, regarding the email below — I am choosing my words carefully, for your awareness, because the premise of the message is concerning,” the official wrote.
“As you know, I was a Deputy on the NIO Cyber team, also the de-facto elections team, from 2015 through this year,” the official wrote. “I have intermittently participated in IC foreign influence and election security efforts from 2014 through this evening.”
“I was asked by NIO Cyber [redacted] to participate in the analytic scrub of the non-compartmented version of what I think is the 2017 ICA referenced below. It included no dossier reference that I recall,” the official said.
This was important, they said, because even though they were “not in all of the Russia compartments, and so I did not participate in the crafting of the compartmented version,” they had queried about other information that might be involved.
A response from the original sender, a few hours later, tried to “cut to the chase” about it: “IF the Dossier material WAS used by the NIC, unless it is also compartmented, my NIO intentionally deceived and excluded me from things I was cleared for and had need to know, throughout his entire tenure here. I prefer to think that isn’t true, but if it was, we have a problem.”