Ratcliffe Says He Is Coordinating with John Durham, Plans to Declassify More Trump-Russia Documents

John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, has been coordinating with U.S. Attorney John Durham and plans to soon declassify more documents related to the Trump-Russia probe, he said Sunday.

“The question now is did the FBI have a proper predicate to begin a counterintelligence investigation at all, and that’s the issue that John Durham is looking at, and also the issue that I’m continuing to look at,” Ratcliffe said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

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CIA Conduct During Russia Assessment May Be Next Boomerang in Probe of Investigators

By his own admission, ex-CIA Director John Brennan chafed at being questioned earlier this month by federal prosecutor John Durham about the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment that Russia’s meddling in 2016 election was designed to help Donald Trump.

Brennan “questioned why the analytic tradecraft and the findings of the ICA are being scrutinized by the Department of Justice, especially since they have been validated by the Mueller Report and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Review,” a statement issued by his spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

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Declassified Intelligence Report Shows FBI Withheld Key Details About Steele Dossier

FBI officials left key details about former British spy Christopher Steele and his infamous dossier out of a newly declassified Intelligence Community Assessment regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The two-page document, which Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified this week, describes Steele’s allegations about possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian government. It says that an FBI source — Steele — had provided information thought to be credible regarding Russia’s goals in meddling in the election.

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Newly Released Transcripts of Flynn/Kislyak Phone Calls Show Nothing Nefarious

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe on Friday sent declassified transcripts of former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s phone calls with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to Congress.

The calls, which took place during the presidential transition period from Dec. 22, 2016 through January of 2017, show that Flynn was concerned about an escalation of hostilities between the two countries after the United States expelled 35 Russian diplomats. The two also discussed Middle East policy at length and working together to defeat a common enemy: radical Islamists. There was nothing discussed in the phone calls, according to the summary, that would have given Obama-era government snoops reason to believe Flynn was treacherously “colluding” or “conspiring” with Russia.

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