CIA review of 2016 Russia election probe finds no major flaws
While such reviews are not uncommon, it is rare for them to be released to the public.
'The only reason why you would be putting this out into the public domain is for political reasons,' said a former CIA analyst who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the intelligence process.
A review of the 2017 assessment was not conducted until today because 'it was too politically sensitive,' the CIA review read.
After the review was released, Ratcliffe posted on X a characterization of the report that appeared to deviate from its findings.
'All the world can now see the truth: Brennan, Clapper and Comey manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump,' he wrote in one post. In a second, he said that the 2016 assessment was produced in a process that was 'atypical & corrupt.'
Investigations into the Kremlin's efforts to sway the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's contacts with Russian officials dominated much of the president's first term in office.
A special counsel's investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign sought to collude with that effort.
Trump and his allies have long raged against the investigations, dismissing them as politically motivated witch hunts.
The president has regularly lashed out at the outspoken former CIA Director John Brennan, who led the agency as it probed Moscow's interference efforts, revoking his security clearance in 2018 in an apparent act of revenge.
Brennan did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
A major flashpoint for Trump and other critics of the report was the inclusion of the Steele dossier in the annex of the 2016 intelligence community assessment — an unsubstantiated and now largely debunked report that suggested Trump had extensive entanglements with the Russians.
In an extensive review of the 2016 assessment, conducted as part of its wide-ranging Russia investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 found no 'significant analytic tradecraft issues' with U.S. spy agencies' work.
The oversight panel, which was headed at the time by Republican Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC.), also dedicated 'additional attention' to the assessment that Putin 'aspired' to help Trump.
The CIA and FBI had 'high confidence' Putin aspired to help Trump, while the NSA only had 'moderate' confidence in that conclusion. The public version of the assessment released in 2017 referenced all of those judgements.
The Senate panel, for its part, concluded the agencies' disagreement was 'reasonable, transparent, and openly debated.' The fourth volume of their review, which spanned more than 150 pages alone, further stated that all witnesses interviewed by the committee saw 'no attempts or pressure to politicize the findings.'
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CNN
6 minutes ago
- CNN
Exclusive: Inside the cynical choices on abortion, women and early voting that drove Trump's third campaign
A deferral on abortion. A major shift in turnout strategy. A reversal on early voting. President Donald Trump and his team made a series of political calculations steeped in cynicism months before the November 2024 election, according to a new book from a trio of reporters who chronicled the election – which ultimately laid the groundwork for his victory. It depicts a candidate more focused on winning than steadfast beliefs. CNN has exclusively obtained a passage from Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf's '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.' The chapter lays out how the then-candidate shifted his perspective on targeting male voters, dismissed pressure to back a nationwide abortion ban and was convinced to support early voting efforts – sharp pivots from his positions in 2020. The book details how Trump sorted through what the authors describe as 'conflicting advice' on handling the issue of abortion. He was struggling to determine his campaign stance on an issue that was at the forefront of politics – thanks in part to decisions he made in his first term – for which 'his own position had long been a moving target.' Trump was acutely aware of the political implications of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the authors report, telling his co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita: 'Oh sh*t. This is going to be a problem,' when the June 2022 news alert came. And when Democrats made gains in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump reportedly told an anti-abortion activist, 'I have to find a way out of this issue. It's killing us.' Trump fielded perspectives from a wide range of advisers – GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, evangelical leader Ralph Reed, and his 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, among others – as he weighed a position on a national ban on abortion after a certain number of weeks. Trump's team compiled a presentation, delivered by co-campaign manager Susie Wiles in March 2024, titled: 'How a national abortion policy will cost Trump the election.' It showed the more moderate abortion policies in the so-called Blue Wall states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – and argued, the book says, that 'if Trump supported a national ban, he would be campaigning on a stricter rule than was currently in effect in the Midwest battlegrounds.' 'Only electoral math matters,' said the presentation – obtained by the authors and reviewed by CNN. 'Bottom line: Declaring any number of weeks would play directly into Joe Biden's hands on his simplest path to electoral victory.' Trump repeatedly waffled on abortion during the campaign, but ultimately he said in a recorded video that he was committed to leaving restrictions to the states and would veto a federal ban – a stance that proved popular with moderate voters. Trump's third and final pursuit of the presidency offered a dramatic departure in the way his team deployed its resources across the country, as well as the targets of those resources. Aides James Blair and Tim Saler dove into Trump campaign voter data from 2016 and 2020, Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf write, and 'made a startling discovery.' 'The conventional wisdom was that Trump lost in 2020 because of his erosion among women, particularly suburbanites horrified by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and tired of his taunts and insults. But Saler and Blair concluded Trump's problem in 2020 was that he slipped among men,' they write. Blair and Saler presented a memo to senior staff detailing the campaign's 2020 slippage with White men compared to 2016 – a copy of that memo obtained by the authors and reviewed by CNN said that marked 'the single most significant factor' in Trump's 2020 loss (the memo described it as a 'reported raw vote shortage' rather than a loss). The team proposed a shift away from targeting swing voters and toward motivating low-propensity voters who would vote for Trump if they showed up at the ballot box. That included rural White men, as well as young, male, and non-White men who 'tended not follow politics closely or receive their news from traditional media,' Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf write. That became the basis for Trump's untraditional strategy to target irregular voters. CNN reported one month before the election that the campaign internally acknowledged it was a gamble, but one that they insisted was built on data they collected over nearly a decade and tested in the months prior. And that strategy, which relied on grassroots networking and appearances by the candidate on male-oriented podcasts like 'The Joe Rogan Experience' and 'This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von' propelled Trump to a more diverse coalition – and an advantage with voters who didn't turn out in 2020. The most significant Trump turnabout between 2020 and 2024 came on the issue of early voting. Trump had falsely alleged massive fraud in the 2020 election due to mail-in ballots, which he cast as 'dangerous' and 'corrupt.' His campaign at the time filed lawsuits to stop changes made by states to make it easier to vote by mail. Altogether, the steps fomented mistrust among Republican constituents, inadvertently encouraging them not to vote before Election Day. The authors write that Trump was pushed by numerous advisers to get the president to stop disparaging early voting – from Sean Hannity to Florida lobbyist Brian Ballard to Conway. But, they write, the first person to break through on the issue was Rob Gleason, the former Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman. 'Trump started going on again about how much he didn't like early and mail-in voting, and Gleason asked him to think of it this way: when a Trump supporter gets a mail ballot, he argued, they were so excited to vote for him they wanted to do so right away. Why wouldn't he want them to have that chance to show their enthusiasm for him?' the book says. Trump was urged by Wiles and others to use the 'Too Big to Rig' tagline, actively promoting early and mail-in voting. At the same time, Trump allies were not copacetic with those who said former President Joe Biden's 2020 victory was legitimate. After Ronna McDaniel left her position as chair of the Republican National Committee, LaCivita was installed to run the party's day-to-day operations and oversaw a hiring purge as Trump aides asked RNC staffers if they believed the 2020 election was stolen, the reporters write. That was only paused, the book says, when an RNC official warned LaCivita that he 'would trigger a mass layoff notice under DC labor laws.' Wiles later stepped in to remediate the dysfunction. 'Wiles posted up at the RNC, taking phone calls and complaining about the mess she now had to fix. Some of the fired staff would be re-hired. LaCivita fired one staffer, John Seravalli, thinking he was someone else. He agreed to hire him back and gave him a raise. He renegotiated a consulting fee for Boris Epshteyn, thinking he had achieved a reduction, but it was actually an increase,' the book says. CNN's Steve Contorno, Fredreka Schouten, Em Steck, Andrew Kacyznski, and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
Newsweek
10 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Donald Trump's Approval Rating Underwater Across Multiple Polls
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. President Donald Trump's approval ratings remain underwater in multiple polls. Newsweek's tracking poll shows his net approval at –6 points, with 45 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving. While that's an improvement from last week's –10 net approval, it still leaves him in negative territory. A separate survey by Targoz Market Research and Overton Insights, conducted June 23 to 26 among 1,200 registered voters, put Trump's net approval even deeper underwater at –11 points—with 43 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving. That's a noticeable drop from a –5 net approval rating in March. The latest Quantus Insights poll, conducted June 30 to July 2 among 1,000 registered voters, showed Trump's net approval at –2 points, with 47 percent approving and 49 percent disapproving—relatively unchanged from previous Quantus polls. Pollster Jason Corley said the results reflected an "unsettled" national mood: More Americans believe the country is in decline (37 percent) than believe its best days are ahead (34 percent), while more than one in five think the nation's golden era is already behind us. Corley added that pessimism is "particularly strong" among older voters and rural Americans, key parts of Trump's base. "This is not mere partisanship. It reflects a deeper loss of faith in national direction, shared across ideological lines," he added. Why It Matters Trump's approval ratings initially dropped in early April after he announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs. Although they briefly rebounded, his recent actions—including deploying the National Guard and Marines to quell anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and ordering airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites—have reignited public discontent. President Donald Trump outside the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 1. President Donald Trump outside the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 1. Mark Schiefelbein/AP What To Know Several recent polls have shown Trump's approval rating at an all-time low for his second term. The latest ActiVote survey, conducted June 1 to 30 among 523 adults, found Trump's national approval at 45 percent and disapproval at 52 percent—putting his net approval at –7 points, his worst showing since returning to office. Despite this record low for his second term, Trump's current approval still outpaces his own first-term average, which ActiVote tracked at 41 percent. It also remains slightly higher than former President Joe Biden's full-term average of 41 percent and Biden's final-year average of 40 percent. Other polls paint an equally bleak picture. A John Zogby Strategies poll from June 24 and 25 among 1,006 likely voters showed Trump's net approval at –8 points (45 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove), a sharp slide from –1 point in May. A Bullfinch Group poll, conducted June 17 to 20 among 1,223 adults, put his net approval even lower: at –13 points (41 percent approve, 54 percent disapprove), down from –5 points in May. Some surveys show deeper discontent. An Ipsos/Reuters poll, conducted June 21 to 23 among 1,139 registered voters, found Trump's net approval at –16 points (41 percent approve, 57 percent disapprove)—slipping from –12 the week prior. The American Research Group's June 17 to 20 poll among 1,100 adults showed his net approval plunging to –21 points (38 percent approve, 59 percent disapprove), down sharply from –14 in May. A few outliers offer Trump a silver lining. An RMG Research poll from June 18 to 26 showed the president still slightly above water, with a net approval of +4 points (51 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove)—though that, too, was down from +7 previously. Some polls suggest Trump's approval rating has ticked up slightly after a period of steady decline, underscoring how divided—and volatile—voter sentiment is in his second term. The latest Navigator Research poll, conducted June 26 to 30, found Trump at 45 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval—a slight recovery from early June when he hit a record low for this term at 43 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval. A YouGov/Economist survey from June 27 to 30 showed a modest uptick to 42 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval, up from a low of 40 percent earlier in the month. Similarly, Morning Consult's June 27 to 29 poll found 47 percent of respondents approved of Trump's job performance, with 50 percent disapproving—a slight improvement from May's 45 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval. Meanwhile, a Marist/NPR/PBS poll conducted June 23 to 25 put Trump's approval at 43 percent and disapproval at 52 percent, a tick up from April's low of 42 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval. What Happens Next Trump's approval ratings are likely to fluctuate in the coming weeks.
CNN
12 minutes ago
- CNN
Exclusive: Inside the cynical choices on abortion, women and early voting that drove Trump's third campaign
A deferral on abortion. A major shift in turnout strategy. A reversal on early voting. President Donald Trump and his team made a series of political calculations steeped in cynicism months before the November 2024 election, according to a new book from a trio of reporters who chronicled the election – which ultimately laid the groundwork for his victory. It depicts a candidate more focused on winning than steadfast beliefs. CNN has exclusively obtained a passage from Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf's '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.' The chapter lays out how the then-candidate shifted his perspective on targeting male voters, dismissed pressure to back a nationwide abortion ban and was convinced to support early voting efforts – sharp pivots from his positions in 2020. The book details how Trump sorted through what the authors describe as 'conflicting advice' on handling the issue of abortion. He was struggling to determine his campaign stance on an issue that was at the forefront of politics – thanks in part to decisions he made in his first term – for which 'his own position had long been a moving target.' Trump was acutely aware of the political implications of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the authors report, telling his co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita: 'Oh sh*t. This is going to be a problem,' when the June 2022 news alert came. And when Democrats made gains in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump reportedly told an anti-abortion activist, 'I have to find a way out of this issue. It's killing us.' Trump fielded perspectives from a wide range of advisers – GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, evangelical leader Ralph Reed, and his 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, among others – as he weighed a position on a national ban on abortion after a certain number of weeks. Trump's team compiled a presentation, delivered by co-campaign manager Susie Wiles in March 2024, titled: 'How a national abortion policy will cost Trump the election.' It showed the more moderate abortion policies in the so-called Blue Wall states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – and argued, the book says, that 'if Trump supported a national ban, he would be campaigning on a stricter rule than was currently in effect in the Midwest battlegrounds.' 'Only electoral math matters,' said the presentation – obtained by the authors and reviewed by CNN. 'Bottom line: Declaring any number of weeks would play directly into Joe Biden's hands on his simplest path to electoral victory.' Trump repeatedly waffled on abortion during the campaign, but ultimately he said in a recorded video that he was committed to leaving restrictions to the states and would veto a federal ban – a stance that proved popular with moderate voters. Trump's third and final pursuit of the presidency offered a dramatic departure in the way his team deployed its resources across the country, as well as the targets of those resources. Aides James Blair and Tim Saler dove into Trump campaign voter data from 2016 and 2020, Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf write, and 'made a startling discovery.' 'The conventional wisdom was that Trump lost in 2020 because of his erosion among women, particularly suburbanites horrified by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and tired of his taunts and insults. But Saler and Blair concluded Trump's problem in 2020 was that he slipped among men,' they write. Blair and Saler presented a memo to senior staff detailing the campaign's 2020 slippage with White men compared to 2016 – a copy of that memo obtained by the authors and reviewed by CNN said that marked 'the single most significant factor' in Trump's 2020 loss (the memo described it as a 'reported raw vote shortage' rather than a loss). The team proposed a shift away from targeting swing voters and toward motivating low-propensity voters who would vote for Trump if they showed up at the ballot box. That included rural White men, as well as young, male, and non-White men who 'tended not follow politics closely or receive their news from traditional media,' Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf write. That became the basis for Trump's untraditional strategy to target irregular voters. CNN reported one month before the election that the campaign internally acknowledged it was a gamble, but one that they insisted was built on data they collected over nearly a decade and tested in the months prior. And that strategy, which relied on grassroots networking and appearances by the candidate on male-oriented podcasts like 'The Joe Rogan Experience' and 'This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von' propelled Trump to a more diverse coalition – and an advantage with voters who didn't turn out in 2020. The most significant Trump turnabout between 2020 and 2024 came on the issue of early voting. Trump had falsely alleged massive fraud in the 2020 election due to mail-in ballots, which he cast as 'dangerous' and 'corrupt.' His campaign at the time filed lawsuits to stop changes made by states to make it easier to vote by mail. Altogether, the steps fomented mistrust among Republican constituents, inadvertently encouraging them not to vote before Election Day. The authors write that Trump was pushed by numerous advisers to get the president to stop disparaging early voting – from Sean Hannity to Florida lobbyist Brian Ballard to Conway. But, they write, the first person to break through on the issue was Rob Gleason, the former Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman. 'Trump started going on again about how much he didn't like early and mail-in voting, and Gleason asked him to think of it this way: when a Trump supporter gets a mail ballot, he argued, they were so excited to vote for him they wanted to do so right away. Why wouldn't he want them to have that chance to show their enthusiasm for him?' the book says. Trump was urged by Wiles and others to use the 'Too Big to Rig' tagline, actively promoting early and mail-in voting. At the same time, Trump allies were not copacetic with those who said former President Joe Biden's 2020 victory was legitimate. After Ronna McDaniel left her position as chair of the Republican National Committee, LaCivita was installed to run the party's day-to-day operations and oversaw a hiring purge as Trump aides asked RNC staffers if they believed the 2020 election was stolen, the reporters write. That was only paused, the book says, when an RNC official warned LaCivita that he 'would trigger a mass layoff notice under DC labor laws.' Wiles later stepped in to remediate the dysfunction. 'Wiles posted up at the RNC, taking phone calls and complaining about the mess she now had to fix. Some of the fired staff would be re-hired. LaCivita fired one staffer, John Seravalli, thinking he was someone else. He agreed to hire him back and gave him a raise. He renegotiated a consulting fee for Boris Epshteyn, thinking he had achieved a reduction, but it was actually an increase,' the book says. CNN's Steve Contorno, Fredreka Schouten, Em Steck, Andrew Kacyznski, and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
