Ex-DNI Ratcliffe: Intelligence shaped Durham filing

FPI / February 17, 2022

Geostrategy-Direct

Based on intelligence he has seen, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said he expects more criminal indictments will result from special counsel John Durham’s investigation of Democrats’ attempts to falsely link Donald Trump to Russia.

“I’ve been saying there’d be indictments before there were any, and the folks that have been indicted, that does relate to intelligence that I shared with John Durham,” Ratcliffe told Fox News on Feb. 14.

“And based on more intelligence that has not yet been declassified, I would expect there to be frankly, quite a few more indictments.”

Durham, in an explosive Feb. 11, 2022 court filing in Washington made as part of his probe into U.S. government wrongdoing related to an FBI inquiry of Russia collusion, said government evidence shows that Michael Sussmann, a lawyer linked to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, worked with a tech company to hack Trump’s office and residence in New York and “the executive office of the president” after Trump was sworn into office in 2017.

Ratcliffe told Fox News that, while he was DNI, he met several times with and provided intelligence information to Durham.

Additional information on what Ratcliffe characterized as a “conspiracy” by Democrats to subvert Trump before and after he became president is also in classified information that has not been made public.

“I think this pleading alleges or alludes to a conspiracy, meaning two or more people in furtherance of a crime, and anyone that was aware that this [Democratic] campaign plan was going to be falsely pitched to the FBI or the CIA or law enforcement or intelligence authorities would be subject to criminal prosecution for any number of criminal crimes,” Ratcliffe said.

Possible crimes related to the data theft include mail fraud, wire fraud and lying under oath, he said.

“The people that have been indicted, that does relate to the intelligence I shared with John Durham,” Ratcliffe said.

In a Jan. 26, 2021 report, Geostrategy-Direct noted that Ratcliffe, DNI during the Trump administration, suggested U.S. intelligence agencies played partisan political roles by downplaying China‘s role of interfering in the disputed 2020 presidential election.

An Intelligence Community (IC) assessment of China’s interference in the election could have triggered enforcement of Trump’s 2018 executive order on foreign interference in U.S. elections.

“From my unique vantage point as the individual who consumes all of the U.S. government’s most sensitive intelligence on the People’s Republic of China, I do not believe the majority view expressed by [intelligence community] analysts fully and accurately reflects the scope of the Chinese government’s efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. federal elections,” Ratcliffe said in a Jan. 7, 2021 statement.

Ratcliffe said that what he called “the politicization of China election influence reporting” was the result of “undue pressure being brought to bear on analysts who offered an alternative view based on the intelligence.”

The debate centers on whether intelligence analysts emphasized Russian meddling while playing down the role of communist China during the election. Ratcliffe said the three-page report raises broader questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence analyses.

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