Five Crucial Facts You Don't Know From the House Intel Report on Russiagate
The classified portions were so damning to Obama's team that the CIA refused repeated requests to give it to President Trump, even locking it in a hidden safe.
Don’t miss my must-read “Yes, There Will Be Arrests”, absolutely FREE.
NOTE: My friend Fred Fleitz is a former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff, a former CIA analyst, and a former senior staffer with the House Intelligence Committee. He knows this topic better than most. — RDM
by Fred Fleitz
July 28, 2025
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did an excellent service to our nation this week when she released a declassified version of a critical September 2020 House Intelligence Committee staff report on a major January 2017 intelligence report, known as an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), titled “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.”
Gabbard’s decision came after a years-long tug-of-war over the release of this report between Republican members of Congress who believe it provides critical information about the Russia collusion hoax and the involvement of Obama officials and the U.S. Intelligence Community versus Democratic congressmen and deep state intelligence officials who have desperately tried to hide this report from the American public.
Press accounts have reported many of the essential details of the House report, such as how it was rushed out on President Obama’s orders to be published just before Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017. Media stories have also detailed how substandard intelligence was used to justify the ICA’s finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win and that this bad intelligence was included on the orders of CIA Director John Brennan over the objections of senior CIA analysts.
The media has further reported the House Intelligence report’s finding that a hand-picked group of five analysts wrote the ICA and that it was not adequately vetted by U.S. intelligence agencies and analysts, despite the repeated claim that “17 intelligence agencies agree”, which they did not. It is also clear in the House report that, despite numerous statements by Brennan denying it, the fraudulent Steele dossier was heavily used in the ICA.
I am very familiar with the House Intelligence Committee report. I was permitted to read a classified version of the report when I served as Chief of Staff of the National Security Council in August 2018. I also discussed efforts by the White House to pressure the CIA to release the report a month before the 2020 presidential election with the late Lou Dobbs. This reportedly included President Trump visiting the CIA to retrieve the report personally.
Based on my understanding of this issue, here are five key points about the House Intelligence Committee report that most Americans may not be aware of.
 |
|