By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations January 30, 2025
Though even Donald Trump's harshest critics now concede he may not be the "Russian agent” they once speculated he was, the consensus among Washington’s elite remains that he's a beneficiary of Kremlin skullduggery.
This persistent belief springs from a January 2017 U.S. intelligence document crafted by the Obama administration, which classified the sourcing behind it at the highest levels.
Known as an intelligence community assessment (ICA) and titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," its unclassified finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win has gone largely unquestioned by the Washington media and by Democrats and Republicans alike. They’ve accepted its conclusion that Putin abetted Trump as incontrovertible fact, and many suspect he continues to cast a spell over the now-reelected president.
Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 loss on Putin. She’s asserted, “There's no doubt in my mind [that Putin] wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,” echoing the ICA’s judgments, which she and other leading Democrats continue to cite to explain Trump’s ascendency.
But former intelligence czar John Ratcliffe has seen the evidence underlying the ICA, and is not convinced it supports that conclusion. His skepticism, reported here for the first time, appears in written testimony he submitted to the Senate in advance of his confirmation hearing for CIA director.
Ratcliffe was confirmed last Thursday as Trump’s nod for the top Langley job.
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