New Docs Contradict Obama Officials’ Claims About Steele Dossier

Newly declassified records show the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.

The information was disclosed Wednesday in a declassified 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Approved for release by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the unsealed records paint a damning picture of how high-ranking Obama administration officials included unsubstantiated dirt about Trump in its 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Moscow’s shenanigans in the 2016 contest.

That ICA, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted, included a “‘key judgment’ … that Russia had interfered in the election specifically because Putin and the Russian government ‘aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.’”

The declassified report released Wednesday not only significantly undermines the ICA’s “key judgement,” but it also contradicts claims made by top Obama officials that salacious information from the infamous Steele dossier were not incorporated into the main body of the 2017 ICA.

As a quick refresher, the allegations that ultimately became the dossier were compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn had been hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign’s law firm (Perkins Coie) to dig up dirt on Trump ahead of the 2016 election. The dossier was ultimately shopped by Steele to the FBI in early July 2016 and later used by the agency to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page.

The report unsealed by Gabbard reveals that the dossier’s “most significant claims — that Russia launched cyber activities to leak political emails — were little more than a regurgitation of stories previously published by multiple media outlets prior to the creation of the dossier.” It further disclosed that dossier reports containing salacious allegations about Trump’s character and alleged collusion with Moscow “were either proven false or unsubstantiated.”

Equally significant, however, are the report’s following paragraphs, which detail how the dossier was “referenced in the ICA main body text and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex” — “[c]ontradicting public claims by [then-CIA Director John Brennan] that the dossier ‘was not in any way‘ incorporated into the ICA.”

“By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” the 2020 HPSCI analysis reads. “The ICA referred to the dossier as ‘Russian plans and intentions,’ falsely implying to high-level US policymakers that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow’s influence operations.”

As summarized by Federalist CEO Sean Davis, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body.”

“The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA,” Davis added.

It wasn’t only Brennan who previously claimed (under oath) that the dossier’s contents weren’t formally included in the 2017 ICA, however.

In addition to claiming in January 2017 (shortly after meeting with Trump) that, “we did not rely upon [the dossier] in any way for our conclusions,” then-DNI James Clapper contended in a July 2017 interview with House lawmakers that the dossier was “not a formal part of the Intelligence Community Assessment.”

Clapper reportedly echoed similar claims during a May 2023 interview with House members, according to RealClearInvestigations.

Former FBI Director James Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also issued statements claiming the dossier’s contents weren’t included in the “main body” of the ICA when previously speaking with lawmakers, the outlet reported.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood