Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe sent a now-unclassified letter to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining accusations of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign solicited help from the Russian government–while noting in the letter that the Intelligence Community had no way of knowing if it was true.
“The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” Ratcliffe stated in the letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
🤔Ratcliffe just declassified to Graham a claim that Russian intel alleged that Clinton “approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against [Trump] by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the DNC.”
…but says “the IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation.” pic.twitter.com/tpqGmhXUMY
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) September 29, 2020
In other words, John Ratcliffe is claiming that he acknowledges is likely inaccurate of completely false, but he’s passing it along to the Senate Intelligence Committee as though it was had a high degree of certainty. He also noted that the Obama Administration was briefed on these claims, without noting the level of certainty the IC found to believe the claims or if there were any affirmative information that the Clinton campaign had, in fact, done what was claimed.