The intelligence community had no evidence to back the claim of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said in an interview Sunday.
“I do expect that the Durham report will be another scathing recounting of abuses — abuse of power at the FBI. And I say that because I have reviewed the intelligence with John Durham and Bill Barr,” Ratcliffe said, referring to the special counsel appointed by former Attorney General Barr to review the Obama administration’s Operation Hurricane probe.
Ratcliffe told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that after going over the intelligence last summer, he “unanimously agreed” with Durham and Barr “that there was no intelligence from the intelligence community that reflected actual, real Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — but there was intelligence that it was created by the Hillary Clinton campaign — and that there was no proper predicate for Crossfire Hurricane to begin.”
“I really do expect that the Durham report will talk about that abuse of power because I know that intelligence,” he said.
Durham announced last month he will resign from his position as U.S. attorney in Connecticut but will remain as a special counsel in the investigation of Crossfire Hurricane.
Ratcliffe said the Obama probe of Trump-Russia collusion was “very clearly” political.
“The inspector general, the independent arbiter for the Justice Department, found that the FBI’s senior leadership had lied,” he said. “We saw that the FISA court called out the FBI. Obviously, we know that an FBI lawyer lied to the FISA court to perpetuate the investigation into the Trump campaign.”
The report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz in late 2019 blasted the DOJ for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” in its effort to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
The FISA court later criticized the FBI’s handling of the warrant applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor.” And the DOJ acknowledged that some of the spy warrants no longer were “valid.”
One of the key pieces of evidence peddled by the Obama DOJ and FBI was the dubious dossier created by British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Clinton campaign.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe debunked the dossier’s major claims and could not verify any of them. Mueller’s team believed Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign but could not establish any Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin.
The Washington Examiner reported Biden’s nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland, declined to promise the Senate Judiciary Committee during a confirmation hearing that he would protect Durham’s investigation and make his report public.
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