“DNI John Ratcliffe has declassified the Appendix to the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). [Source Document Here] The appendix known as “Annex A” was the material the FBI and CIA did not include in the body of the ICA; however, it was used to brief congress.
There was always suspicion that “Annex A” was the ridiculous claims by FBI source Christopher Steele; those suspicions are confirmed today. The ICA was written in late December ’16 & early January 2017, and the purpose was to politicize intelligence by making outlandish claims of the Trump-Russia conspiracy the official position of the U.S intelligence apparatus (CIA, FBI, DOJ and NSA).
(NOTE: the document quality/clarity is very poor as released)
The “Annex A” supporting the narrative was made out of claims by Christopher Steele. The two-page document is stunningly obtuse by design; and despite the FBI knowing the purpose of Christopher Steele, the Annex pretends not to know his agenda.
By keeping the ridiculous Steele claims in the annex the FBI was able to use the claims yet it afforded them plausible deniability under the pretense of non-verification. When James Comey briefed President Trump about the claims he pretended not to know the political intents of the information; and worse still, he covered-up that Clinton’s campaign had paid for the information. A stunningly political move based on deception.
In many ways, the refusal of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ to admit their knowledge of the material from Chris Steele is the biggest example of how those same agencies were playing politics. None of the Steele claims were based on actual evidence; everything was hearsay, gossip, innuendo, and entirely made-up. The agencies knew this and yet they pretended not to know the motives for the fraudulent intelligence.
As bad as it was to not clearly disclose to FISA court the Steele Dossier had been paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, it was far worse to not disclose this to President-elect (and outgoing President) in the intelligence community assessment.
Deceptive and fraudulent official intelligence documents, purposefully designed to achieve a political agenda, outline a level of serious misconduct even beyond the fabricated claims within the Carter Page FISA application.
The release of this “Annex A” document shows something beyond the willfully blind intentions of James Comey and John Brennan, and speaks to an intentional effort to fabricate claims against the incoming administration on the weakest of possible grounds.
Our research previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking.
The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/11/2020) (Archive)