“Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified documents that revealed former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Fox News has learned.
Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes – which were taken after he briefed Obama on the intelligence the CIA received – and a CIA memo, which revealed that officials referred the matter to the FBI for potential investigative action.
Enclosure 2 (Dcia Memo, 09-… by Sara
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence transmitted the declassified documents to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan notes read. “CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton [on July 26] a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service,” Brennan’s notes read.
“Any evidence of collaboration between Trump campaign + Russia,” the notes read.
The remainder of the notes are redacted, except in the margins, which reads: “JC,” “Denis,” and “Susan.”
The notes don’t spell out the full names but “JC” could be referring to then-FBI Director James Comey, “Susan” could refer to National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and “Denis” could refer to Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough.
(…) Nick Merrill, Clinton’s spokesperson, called the allegations “baseless b———t.”
But Ratcliffe, in a statement released after the information was made public, pushed back on the idea he was advancing “Russian disinformation.”
“To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to Fox News. “I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days.”
A source familiar with the documents told Fox News on Tuesday that the allegation was “not disinformation.”
“This is not Russian disinformation. Even Brennan knew, or he wouldn’t be briefing the president of the United States on it,” the source said. “There is a high threshold to orally brief the president of the United States and he clearly felt this met that threshold.”