New CIA Director John Ratcliffe: Evidence Didn’t Support Brennan’s Explosive Trump-Russia Assessment

Though even Donald Trump's harshest critics now concede he may not be the "Russian agent” they once speculated he was, the consensus among Washington’s elite remains that he's a beneficiary of Kremlin skullduggery.

This persistent belief springs from a January 2017 U.S. intelligence document crafted by the Obama administration, which classified the sourcing behind it at the highest levels.

Known as an intelligence community assessment (ICA) and titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," its unclassified finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win has gone largely unquestioned by the Washington media and by Democrats and Republicans alike. They’ve accepted its conclusion that Putin abetted Trump as incontrovertible fact, and many suspect he continues to cast a spell over the now-reelected president.

Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 loss on Putin. She’s asserted, “There's no doubt in my mind [that Putin] wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,” echoing the ICA’s judgments, which she and other leading Democrats continue to cite to explain Trump’s ascendency.

But former intelligence czar John Ratcliffe has seen the evidence underlying the ICA, and is not convinced it supports that conclusion. His skepticism, reported here for the first time, appears in written testimony he submitted to the Senate in advance of his confirmation hearing for CIA director.

Ratcliffe was confirmed last Thursday as Trump’s nod for the top Langley job.

n a pre-hearing questionnaire obtained by RealClearInvestigations, Senate Democrats asked Ratcliffe, “Do you agree with the ICA’s judgments,” specifically that “Putin’s goals in influencing the 2016 presidential election included ‘denigrat[ing] Secretary Clinton, and harm[ing] her electability and potential presidency’ ”?

They also asked Ratcliffe if he concurred with the ICA’s finding that "Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

Ratcliffe answered that after reviewing the ICA’s underlying intel, including sources and methods, he could only agree that “Russia’s goal was to undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and sow division among the American people,” according to page 38 of the document.

He noted that “Russian social media campaigns included efforts to both support and criticize candidate Trump as well as candidate Clinton, further suggesting an overarching goal of promoting discord.” In other words, he saw no concrete evidence to support a plot by Putin to side with Trump against Clinton.

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https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/01/30/new_cia_director_evidence_didnt_support_brennans_explosive_trump-russia_assessment_1088238.html

TREASON

Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking him to investigate reports that a foreign aid agency pushed abortion on a black-majority country under the Biden administration.

The letter cites The Daily Signal’s Dec. 16 report that the Biden administration was pressuring Sierra Leone to pass an unpopular pro-abortion bill before Donald Trump took office.

It is common knowledge among nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, in Sierra Leone that a U.S. foreign aid agency called theMillennium Challenge Corporationis threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from a U.S. agreement with Sierra Leone unless the West African country’s parliament passes the bill decriminalizing abortion, a former senior U.S. government official who has worked in the West African region told The Daily Signal. Millennium Challenge Corporation denies this.

The Sierra Leone Compact is a five-year, $480 million agreement between the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC, and Sierra Leone aimed at providing affordable electricity.

“Reports suggest that the MCC is threatening to withhold assistance under Sierra Leone’s Compact if the country’s legislature fails to pass the Safe Motherhood Act,” Banks said in his letter to Rubio. “This radical and unpopular bill would legalize abortion up to 14 weeks for any reason, and until birth if deemed necessary to ‘protect the mental health of the woman.’ Holding assistance hostage for the sake of pressuring another nation to adopt pro-abortion legislation is shameful and wrong.”

The so-called Safe Motherhood Act would legalize abortion up to 14 weeks for any reason and up to birth to protect the “mental health of the woman.” Abortion to save a woman’s life is already legal in Sierra Leone.

The World Bank’s Nov. 14 report on Sierra Leone’s stability and resilience obtained by The Daily Signal includes several mentions of the Safe Motherhood Act. It says an indicator of the country’s progress is how many health centers implement the abortion legislation, “starting at none as of end-2024 and aiming for 30 percent by end-2027.”

The United States is the largest financial contributor to the World Bank.

The Development Policy Financing World Bank document report says humanitarian aid organization UNICEF recommended that the Safe Motherhood Act “be passed and implemented to tackle maternal mortality and enhance the health outcomes of adolescents.”

The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s press secretary, Jenel Few, told The Daily Signal in December the MCC is “unaware of any Sierra Leonean abortion legislation and has never made any requests to the government of Sierra Leone regarding abortion policies.”

Banks asked Rubio to investigate the use of the MCC to threaten the Sierra Leonean’s protection for the unborn. He requested a thorough investigation into the Safe Motherhood Act by March 1.

Contracts like the Sierra Leone Compact can be evaluated on an ongoing basis, allowing for the MCC, under the chairmanship of the secretary of state, to reconsider the eligibility of the country.

To make its Civil Liberties Indicator, the MCC uses Freedom House, a far-left think tank that deems all pro-life legislation an attack on individual liberty.

In 2023, Freedom House lowered its “Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights” score for the United States because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Rubio should investigate if anyone from the MCC worked on the Safe Motherhood Act, if Freedom House was used to consider Sierra Leone’s qualifications for MCC aid, if Sierra Leone’s qualifications for MCC aid would be affected by its passage of the abortion bill, and if funds have been withheld or delayed in the Sierra Leone Compact, Banks said.

An MCC spokesperson again denied pressuring Sierra Leone to adopt the Safe Motherhood Act, saying the MCC “is complying with President Trump’s executive orders and Office of Management and Budget guidance.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/31/senator-asks-rubio-investigate-biden-admin-pushing-abortion-african-country/

Australian Spy Agency Collected "Signals Intelligence" On China COVID Origins: Former State Department Investigator

David Asher, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the lead investigator of the State Department's Covid-19 origins investigation during President Trump's first term, appeared on Sky News on Tuesday. Asher disclosed that Australian spy agencies had previously collected signals intelligence concerning the origins of the virus in Wuhan, China.

What Asher means by signals intelligence is the interception of voice, text, and other communications (e.g., phone calls, emails, and radio transmissions). Australian spy agencies conducted much of this in Asia, which the CIA later obtained.

"I never thought the intel picture based on human intelligence, which is what the CIA has, but it was reasonably clear based on the reactions of senior Chinese leaders that something terrible had gone wrong inside Wuhan, specifically inside the Wuhan Institute of Urology and perhaps also the Wuhan University and the CDC … they shared certain programs together," Asher told Sky News host Sharri Markson.

He said, "I think there will be much more coming out - with CIA Director John Ratcliffe - who you interviewed previously - is adamant about declassifying information or releasing information that is already declassified. There is going to be signals intelligence and how much of that makes its way out - just trust me - there was a lot of it."

Sky News Markson asked Asher: "What do you mean by signals intelligence that hasn't come out yet?"

"Just picking up phone calls, picking up the emails, things like that … just messages between different people, I can't comment on what they are, but it's no secret we do this. Much of our collection is actually done in Australia, as you know," Asher responded.

He continued: "So your government is fully aware, which is another reason why they are really puzzled and dismayed that the Australian government, which has the same information … as we do, has been so passive, especially given the fact that your Prime Minister originally came out and said that we had to have an investigation."

"It's just sort of pathetic if you ask me," Asher noted, who was referring to Western governments burying the Covid lab leak theory during the Biden-Harris administration.

Asher's interview with the Australian media outlet came shortly after the CIA released an assessment identifying the Wuhan lab as the most likely origin of Covid. It only took a change in administration for this conclusion to be made public. Our view is that the CIA knew all along - with high confidence - about lab origins. Meanwhile, former FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in 2023 that the virus "most likely" originated from the Wuhan lab.

Yet during President Biden's first term, the radical leftists in the administration deployed the taxpayer-funded censorship blob to combat lab origins and maintain the official gov't narrative that Covid originated naturally.

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/australian-spy-agency-collected-signals-intelligence-related-covid-china-origins-former