White House wants Obama intel officials ‘held accountable’ for role peddling 2016 Russia hoax

Intelligence agency officials like former CIA Director John Brennan must be held accountable for their role in advancing allegations about President Donald Trump’s connections with Russia during the 2016 election, according to the White House.

“President Trump was right — again,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Those who engaged in this political scandal must be held accountable for the fraud they committed against President Trump and the lies they told to the American people.”

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News intelligence officials from the Obama administration must be held accountable for their role in peddling the 2016 Russia hoax. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Leavitt’s comments come after a new lessons-learned review that CIA Director John Ratcliffe declassified Wednesday determined that the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election deviated from intelligence standards that led to some “procedural anomalies.”

The review determined that the “decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” 

The “Steele dossier,” composed by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele as part of opposition research on Trump during the 2016 campaign, featured salacious material and unfounded allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia. Trump has denied the allegations included in the document. 

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Then-CIA Director John Brennan speaks during the CIA’s third conference on national security at George Washington University, September 20, 2016, in Washington, D.C. 

Specifically, the CIA’s new review found that the CIA’s deputy director for analysis said in a December 2016 email to Brennan that including the dossier in any capacity jeopardized “the credibility of the entire paper.”

“Despite these objections, Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness,” the new review stated. “When confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two mission center leaders – one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background – he appeared more swayed by the Dossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that ‘my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.’”

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Brennan served as director of the CIA from March 2013 to January 2017 under the Obama administration. 

Brennan could not be reached for comment by Fox News Digital. 

Likewise, the review said Brennan had sent a note to intelligence community analysts one day before their only session coordinating on the ICA that he had met with then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-FBI Director James Comey. 

In that message, Brennan told the CIA workforce that “there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our recent Presidential election.”

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

CIA Director John Brennan participates in a session at the third annual Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington, Sept. 8, 2016.