Trump intelligence heads hid evidence of Russian election interference

floridafan

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Lost in the news on the day of Trump's Insurrection was a devastating new watchdog report to Congress on the politicizing and distorting of intelligence during Donald Trump's time in office.

The analytic ombudsman, career intelligence community veteran Barry A. Zulauf, determined that under Trump, national intelligence reports had become highly politicized. Important findings were suppressed to appease Trump's refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in American elections,

Zulauf's unclassified report paints a frightening picture of just how much the Trump Administration skewed intelligence to suppress knowledge of interference by Russia in our 2020 elections.

From March 2020, in the critical months leading up to the elections, Zulauf "identified a long story arc of—at the very least—perceived politicization of intelligence."

Zulauf works in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a Cabinet-level position created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to oversee all U.S. intelligence operations. Zulauf's job within the ODNI was created by Congress to assist analysts throughout the intelligence community with complaints and concerns about politicization, biased reporting or lack of objectivity in intelligence analysis.

Zulauf determined that Trump's ODNI took "willful actions that… had the effect of politicizing intelligence, hindering objective analysis or injecting bias into the intelligence process."

While Zulauf tried to avoid specifically naming individuals responsible for much of the political heavy-handed rewriting, he repeatedly calls out actions taken by two recent Trump appointees, neither of whom had any chops as intelligence experts.

One is former Acting Director Richard Grenell, who had been a Fox News commentator and Trump-appointed ambassador to Germany, who took over the ODNI in February 2020 and relinquished the post the following May. The second was the Texas Congressman Trump appointed to replace Grenell, John Ratcliffe, best known as a fervent defender of the ex-president in his first impeachment.

In one particularly egregious example, Zulauf wrote that Ratcliffe insisted on highlighting Chinese election interference while downplaying Russian efforts.


Continued:

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-russia-2650600881/
 
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