EXCLUSIVE: Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Thursday urged President-elect Joe Biden to allow Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the Russia probe to run its course, while saying he hopes there will be "folks held accountable that should be."
Ratcliffe, during an interview with Fox News, also indicated that there are “a significant number of documents” not within the intelligence community, but that “relate to the counterintelligence investigation at the FBI and at the Justice Department” that have not yet been declassified.
“I think it is possible that some of those would be, and should be,” Ratcliffe said.
Attorney General William Barr made public Tuesday that U. S. Attorney from Connecticut John Durham, who has been investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, was appointed in October as special counsel to continue his probe in the next administration.
“My hope is that John Durham, with all of the documents that I have provided in connection with his investigation from the intelligence community, will provide the full accounting and for there to be folks held accountable that should be,” Ratcliffe told Fox News.
He added: “I certainly hope that whoever is running the Justice Department in 2021 will allow these answers to be fully accounted for before the American people.”
Ratcliffe said the questions have “already been answered.”
“Was there an abuse of power? Legal authorities violated at the FISA court? Did crimes occur? An FBI lawyer has pled guilty in connection with all of that — so the answer is, it happened,” Ratcliffe said.“The question now is how far, and how deep, is it?” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe, during his tenure as director of National Intelligence, has declassified a slew of documents, which allies of President Trump have cast as significant, citing their content as proof that the investigation into the president and his 2016 campaign was baseless.
“The documents I have declassified reveal that there are folks in the Biden — or, the Obama-Biden administration, senior national security folks that were aware of the fact that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign — no intelligence that supported that,” Ratcliffe told Fox News.
"Remember, we were told, the idea, when I first raised the issue of abuse at the FISA court, officials said ideas of FISA abuse is a bunch of nonsense, but now very clearly that's proven to be the case — those violations did occur," Ratcliffe said. "And all of those national security officials in the Obama-Biden administration, like [former FBI Director James] Comey and [Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew] McCabe and [Former Deputy Attorney General Sally] Yates and others are now running the opposite direction saying oh, had we only known."
In May, prior to Ratcliffe’s Senate confirmation, acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell cleared for release more than 6,000 pages of transcripts of interviews from the House Intelligence Committee’s long-running Russia investigation. Fox News first reported that top Obama officials, like former DNI James Clapper, testified that he “never saw any direct empirical evidence” of collusion or a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe, pointed to other intelligence to “reflect that the Trump-Russia collusion was a narrative created by Democrats — specifically the Clinton campaign.”
Ratcliffe was referring to declassified handwritten notes belonging to former CIA Director John Brennan, which appeared to show Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public form her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Ratcliffe also declassified a CIA memo sent to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strz... (Read more)
Submitted 1210 days ago
Latest News