The White House is calling for accountability from former intelligence officials, including ex-CIA Director John Brennan, over their role in promoting now-debunked claims about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
“President Trump was right — again,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “Those who orchestrated this political scandal must be held accountable for the fraud they committed against President Trump and the lies they spread to the American people.”
Leavitt’s remarks come in response to a newly declassified internal review conducted under CIA Director John Ratcliffe, which concluded that the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference — compiled by the CIA, FBI, and NSA — strayed from professional standards and contained “procedural anomalies.”
A key finding from the review criticized the decision by top agency officials to include the infamous Steele dossier in the 2017 ICA. That decision, the report said, ran contrary to core intelligence tradecraft and significantly undermined the credibility of the assessment’s conclusions.
The Steele dossier, assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned as opposition research against Trump, included sensational but unverified claims about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin — allegations Trump has consistently denied.
According to the CIA review, internal concerns were raised at the time. One senior analyst warned Brennan directly in December 2016 that including the dossier could damage “the credibility of the entire paper.”
Despite this, Brennan reportedly pushed forward. The review said he favored maintaining “narrative consistency” over addressing legitimate analytic flaws. When confronted with the dossier’s shortcomings, Brennan appeared more persuaded by how it aligned with existing suspicions than by the lack of verifiable evidence. He eventually formalized his position, writing, “My bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”
Brennan served as CIA Director from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. He did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The review also revealed that Brennan had informed intelligence analysts of a “strong consensus” about Russian interference, based on prior meetings with then-DNI James Clapper and then-FBI Director James Comey — even before the agencies had held their first and only joint coordination session on the ICA.
The findings reignite long-standing criticism that intelligence officials prioritized political narratives over objectivity during the heated final stretch of the 2016 election.
