Vindicated

Brennan: Intelligence community vindicated by Senate committee's report

Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine the intelligence community’s investigation into the 2016 election.

By NATASHA KORECKI

Former CIA Director John Brennan on Wednesday held up a new intelligence report from a GOP-led panel as vindication that there was no “hoax” behind findings that there was Russian influence in the 2016 election in an effort to help Donald Trump.

Brennan, who helped author the intelligence that led to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election, told POLITICO that the Senate panel’s findings undercut Trump’s repeated assertions that the investigation was influenced by anything other than fact-finding.

“I’m just very glad that the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday came out with a report that totally validated the intelligence community’s assessment about Russian interference in the election in 2016 to help Donald Trump,” Brennan said in an interview Wednesday. “Donald Trump continues to call all these things hoaxes. They’re not. The only hoax is his representation of the facts. That’s the hoax. It’s because, I think, he has this quite understandable insecurity about what he’s done — well, this is what others have done.”

Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine the intelligence community’s investigation into the 2016 election and is reportedly “obsessed” with Brennan, a vocal critic of the president.

But the bipartisan panel on Tuesday, chaired by North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, reaffirmed its support for a January 2017 intelligence assessment, which found that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”