Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe just shared the opposite of intelligence with the
Senate Judiciary Committee.In a Tuesday letter, Ratcliffe let Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) know he'd declassified some
Russian intelligence alleging
Hillary Clinton may have launched President Trump's
Russia scandal. Not that Ratcliffe, a Trump appointee who has defended the president on Russia before, had any idea if the allegation was true or not.In July 2016, U.S. intelligence picked up Russian intelligence alleging the
Democratic presidential nominee "had approved a plan to stir up a scandal against" Trump by "tying him to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the Russian's hacking of the Democratic National Committee." Former CIA Director John Brennan apparently briefed then-President
Barack Obama on the intelligence. But Ratcliffe noted the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this allegation," or if it contains "exaggeration or fabrication" — probably a reason it wasn't shared earlier.
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe has declined to release the U.S. intelligence community's annual global threat assessment — something Trump's former anti-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk said is more important than "sketchy Russia intel chatter."