"Through my role in leading production of the prior 2016 ICA, I also knew that as
recently as September of 2016, other elements of the ICvi had pushed back during analyic
coordination on warnings of Russian intent to influence the 2016 presidential election,
stating that such a judgement would be misleading. Yet, by January, at least one of the IC
Elements that had pushed back (the Federal Bureau of Investigation) had seemingly
altered its position and embraced a judgement of Russian intent to influence the election,
seemingly without any new data other than the election’s unexpected result and public
speculation that Russia had ”hacked” the vote – a scenario that, we in the IC judged,
simply did not occur.vii viii ix
As for the 2017 ICA’s judgement of a decisive Russian
preference for then-candidate Donald Trump, I could not concur in good conscience
based on information available, and my professional analytic judgement. I did not rule
the possibility out, and was willing to be convinced, but I was not offered access to any
of the supposedly dispositive reporting when I asked to review it (as a DNIO at the NIC,
a “one time” read in for almost anything relevant was normally provided)."
" concurred with the 2017 ICA’s
judgement that Moscow sought to “undermine public faith in the US democratic process”
and I had been on record expressing this view in classified, unclassified, and even openly
published documents since 2015.v
In my own judgement, it was also likely that Moscow
sought to influence how Americans viewed the process and results of the 2016 election,
but I did not assesses at that time that this indicated Russian goals were, as the opening
sentence of the 2017 ICA states, “to influence the 2016 US Presidential election” itself.
" Through my role in leading production of the prior 2016 ICA, I also knew that as
recently as September of 2016, other elements of the ICvi had pushed back during analyic
coordination on warnings of Russian intent to influence the 2016 presidential election,
stating that such a judgement would be misleading. Yet, by January, at least one of the IC
Elements that had pushed back (
the Federal Bureau of Investigation) had seemingly
altered its position and embraced a judgement of Russian intent to influence the election,
seemingly without any new data other than the election’s unexpected result and public
speculation that Russia had ”hacked” the vote – a scenario that, we in the IC judged,
simply did not occur.vii viii ix "However, I later also
began to consider it possible that
some of the reporting might reflect
Domain Name Service (DNS) record manipulation by parties other than
Russia, possibly USPERSONs, relevant to the Durham investigation, and
conveyed this to my contact there. (See Enclosure 3, Possible DNS
manipulation.)
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-Whistleblower-Testimony-Obama-Subvert-President-Trump-July2025.pdf"“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘
by the book,’”
Susan Rice
Jan 20, 2017