The CIA Knew About Russia's Operation to Get Trump Elected Last Summer

By Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair

10 April 17

Now we finally know the real reason Harry Reid was so infuriated by the Comey letter.

s the Russian melodrama on Capitol Hill has unfolded, the seminal question of the Watergate scandal—“Who knew what and when did they know it?”—has resurfaced with every new revelation. Now, a new report reveals that the C.I.A. and its then director, John Brennan, had evidence of the Russian government’s intention to aid Donald Trump and derail Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid as early as last summer, much earlier than was previously believed.

In late August, ten weeks before American voters cast their ballots, Brennan began holding a series of high-priority, individual meetings with the “Gang of Eight”—the Republican and Democratic Senate and House leaders and the chairpersons of the intelligence committees in each chamber—to share that the C.I.A. had uncovered information suggesting the Kremlin was actively working to help elect Trump, according to a New York Times report citing former government officials. What intelligence prompted Brennan’s urgency is unknown, but the Times reports that the C.I.A. director was growing increasingly distraught about Russia’s influence campaign. According to officials, his briefings with lawmakers took place after the C.I.A. discovered potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. (Members of the campaign have denied any wrongdoing and President Trump has routinely dismissed the implication that anyone on his team colluded with Russia as “fake news.”)

The timing of Brennan’s warning to the Gang of Eight provides new context to the curious circumstances surrounding F.B.I. Director James Comey’s infamous decision to send Congress a letter, just days before the election, announcing that his agency had reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server. At the time, Senator Harry Reid issued a fiery rebuke, accusing Comey of tarnishing Clinton while failing to alert the American people to “explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government,” which he claimed the government possessed. As Senate minority leader, Reid was among the lawmakers that Brennan had briefed on the scope of Russian interference in the election. According to two former officials who spoke with the Times, the C.I.A. director informed Reid during an August 25 briefing that Russia’s high-profile cyberattacks against the Democratic Party were aimed at getting Trump elected and indicated to the Nevada lawmaker that associates of Trump may have been colluding with Russia. (No evidence of such collusion has been publicly released.)

Brennan reportedly informed Reid that the F.B.I.—the law enforcement agency in charge of domestic intelligence—would have to lead the probe. This prompted Reid to write to Director Comey urging the F.B.I. to “use every resource available” to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

In a congressional hearing last month, Comey publicly confirmed that the F.B.I. had launched a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July. Reid and his fellow lawmakers, however, were unaware of the probe’s existence. As a result, when Comey announced 11 days before the election that his agency had reopened its investigation into Clinton, Reid interpreted the action as partisan, prompting him to accuse the law-enforcement official of violating the Hatch Act. Reid wrote that Comey’s “partisan actions” may have violated federal law.

In fact, there was a sizable gulf between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. on the breadth and goal of the Russian influence campaign. The Times reports that at the time Brennan began speaking with lawmakers about the Russian threat, senior officials at the F.B.I. were still unconvinced that the Kremlin sought to aid Trump in his bid for the White House, believing through the fall that the high-profile cyberattacks were more broadly aimed at undermining the U.S. political system. The F.B.I. did, ultimately, reach the same conclusion as the C.I.A. In January, both agencies publicly disclosed in a declassified report that they had “high confidence” the Kremlin wanted to help Trump win the election, while the National Security Agency had “moderate confidence” this was the goal of the hacking and influence campaign.

Brennan—along with the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates—was scheduled to testify in an open hearing before the House Intelligence Committee for the ongoing Trump-Russia probe. But Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the panel, who temporarily recused himself from the Russia investigation on Thursday amid ethical questions, canceled the hearings at the last minute during the final week of March.