The months leading up to the November 2016
election,
the intelligence community
agreed that there was no intelligence that reflected
that Russia was trying to hack the election
in favor of either candidate.
The evidence showed, the intelligence
showed that again, Russia did not have either the intent nor the capability
to be able to impact the outcome of the United States election. So it was very
striking
When we look back again at the documents that I declassified
and released that shows there was a shift
in early December, the first week of December, again, another document was produced by the Intelligence Committee, a President's Daily Brief that was consistent with every other assessment that was done previously leading up to the election. Russia
did not
attempt to affect the outcome
of the American election.
That was never published. Hours before would have gone into President Obama's president's daily brief, it was pulled by a senior level intelligence official
saying that they had to pull it because they had received new guidance.
The very next day, this meeting was called a National Security Council meeting, bringing
together all of the senior leaders of President Obama's cabinet,
and the topic that was put forward was a sensitive matter.
The task that came out of that meeting
was coming from President Obama directing the intelligence community,
then Obama's ODNI Director Clapper, to produce
a document, to produce an intelligence
assessment
that detailed
not if, but how Moscow
affected
the outcome of the election that had already occurred, electing Donald Trump to the presidency.
This document that they published in January of 2017
was the foundational
groundwork
that they continued to reference over and over and over again to enact this years-long coup against President Trump.