Taibbi Critiques Intelligence Community’s Assessment of Russian Interference
During a Fox News segment on Wednesday, journalist Matt Taibbi criticized Steele’s documents, suggesting they turned key assertions about Russian involvement in the 2016 election into what he described as “splitting and rejected non-information.”
Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, has put forth what she calls “overwhelming evidence” suggesting that former President Obama and his national security team “manufactured and politicized intelligence” following Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. In his appearance on The Will Cain Show, Taibbi talked about the flawed evaluation by the intelligence community that stated Russian President Vladimir Putin was already inclined to support Trump.
“Today, we learned that the conclusion asserting that Putin was not trying to help Trump, who clearly favored him, relies on four pieces of evidence. It was also announced that one of these is Steele’s dossier,” Taibbi stated. “The other three were disregarded, labeled as ‘operational operations,’ which included vague emails without recipients or addresses.”
Taibbi expressed frustration over the mainstream media’s limited reporting on the Russian interference narrative, pointing out significant flaws in the intelligence community’s assessments.
“It was disheartening to witness the coverage. The mainstream media hardly addressed it, insisting it was an ‘apples and oranges’ situation. This narrows down to a singular issue,” he remarked. “And that certainly lies at the core of the intelligence community’s findings.”
Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, crafted the Steele dossier. Major networks like CNN and MSNBC have echoed Hillary Clinton’s baseless claims that Russian interference was behind her loss in 2016. A report by Special Advisor John Durham, released on May 15, 2023, stated that the FBI could neither support nor validate the claims from the document.
Officials who facilitated warrants to surveil Trump’s associates, such as Carter Page, have since lost confidence. In October 2022, FBI analyst Brian Orton testified that the FBI had provided Steele with $1 million to corroborate the documents, but Steele was not able to substantiate his claims.
In 2022, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee faced fines from the Federal Election Commission for promoting dubious documents central to conspiracy allegations. These officials also disputed John Brennan’s significant assertions at the time about Russian interference in the 2016 election, specifically that Russia intended to assist Trump in defeating Clinton.
