Trump investigation: Intelligence report contradicts claims by Trump and his team on China election interference

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The report also raises questions about the effort from Senate Republicans to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine, a probe that examined many of the same allegations about the Bidens and Ukraine that the Russian-linked officials were pushing, according to the intelligence community report.

The report, compiled by the US intelligence community and declassified and released by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Tuesday, assessed that the Russian government meddled in the 2020 election with an influence campaign “denigrating” President Joe Biden and “supporting” Trump. In addition, the report said China did not interfere and “considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.”

That assessment flies in the face of the public comments from Trump and members of his administration, including former Attorney General William Barr and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien who helped push Trump’s narrative that China was interfering in the election more aggressively than Russia or Iran.

A whistleblower also previously accused top Trump political appointees in the Department of Homeland Security of instructing career officials to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the US and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran,” according to the documents obtained by CNN.

That order came from O’Brien, according to the complaint.

The new report rebuts many of the claims Trump and his allies made surrounding foreign interference and the election, where Trump and administration officials repeatedly downplayed the threat of Russian election interference while Trump’s allies such as Rudy Giuliani worked with Russian-linked Ukrainians to try to dig up dirt on Biden.

While the intelligence report didn’t mention Giuliani by name, it includes a detailed accounting of how Russian-linked officials sought to damage Biden’s campaign by providing materials to US officials in an attempt to implicate the Bidens “in allegedly corrupt activities related to Ukraine.”

“The primary effort the IC (intelligence community) uncovered revolved around a narrative — that Russian actors began spreading as early as 2014 — alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other US officials and Ukraine,” the report says.

Those same Russian-linked allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine were taken up in a Senate GOP investigation…

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