{"id":1473689,"date":"2024-06-27T02:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T06:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1473689"},"modified":"2024-06-27T02:20:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T06:20:00","slug":"james-clapper-mr-october-surprise-how-obamas-intel-czar-rigged-2016-and-2020-debates-against-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/james-clapper-mr-october-surprise-how-obamas-intel-czar-rigged-2016-and-2020-debates-against-trump\/1473689\/","title":{"rendered":"James Clapper, Mr. October Surprise: How Obama’s Intel Czar Rigged 2016 And 2020 Debates Against Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Clapper, Mr. October Surprise: How Obama’s Intel Czar Rigged 2016 And 2020 Debates Against Trump<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Just before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their second presidential debate,<\/strong> then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper met in the White House with a small group of advisers to President Obama to hatch a plan to put out a first-of-its-kind intelligence report warning the voting public that “the Russian government” was interfering in the election by allegedly breaching the Clinton campaign\u2019s email system.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Oct. 7, 2016 \u2013 just two days before the presidential debate between Trump and Clinton \u2013 Clapper issued the unprecedented\u00a0intelligence advisory<\/a>\u00a0with Obama\u2019s personal blessing. It seemed to lend credence to what the Clinton camp was telling the media \u2014 that Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election. Sure enough, the Democratic nominee pounced on it to smear Trump at the debate.<\/p>\n

And that wouldn\u2019t be the only historically consequential maneuver for Clapper, <\/strong>whose role in skewing presidential campaigns might deserve a special place in the annals of nefarious election meddling \u2013 by, in this case, a domestic, not foreign, intelligence service.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2020, he was the lead signatory on the \u201cintelligence”\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0that discredited the New York Post\u2019s October bombshell exposing emails from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop<\/strong>, which documented how Hunter\u2019s corrupt Burisma paymasters had met with Joe Biden when he was vice president. It was released Oct. 19, just three days before Trump and Biden debated each other in Nashville. Fifty other U.S. \u201cIntelligence Community\u201d officials and experts signed the seven-page document, which claimed “the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden\u2019s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In hindsight, Clapper’s well-timed pseudo-intelligence in 2016 and 2020 helped Clinton and Biden make the case against Trump as a potentially Kremlin-compromised figure, charges that crippled his presidency and later arguably denied him reelection.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The phony laptop letter actually helped Biden seal his narrow victory since many of his voters in the close election told pollsters they would have had second thoughts about backing him had they known of the damning materials contradicting his denials he knew anything about his son\u2019s shady foreign dealings.<\/p>\n

A post-election survey by The Polling Company, for one, found that thanks to the discrediting and suppression of the laptop story, 45% of Biden voters in swing states said they were \u201cunaware of the financial scandal enveloping Biden and his son\u201d and that full awareness of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal would have led more than 9% of these Biden voters to abandon their vote for him \u2013 thereby flipping all six of the swing states he won over to Trump and giving Trump the victory.<\/p>\n

In effect, Joe Biden was elected president because millions of voters were steered away by Clapper and his intelligence colleagues from learning about the damning contents on Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Beginning, Disinformation<\/h2>\n

In 2016, Clapper appeared to use his authority as Obama\u2019s chief of intelligence to try to trip up Trump on behalf of Clinton.<\/p>\n

But not everyone in the administration was on board with releasing his official statement about supposed Kremlin meddling.<\/p>\n

Then-FBI Director James Comey had also met in the Situation Room in early October to discuss the plan.<\/strong> But Comey balked at accusing \u201cRussia\u2019s senior-most officials\u201d of authorizing the “alleged hack” of the Clinton campaign and trying \u201cto interfere in the U.S. election process,\u201d as the two-page document claimed. Conspicuously, the FBI did not sign on to the intelligence.<\/p>\n

Still, Clapper implied in his statement that this was the finding of the entire \u201cU.S. Intelligence Community\u201d and that it was \u201cconfident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails.\u201d Aside from Clapper’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the only other agency that attached its name to the assessment was the Department of Homeland Security. Also remarkable was the paucity of underlying evidence. The joint ODNI-DHS statement\u00a0based<\/a>\u00a0its conclusion primarily on a report by a cybersecurity contractor hired by the Clinton campaign\u2019s law firm, who later walked back his finding in a sworn congressional\u00a0deposition<\/a>, allowing: \u201cWe did not have concrete evidence [Russian agents stole campaign emails].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At best, Clapper\u2019s finding was shoddy tradecraft. At worst, it was manufactured, or simply \u201cdreamed up,\u201d as one former FBI counterintelligence official described it to RealClearInvestigations.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Either way, it came at a highly opportune time for Clinton. The Democratic nominee\u00a0seized<\/a>\u00a0on the intelligence report during her debate with Trump in St. Louis on Oct. 9 to tarnish her Republican opponent as some kind of Russian agent.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, let\u2019s talk about what\u2019s really going on here, because our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin \u2013 meaning Putin and the Russian government \u2013 are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election,\u201d Clinton asserted, citing Clapper\u2019s warning. \u201cWe have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

“And believe me, they\u2019re not doing it to get me elected,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>she\u00a0continued<\/a>. “They\u2019re doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Now, maybe because he has praised Putin, maybe because he says he agrees with a lot of what Putin wants to do, maybe because he wants to do business in Moscow, I don\u2019t know the reasons. But we deserve answers,\u201d Clinton went on, clearly reciting a prepared talking point. “And we should demand that Donald release all of his tax returns so that people can see what are the entanglements and the financial relationships that he has with the Russians and other foreign powers.”<\/p>\n

Some former U.S. intelligence officials say the Oct. 7 intelligence assessment appears to have been cooked up for the benefit of Clinton.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no evidence to support it,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>said retired U.S. Army Col. Derek Harvey, who investigated the origins of the assessment for the House Intelligence Committee. \u201cIt was a political diversion to help Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed out that the specious sourcing behind the intelligence violated Clapper\u2019s own 2015 Intelligence Community directive outlining analytical standards for such assessments. What\u2019s more, his directive prohibited any political bias in intelligence reporting, warning that assessments must be \u201cindependent of political consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Analytic assessments must not be distorted by, nor shaped for, advocacy of a particular audience, agenda or policy viewpoint,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> according to the six-page document, which was signed by Clapper himself.<\/p>\n

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker said Clapper’s Oct. 7 assessment is another example of the many covert ops the Intelligence Community ran against Trump to try to keep him from power or to minimize his effectiveness while in office. By pre-cooking the conclusion about the Russian government targeting Clinton, he said, Clapper abused the U.S. government’s awesome intelligence powers to intervene in a U.S. election.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn hindsight, it is now clear that the leaders of our intelligence agencies directed their immense powers towards all things Trump,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> he said in an RCI interview.<\/p>\n

Swecker added that Clapper, now 83, was easily manipulated by Obama and then-CIA Director John Brennan, even though Clapper oversaw the CIA. \u201cJames Clapper was the Barney Fife of the Intelligence Community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The CIA and other American intelligence agencies are prohibited from getting involved in domestic affairs, Swecker noted, and certainly not American elections.<\/p>\n

Attempts to seek comment from Clapper, now retired, were unsuccessful. But in his 2018 memoir, \u201cFacts and Fears,\u201d Clapper revealed that he and then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, another Obama appointee, \u201cagonized over the precise wording\u201d in the Oct. 7 intelligence release, ostensibly because the linkages to the Kremlin were gauzy at best.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t see any hard evidence of political collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Clapper admitted on page 349, “but as I said at the time, my dashboard warning lights were all lit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also suggested he was looking out for Clinton \u2013 whom his boss, President Obama, had publicly endorsed and was actively campaigning for at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the Russians and the Trump campaign were, in parallel, pushing conspiracy theories against Secretary Clinton,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Clapper complained, namely that \u201cshe was corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added the former intel chief: \u201cJeh and I felt strongly that we should inform the electorate,\u201d and \u201cPresident Obama assented.\u201d In doing so, Clapper confessed they \u201cpushed the boundaries\u201d of what they could say about the purported “Russian activities.\u201d As much as they juiced the intel, though, they agreed to stop short of blaming Putin directly.<\/p>\n

While Clapper, in his book, mentioned the presidential debate that took place two days later, he did so only in passing and failed to note the key fact that Clinton cited his ginned-up intelligence during the televised event, almost on cue.<\/p>\n

The Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser later gloated about the Clapper statement, showing how important it was to the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is that the entire Intelligence Community stood behind a statement in October that the Russian campaign had hacked the DNC and released their emails,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Jake Sullivan testified in a closed-door December 2017 interview with the House Intelligence Committee. \u201cWe feared that we were under attack, not just by the Russians, but by a coordinated [sic] with the Trump campaign as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan was mistaken, of course. <\/strong>The entire Intelligence Community did not stand behind the statement, which was backed by no real evidence. At the time, according to internal documents, the FBI called the notion that the Russian government was behind the alleged hack \u201cspeculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

And nothing the Russians may have done was coordinated with the Trump campaign, as multiple investigations have concluded.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ‘Laptop Op’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Having been nearly charged with perjury in 2013 for\u00a0lying<\/a>\u00a0to Congress about intelligence gathering before\u00a0apologizing<\/a>, Clapper appeared to politicize intelligence ahead of the 2020 presidential debate as well.<\/p>\n

In an Oct. 19, 2020, formal statement, Obama\u2019s and Biden\u2019s old intelligence czar falsely implied damning emails found on Hunter Biden\u2019s abandoned laptop were Russian disinformation. The \u201cintelligence\u201d came just in time for Biden, who would be squaring off with Trump in three days, just like it did for Clinton in October 2016.<\/p>\n

“Clapper didn\u2019t know the Russians were involved. He was just spitballing. His pre-debate guesswork was similar to his pre-debate so-called intelligence on Russia in 2016,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> said the former senior FBI counterintelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

Although the statement declared the Hunter Biden laptop \u201chad all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,\u201d it provided no actual evidence of Russian involvement. Clapper and his colleagues asserted that they strongly suspected \u201cthe Russian government played a significant role in the case.\u201d Later in the statement, they went further to state \u201cour view\u201d shared by the Intelligence Community \u2014 not merely a suspicion anymore \u2014 \u201cthat the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and-or to weaken Biden should he win,\u201d they speculated. \u201cA \u2018laptop op\u2019 fits the bill, as the publication of the emails are clearly designed to discredit Biden.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Clapper was dead wrong. There was no Russian “op.\u201d <\/strong>And the laptop and its contents \u2014 including the damning emails published by the Post \u2014 were 100% real and authentic, as Special Counsel David Weiss confirmed during the recent trial of Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges, for which he was convicted earlier this month. The Russian government had nothing to do with any of it.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, many political analysts agree Clapper’s intel statement was designed not to inform the electorate but to mislead it. But more significantly, the timing of its release suggests it was meant to help Biden in the next presidential debate, which was scheduled just three days later in Nashville.<\/p>\n

During that final presidential debate, held on Oct. 22, 2020, Biden dismissed concerns about his son’s laptop emails and family foreign influence-peddling as part of a \u201cRussian plant\u201d after Trump lit into him about the laptop story. \u201cJoe, they\u2019re calling you a corrupt politician,\u201d Trump said. \u201cTake a look at the laptop from Hell.” Leaning on Clapper\u2019s intel statement, Biden flatly denied knowing anything about Hunter\u2019s foreign business dealings.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he\u2019s accusing me of is a Russian plant,\u201d Biden shot back. \u201cThey have said this is, has all the characteristics \u2014 four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he\u2019s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The intel provided a much-needed lifeline for the former vice president.<\/p>\n

It were as if Clapper had teed up the perfect talking point for Biden.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Biden campaign officials had worked with Clapper\u2019s team prior to the release of the intel statement accusing Putin of planting the laptop story.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a House deposition, former deputy CIA Director Mike Morell, a Clapper confidant and one of the 51 signatories of the letter, testified that around Oct. 17, top Biden campaign aide Antony Blinken, now Biden’s Secretary of State, reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story.<\/p>\n

Morell revealed that one of the goals in releasing the letter two days later \u201cwas to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate,\u201d according to an April 20, 2023, letter House investigators sent to Blinken. The day after speaking with the Biden campaign, Morell blasted out an email to former intelligence officials to recruit them to sign the Oct. 19 intel letter. \u201cWe want to give the VP a talking point to use in response\u201d to Trump in the event he attacks Biden over the laptop revelations during the upcoming debate, Morell wrote his colleagues. After the Oct. 22 debate, Morell testified that Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti called him to thank him \u201cfor putting the statement out.\u201d Morell said former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash was also involved in the coordination effort. Bash happens to be the ex-husband of Dana Bash, who will be one of the CNN moderators questioning Trump and Biden at Thursday night\u2019s debate in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

In effect, the Intelligence Community conspired with the Biden campaign to deceive the electorate by creating a false talking point for Biden in the presidential debate, which some government watchdogs say constituted an unreported campaign contribution and a potential violation of federal campaign finance laws.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the same day that Clapper released the statement, then-Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand hyped it in a story with the conclusive headline: \u201cHunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.\u201d During the earlier frenzied coverage of Russiagate, Bertrand, who now works for CNN, acted as a go-to reporter for leaks from intelligence officials about Trump. She quoted one signatory to the letter as being confident that \u201conce again the Russians are interfering\u201d in U.S. elections. About 15 minutes after Politico published its story, Jen Psaki tweeted a link to the Politico article. Psaki was named Biden\u2019s press secretary the next month. The Biden campaign repeatedly cited Clapper’s statement to dismiss the allegations against Hunter and Joe Biden. Clapper played his part by jumping on CNN to claim the laptop was \u201ctextbook Soviet tradecraft.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear Clapper was rooting for Biden to win.<\/strong> Three days before Clapper released his all-too-convenient intelligence letter, he had donated $1,000 to Biden\u2019s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. He had given another $250 to Biden For President the previous October. In the current election cycle, records show Clapper has contributed at least $300 so far to Biden.<\/p>\n

RealClearInvestigations reached out to Clapper for comment but did not hear back. However, in a previous statement, he was unapologetic. \u201cI stand by the statement made at the time,\u201d he told the New York Post. “I think sounding such a cautionary note at the time was appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clapper and Tapper<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Clapper\u2019s history of intrigue against Trump includes leaking damaging classified information about him to the media.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CNN anchor Jake Tapper thought he had the scoop of his career when, on Jan. 10, 2017, he reported that President-elect Trump had been briefed by the FBI about \u201cclassified documents\u201d containing information from a \u201ccredible\u201d intelligence source that the Russians had \u201ccompromising\u201d dirt on him. Citing unnamed \u201cU.S. officials,\u201d the\u00a0report<\/a>, co-bylined with Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, also falsely claimed that the Trump campaign and the Russian government had “exchange[d] information” throughout the election and that these allegations had been verified. Tapper failed to note that the supposedly \u201cclassified\u201d information came from political opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, otherwise known as the Steele dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.<\/p>\n

As flawed as the story was, it triggered a feeding frenzy in the national media, which up to that point backed off from covering the wild and unsubstantiated allegations contained in the Steele dossier. <\/strong>But after they learned from Tapper \u2013 by way of Clapper \u2013 that the U.S. Intelligence Community itself had taken a keen interest in the dossier and appeared to be taking it seriously, they reported the allegations against Trump nonstop for several years as if the dossier reports were the Pentagon Papers.<\/p>\n

When congressional investigators first asked Clapper about the CNN leak in a July 2017 deposition, Clapper \u201cflatly denied \u2018discuss[ing] the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists,\u2019\u201d according to a report issued by the House Intelligence Committee. But Clapper changed his story upon further questioning. \u201cClapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the \u2018dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper.\u2019\u201d The report added that Clapper secretly spoke with Tapper in early January 2017 and that on Jan. 10, CNN published Tapper\u2019s story about the dossier allegations, for which he won the Merriman Smith Award for broadcast journalism in 2018.<\/p>\n

The next day, Clapper issued a statement describing a call with Trump in which Clapper \u201cexpressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press\u201d and stressed that \u201cI do not believe the leaks came from within the IC,\u201d or Intelligence Community.<\/p>\n

Clapper, who was later hired by CNN as an official “national security analyst,” had blatantly lied not only to the incoming president but also to the public. Again. And in effect, he had used Tapper, who’s not only failed to correct the record at CNN, but finds himself in the position to grill Trump on Thursday night as co-moderator with Bash of the first 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta.<\/strong><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Support RealClearInvestigations<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We’re proud to make our journalism accessible to everyone, but producing high-quality investigative pieces still comes at a cost. That’s why we need your help. By making a contribution today, you’ll be supporting RealClearInvestigations and ensuring that we can keep providing in-depth reporting that holds the powerful accountable. Donate now and help us continue to publish distinctive journalism that makes a difference. Thank you for your support!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 06\/26\/2024 – 22:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/james-clapper-mr-october-surprise-how-obamas-intel-czar-rigged-2016-and-2020-debates<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Clapper, Mr. October Surprise: How Obama’s Intel Czar Rigged 2016 And 2020 Debates Against Trump Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com, Just before Donald…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1473690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1473689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1473690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}