A newly released internal review by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has cast fresh light on the intelligence community’s controversial assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election to benefit Donald Trump – and the pivotal role of former CIA Director John Brennan in driving that narrative. The June 2025 review, commissioned by current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, concludes that Brennan overrode internal objections, marginalized key intelligence bodies, and created a politicized process that compromised the integrity of one of the nation’s most consequential intelligence assessments.

The December 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), formally titled “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election,” was presented to both President Barack Obama and then President-elect Donald Trump in early January 2017. It became a foundational document in fueling the Russia collusion narrative, widely disseminated by the media and embraced by Democratic lawmakers. But according to the newly declassified CIA review, the process by which the ICA reached its core conclusion – that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump win – deviated from standard analytical rigor and was tainted by political considerations.

At the center of the review’s criticism is Brennan’s handling of a “highly classified” report that served as the cornerstone of the ICA’s judgment regarding Putin’s intentions. The document, collected in July 2016 but not shared through standard CIA channels until December, was subject to unusually restricted access. Even within the CIA, only a narrow circle of personnel were permitted to view it, effectively locking out career analysts and other agencies that typically contribute to such an assessment.

The review noted that the highly classified report was not serialized in official CIA reporting until December 19 – weeks after Brennan had........

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