CIA/INTELLIGENCE/MIKE POMPEO/NATIONAL SECURITY/RUSSIA: “CIA Director Mike Pompeo drew sharp criticism Thursday [10-19-17] after wrongly stating that the U.S. intelligence community had found that Russian meddling did not tilt the 2016 presidential election.
Pompeo made the inaccurate claim at an event hosted by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank close to the Trump administration. His comments come amid growing evidence of Russian interference in last year’s campaign, the scale of which remains unclear…
The intelligence community has made no such assessment. A report by the CIA and the National Security Agency released in January found that the Kremlin hacked emails and disseminated propaganda in order ‘to help [then-candidate Donald Trump’s] election chances.’…
President Donald Trump, who has doubted whether Russia interfered in the election at all, has repeatedly made the blanket assertion that any Kremlin meddling had no ultimate impact. ‘The Russians did not affect the vote,’ Trump told NBC in May.
‘Not true,’ former CIA Deputy Director David Cohen tweeted after Pompeo’s remark Thursday. ‘The Intelligence Community Assessment specifically said the IC made no judgment on whether Russian interference affected election.’…
A CIA official insisted that neither was true.”
-Michael Crowley, “CIA director rebuked for false claim on Kremlin’s election meddling,” Politico, Oct. 19, 2017 09:07pm