Multiple senior U.S. officials have reported that a high ranking official within the federal government has been personally blocking the declassification and release of key documents relating to RussiaGate.
In the hopes that President Trump will lose the November election, CIA Director Gina Haspel has been blocking the release of RussiaGate documents. According to the unnamed officials, she is concerned that if these documents were released, they could embarrass the CIA, or even implicate Haspel herself.
In 2016-2017, Haspel served as the CIA’s station chief in London, under former CIA Director John Brennan.
“Haspel and [FBI Director] Wray both want Trump to lose, because it’s the only chance they have of keeping their jobs. They’re banking on Biden winning and keeping them where they are,” one senior intelligence official told The Federalist.
It was first reported by The Federalist last week that “Haspel had emerged as the primary roadblock to declassification of materials showing that the U.S. intelligence community knew prior to the 2016 election that the allegations that Trump colluded with Russia were themselves the products of Russian disinformation.”
Multiple senior U.S. intelligence officials told @FDRLST that CIA Director Gina Haspel has repeatedly lied to the WH about the status of key Russiagate documents and is personally banking on a Trump loss in November to keep key documents hidden. https://t.co/fVtsQ4CxFC
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 5, 2020
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe also released a declassified summary last week which revealed that Russian intelligence officials had been aware that Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, had planned to distract from her email scandal by smearing then-candidate Trump as a treasonous Russian asset.
As part of that smear, Clinton had hired Christopher Steele, a foreign agent who had also been working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch at the time, to spread these lies about Trump. FBI authorities now suspect one of the key sources of the Russian collusion allegations in the now-infamous Steele dossier of being a Russian spy.
“It’s far more important for Haspel to block any embarrassment of herself or her agency than to have full transparency and accountability. She’s just hoping she can get past the election so the documents will never come out,” another senior intelligence official told The Federalist.
“This is not a source protection issue, it’s an embarrassment issue,” the intelligence official added.
Officials have also accused Haspel of lying to the White House repeatedly about the status of documents that are being requested for declassification and release. According to these officials, Haspel has been consistently giving excuses for her failure to produce certain documents. She has reportedly stated that she cannot physically locate these documents, or that they are not technically owned by the CIA and therefore cannot be released.
Senators Johnson and Grassley asked CIA Director Gina Haspel on July 28 to turn over documents related to the topics below. They say in a new letter that CIA has given them nothing, and haven't been able to get a phone call to discuss. https://t.co/aDZuDWkxvQ pic.twitter.com/2ftLfgutG4
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) October 8, 2020
“Haspel has repeatedly lied to the president about the status of documents to be declassified. She will claim they don’t know where they are, or which agency technically owns them, and then we’ll find out she had them the entire time and just didn’t want them to see the light of day,” one source within the intelligence community stated.
“The frustration with Haspel is reaching nuclear levels,” one official said.
The CIA Public Affairs office has yet to release a comment on this revelation.
