During this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Night in America,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe offered remarks on the release of the Durham Annex, tied to the so-called Russia-gate “hoax.”
Ratcliffe noted 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s role and called it the “greatest political scandal” in a lifetime.
“I sat beside you as Comey and Brennan were questioned for hours about Russia collusion,” FNC host Trey Gowdy said. “They never once mentioned this was a Clinton campaign plan. They knew it. They were co-conspirators. Would this ever have come out had you not declassified Brennan’s notes and then Durham’s annex and for our viewers, what’s new in the Durham annex?”
Ratcliffe replied, “Well, Trey, think about that, that there was Intelligence from foreign Intelligence services, that one U.S. presidential candidate was trying to frame another candidate for treason, claiming that he was an agent of a foreign power, an agent of Russia, and that Intelligence was never shared with you or I, as members of Congressional Oversight Committees on Intelligence. And you know, but for the good fortune of me being able to find John Brennan’s notes and declassify that, that secret may have been hidden forever, but I was able to provide that to John Durham, and you see some of that in his annex that was declassified this week.”
“And so what you learn in this annex that that many people didn’t know before was details of that Hillary Clinton plan and how it included groups like the Soros Foundation and the role that the FBI played. So before all of this started, Trey, what we did know is this, that on July 31, 2016 the FBI did something as shocking as it was unprecedented,” he continued. “They opened a criminal investigation into a nominee for president, a candidate for president, Donald Trump, something that had never been done before. But what you learned in John Brennan’s annex this week was six days before that, Russian Intelligence predicted that’s exactly what would happen, that there was a Hillary Clinton plan, and that the FBI would pour oil on the fire of a firestorm that would consume the country for the next three years.”
“So think about that, Trey,” Ratcliffe explained. “Either the Russians made the greatest prediction or the luckiest guess of all time, or this Intelligence was real. And of course, the answer is, this Intelligence was real. And how do we know that? Well, subsequently, under penalty of perjury, while under oath, Hillary Clinton’s own campaign manager confirmed that there was such a plan, and that Hillary approved it. So that I think, in addition to what you learn about the FBI role that came out this week was that this Intelligence that was so shocking that John Brennan brought together the National Security Council, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Clapper, Comey, Susan Rice and briefed them on this Intelligence about a Hillary Clinton plan to frame Donald Trump, and that the CIA made the required referral of that to the FBI to investigate that as a counterintelligence matter. And as John Durham found, the FBI buried it. They didn’t open a file. They didn’t assign an analyst, they didn’t investigate at all. They just spent the next few years really amplifying the lie of Hillary Clinton’s Steele dossier and bearing the truth of her plan to frame Donald Trump.”
He added, “It is the greatest political scandal that we hopefully will be the last that we’ll see in our lifetime.”
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