The Justice Department has subpoenaed former FBI Director James Comey, demanding answers about his role in crafting the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. The subpoena was served last week from the Southern District of Florida.
The move marks a significant escalation. Fox News reported that Comey is already the subject of a criminal investigation opened by FBI Director Kash Patel. Former CIA Director John Brennan faces his own federal probe after CIA Director John Ratcliffe sent a criminal referral to the FBI.
The full scope of those criminal investigations remains unclear, but the subpoena signals that the DOJ is actively building cases, not just reviewing old files.
Axios first reported the subpoena.
The 2017 ICA, released on January 6, 2017, became the foundational document for nearly everything that followed: the Mueller investigation, two congressional impeachments, criminal prosecutions of Trump associates, and years of poisoned U.S.-Russia relations.
Intelligence officials have since described the assessment as "politicized," alleging it "suppressed intelligence from before and after the election showing Russia lacked intent and capability to hack the 2016 election."
That's a serious charge. But the declassified record, piece by piece, makes it difficult to dismiss.
A "lessons learned" review, declassified by Ratcliffe, concluded that the decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA "ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment."
The dossier, of course, was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign. The FBI itself reportedly viewed the dossier's claims as "conspiracy," and the broader CIA consensus at the time treated a key allegation as an "internet rumor."
Officials have stated that the ICA's core conclusion "was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured, i.e., the Steele Dossier or deemed as not credible."
That assessment was then "used as the basis for countless smears seeking to delegitimize President Trump's victory, the years-long Mueller investigation, two Congressional impeachments, high level officials being investigated, arrested, and thrown in jail, heightened US-Russia tensions, and more."
The declassified timeline tells a story of intelligence agencies reaching one conclusion, only to have their own leadership overwrite it weeks later.
On December 7, 2016, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's talking points stated plainly:
"Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the U.S. presidential election outcome."
The next day, a Presidential Daily Brief prepared for Obama reinforced the same conclusion:
"We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure."
The PDB acknowledged that Russian government-affiliated actors "most likely compromised an Illinois voter registration database and unsuccessfully attempted the same in other states," but assessed it was "highly unlikely" this "would have resulted in altering any state's official vote result."
Criminal activity "also failed to reach the scale and sophistication necessary to change election outcomes." The assessment noted that such efforts "probably were intended to cause psychological effects, such as undermining the credibility of the election process and candidates."
The intelligence community, in other words, had already spoken. Russia tried things. Those things didn't work.
Then came December 9, 2016.
That day, senior Obama administration officials gathered in the White House Situation Room. The meeting's subject line read: "Summary of Conclusions for PC Meeting on a Sensitive Topic (REDACTED.)" The attendees included then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice, then-Secretary of State John Kerry, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
A declassified meeting record obtained by Fox News Digital shows that principals at the meeting agreed to recommend sanctioning certain members of Russian military intelligence and foreign intelligence responsible for cyber operations, if such activity met requirements from an executive order regarding cyber activities.
But the meeting produced something far more consequential than sanctions recommendations. Clapper's executive assistant subsequently emailed intelligence community leaders, tasking them to create a brand new intelligence community assessment "per the president's request."
That assessment would examine "tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election." The directive specified that "ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS."
The result, released January 6, 2017, was the ICA. And its conclusions bore little resemblance to what those same agencies had assessed just weeks earlier.
The December 8 Presidential Daily Brief was supposed to publish on December 9. It didn't. Declassified, redacted FBI communications indicate the assessment "should not go forward until the FBI" addressed unspecified "concerns."
An ODNI deputy director of the PDB (whose name remains redacted) stated that "based on some new guidance," the office would "push back publication." The official added: "It will not run tomorrow and is not likely to run until next week."
The PDB that said Russia didn't impact the election got shelved. Weeks later, a new assessment saying essentially the opposite became the gospel of Washington.
Officials have alleged that Obama officials "leaked false statements to media outlets," including the claim that "Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election." This claim, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months."
Officials have also pointed out a sleight of hand embedded in how the ICA was later defended. The ICA's architects claimed the intelligence community "made no assessment on the 'impact' of Russian activities," but the intelligence community "did, in fact, assess for impact." As one official stated:
"The unpublished December PDB stated clearly that Russia 'did not impact' the election through cyber hacks on the election."
The same official noted the ICA asserted "Russia was responsible for leaking data from the DNC and DCCC," while "failing to mention that FBI and NSA previously expressed low confidence in this attribution."
Declassified records have also revealed that Brennan pushed for the Steele Dossier to be included in the 2017 ICA, a detail that carries particular weight given that the dossier's material was opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign and flagged internally as unreliable.
For years, the 2017 ICA was treated as unimpeachable. Questioning it was branded as conspiracy theorizing or carrying water for Moscow. Media outlets cited it reflexively. Congressional committees built entire investigative architectures on its foundation. Federal prosecutors used it as a launching pad.
Now the declassified record reveals something that looks less like intelligence analysis and more like a political operation: an assessment that contradicted the intelligence community's own prior conclusions, relied on material known to be manufactured or unreliable, and was commissioned at the direct request of a president whose party had just lost an election.
The subpoena of James Comey is not the end of this story. It's the formal beginning of something that should have started years ago. The question was never whether Russia tried to meddle. Every serious person acknowledges that foreign adversaries probe American systems.
The question is whether senior intelligence officials, in the final days of one administration, fabricated a narrative designed to cripple the next one.
The documents suggest the answer. Now the DOJ is asking the people who wrote them to explain, under oath, what they did and why.
