Washington (CNN) Former CIA director John Brennan on Tuesday accused current intelligence chief John Ratcliffe of selectively declassifying documents ahead of the November election that benefit President Donald Trump, telling CNN that the decision to release materials gathered by the agency on Russian allegations that Hillary Clinton was planning on "stirring up a scandal" against her Republican rival in 2016 was motivated by politics. "John Ratcliffe is anything but an intelligence professional. It is designed to advance the political interests of Donald Trump and Republicans who are aligned with him," Brennan said of the director of national intelligence. The former CIA director also pushed back on Ratcliffe's declassification of a heavily redacted CIA memo related to the investigative referral forwarded to the FBI at the time. The memo notes that the Russians allege Clinton's effort to stir up a scandal was "a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."

Source: CNN October 06, 2020 22:07 UTC