Questions have been raised about the legitimacy of one of the declassified documents released by Donald Trump following his primetime address rehashing complaints about the 2020 election.
The three-page document, entitled “Sensitive PRC [People’s Republic of China] Reporting from 2018–2020,” was among 58 files released by the White House to back up Trump’s disputed July 16 claims that Beijing attempted to meddle in the election to help Joe Biden defeat him.
“As of mid-2018, the PRC’s ultimate goal with regard to the U.S. elections was for the U.S. President not to be re-elected. China found the uncertainty of the U.S. administration unsettling,” it reads.
However, multiple intelligence experts and Democratic figures have raised concerns about the apparent CIA document, including when and where it came from and whether it was done so with the sole purpose of helping legitimize Trump’s efforts to further cast doubt on the election results from six years ago.
A Democratic lawmaker with national security oversight told MS NOW about several potential concerns about the document. These include the author’s identity and the date it was written remaining redacted, as well as its seemingly one-sided framing, which would be unusual for a document produced by the U.S. intelligence community.
Six former CIA and intelligence officials are now demanding that the CIA and the White House answer questions about the origin of the document alleging Beijing attempted to undermine Trump’s 2020 re-election bid.
MS NOW reported that the officials are concerned the document may have been crafted “in response to a narrow query” and are urging an investigation.
Steven Cash, executive director of The Steady State—an organization consisting of hundreds of former national security and intelligence officials—and a former CIA and Department of Homeland Security official, has also sent a letter to senior lawmakers on the intelligence committees warning of “anomalies” in the document.
Those include the files differing “in both style and format” from typical CIA documents, as well as lacking the agency’s usual analytical context.
“It is particularly dangerous when intelligence products are presented piecemeal to the American people,” Cash wrote. “Confidence in the Intelligence Community is predicated not only on what it ultimately knows, but on the integrity of how its work is produced and presented.”
Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst, is concerned that the document may have only just been written and was “tailor-made” to help back up Trump’s election fraud claims.
“Released under CIA letterhead, but with its author and publication date redacted, it has all the hallmarks of a memo built to serve the president’s political needs and the intelligence community’s authority turned against the American public,” Curlee told MS NOW.
Another former senior intelligence official also questioned whether the document was generated by the CIA to “placate” Trump.
The White House did not address the concerns about the legitimacy of the file when approached for comment.
“President Trump and millions of Americans agree that we must have integrity in our elections, otherwise we have no country at all,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast.
In a statement to MS NOW, a CIA spokesperson said the agency “closely collaborated with President Trump’s Government Transparency Task Force to share sensitive intelligence reporting identified by the Task Force for public release, while protecting source and methods.
“Career senior intelligence officials were involved in every step of this process.”
