Did Trump Use the CIA to Lie About 2020? Ex-Intel Officers Say Maybe

When Trump released a tranche of declassified documents to support his national address claiming China stole the 2020 election, most reporters treated them as intelligence products. A 20-year CIA analyst and a former head of the National Security Council looked at them differently.

Julia Curlee spent two decades as a CIA analyst, including serving as a presidential daily briefer and director for the National Security Council for both the Biden and Trump White Houses. Steve Cash is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and the head of The Steady State. Together they explain Steady State's new report this week asking Congress to investigate whether the CIA was weaponized to produce politically motivated intelligence for the president's election speech.

Their finding: when you put the Venezuela document and the China document side by side, one looks like a product of the CIA's Directorate of Analysis. 

The other does not. 

The dates and the producing office are redacted, which are not classified. The sourcing includes what appears to be field reporting from a source who heard from a friend of a friend that China was making fake IDs using TikTok addresses. That ended up in the same document as formal CIA assessments.

Julia and Steve also explain how career CIA officers are walking out the door and not being replaced, why the people who would normally apply for those jobs are now being told not to by the people who mentored them, why the only historical parallel for what's happening to the intelligence community is the McCarthy era, and what Congress needs to do right now, not next week, not next term, to start fixing the broken system. 

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MAKE IT MAKE SENSE SUBSTACK

THE STEADY STATE ELECTION DOCUMENTS ASSESSMENT

THE STEADY STATE

JULIA CURLEE AT LAWFARE

CHAPTERS:

0:00 The China election documents don't look right. Two CIA veterans explain what they saw.

4:05 Meet Julia Curlee: 20-year CIA analyst, NSC director, presidential daily briefer for both Biden and Trump

5:25 Julia's first reaction to the documents: I have never seen intelligence released for such a direct partisan political end

7:04 The alarm bells: the 2020 ICA findings have been public for years. There is no deep state cover-up.

7:54 Venezuela vs. China: put both documents side by side and something is immediately wrong

9:01 Steve's reaction: he expected a declaration of emergency. Instead Trump said thank you and goodnight.

10:44 Why "there was no there there" and what the accidental Russia finding inside the documents means

13:36 Raw intelligence vs. finished analysis: how the CIA actually works and why the China document breaks the rules

15:02 Directorate of Analysis vs. Directorate of Operations: the inside battle and why it matters here

17:02 "Malevolence tempered by incompetence" — and why it's still pretty damn malevolent

18:01 What questions Congress needs to demand answers to: who produced this, when, and who tasked it

33:24 Trump is doing the adversaries' work for them: why China and Russia no longer need to target Americans

34:30 A generation of CIA officers has walked out and will not be replaced: what that actually costs us

35:29 Steve tells college students not to apply to the CIA anymore. He explains why.

37:51 The conspiracy of silence: clearances, health insurance, and the new McCarthy era in Washington

39:11 What Congress needs to do — not next, not later, now

42:01 Democrats being told "no" on every oversight request: they won't even give us an address for the Pentagon