Newly declassified report reveals Putin’s ‘kompromat’ on Clinton in 2016

Russian President Vladimir Putin possessed “devastating” information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign, including internal party emails fretting that her health was terrible and claiming she was on a daily dose of “heavy tranquilizers” because of psychological problems.

Yet Moscow, predicting a Clinton victory in November 2016, kept this information secret so Russia could use it against her when she entered the White House.

The revelation is part of a newly declassified report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, authored by panel Republicans in September 2020, that found significant flaws in the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment that Mr. Putin “developed a clear preference” for candidate Donald Trump and that Mr. Putin and the Russian government “aspired to help” Mr. Trump win by discrediting Mrs. Clinton.

“There was no collusion, no corruption, except on the part of Barack Obama and the weaponized intelligence agencies at the time,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.

The intelligence community assessment, issued in the final weeks of the Obama presidency, downplayed significant evidence that Mr. Putin favored a Clinton win.

The assessment instead tied Mr. Trump’s victory to Mr. Putin, despite a lack of evidence, the newly declassified House report found, and it set off a yearslong investigation into the Trump campaign.

The faulty assessment helped foment distrust over the 2016 election results and Mr. Trump’s victory. It inarguably hobbled his first administration.

It was Mrs. Clinton whom Mr. Putin was counting on to win the White House, and he was withholding a stockpile of significant dirt, some of it hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s email servers, the House committee report found.

The report said the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) had DNC information in September 2016 that indicated President Obama and other top Democrats believed Mrs. Clinton’s health to be “extraordinarily alarming,” and they feared it could have a “serious, negative impact” on her ability to win the election.

Information about her health, Russian Intelligence officials said, was kept in “strictest secrecy” by Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle. According to DNC communications possessed by the Russians, Mrs. Clinton was suffering from “intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression and cheerfulness.”

The Russian assessment of the DNC communications echoed public concerns at that time about Mrs. Clinton’s health as she campaigned for president.

Mrs. Clinton, 68 at the time, appeared to collapse during a Sept. 11, 2016, memorial service for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Doctors later diagnosed pneumonia and told Mrs. Clinton to modify her schedule. A fainting spell in 2012 left her with a concussion.

It’s not clear whether the Russian assessments of the DNC communications were accurate, and the report does not address whether the Russian intelligence about Mrs. Clinton was exaggerated or misinterpreted.

For example, Russian intelligence claimed to have information that Mrs. Clinton suffered from “Type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease, deep vein thrombosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

The primary risk factors for COPD are heavy smoking and occupational hazards, which would make Mrs. Clinton, a nonsmoker, an unlikely candidate for this disease.

In 2015, a doctor released a letter affirming she was in good health and was fit to serve as president.

The 44-page document released to the public Wednesday is part of a string of newly declassified material that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said provides evidence that the Obama administration purposely deceived the public into believing Mr. Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

She could not confirm the veracity of the Russian intelligence but said it shows that if Mr. Putin were trying to help Mr. Trump win the election, as Democrats claimed, “they would have released the most damning of that information” about Mrs. Clinton.

Instead, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence found, Russia planned to release the dirt about Mrs. Clinton before her inauguration “to sow discord and chaos.”

The Russian intelligence on Mrs. Clinton didn’t end with bombshell revelations about her health struggles. Russian intelligence officials claimed to have details of secret meetings in which State Department representatives pledged to provide “significant increases in financing” to religious organizations in exchange for their endorsement of Mrs. Clinton.

The SVR also claimed to have “intercepted” discussions between a “high-ranking DNC official” and a nongovernmental organization. They claimed a Clinton campaign staffer was receiving updates from a high-ranking Justice Department official about the FBI’s investigation of the illegal email server Mrs. Clinton kept in her home while she served as secretary of state.

The newly declassified report said the Obama administration’s intelligence community assessment “ignored strong indicators” supporting the hypothesis that Mr. Putin was preparing for a Clinton presidency, not working to help Mr. Trump win.

“By keeping the most damaging material on Clinton in reserve, Putin was not only demonstrating a clear lack of concern for Trump’s election fate, but conversely, his actions could also indicate that he preferred to see Secretary Clinton elected, knowing she would be a more vulnerable President than a candidate Trump,” the report said.

Ms. Gabbard is overseeing a broad declassification of reports, communications and other materials related to what Mr. Trump and his supporters call the “Russia hoax,” in which Democrats attempted to tie his 2016 victory to an alleged alliance with Mr. Putin.

The report released Wednesday found that the Obama-era intelligence community assessment was in part based on flawed information and unverified conclusions that Mr. Putin “aspired” to help Mr. Trump win the election.

The conclusion relied specifically on “one scant, an unverifiable fragment of a sentence” from a single source published in the final weeks of Mr. Obama’s presidency. It stated that Mr. Putin was “counting on” Trump’s win.

A senior CIA operations officer told House investigators at the time that the sentence was interpreted “five ways” by five different people and nobody knew what it really meant.

“The ICA did not cite any report where Putin directly indicated helping Trump win was the objective,” the report found. “That judgement rested on a questionable interpretation of this one, unclear fragment of a sentence.”

Top Democrats and Mr. Obama are denying accusations by Mr. Trump that the former president committed treason.

Mr. Obama called the claim “nonsense and misinformation.”

Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, a top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and among party lawmakers who claimed Mr. Trump colluded with Russia, condemned Ms. Gabbard for releasing the report. He said it did not alter a Senate bipartisan report issued in 2020 that determined Russia had meddled in the 2016 election.

“Releasing this so-called report is just another reckless act by a director of national intelligence so desperate to please Donald Trump that she is willing to risk classified sources, betray our allies, and politicize the very intelligence she has been entrusted to protect,” Mr. Warner said.