- The Trump administration last year pressured the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to delete part of a report concluding that Russia was aiming to help Donald Trump win reelection in 2020, an investigation by The New York Times Magazine found.
- When Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, refused to delete that conclusion from the report, Trump forced him to retire early, the Times report said.
- Previous reports from the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency concluded that Russia attempted to help Trump win in 2016 — and President Vladimir Putin said publicly that he wanted Trump to win — but Trump has denied those reports' accuracy.
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Last year, President Donald Trump's administration tried to pressure intelligence agencies to delete part of a classified report that found that Russia was trying to help him win the 2020 election, an investigation by The New York Times Magazine found.
The report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in July 2019 and made several "key judgments" about matters of national security. "Key Judgement 2" concluded that Russia aimed to interfere in the 2020 election to help Trump, unnamed national security sources told the Times reporter Robert Draper.
Trump was reportedly unhappy with that finding. He has repeatedly denied the assertion that Russia tried to help his campaign in 2016, despite reports from the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee that supported that conclusion. Russian President Vladimir Putin has similarly denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, though he has also said he wanted Trump to win.
When the ODNI was finalizing last year's report, Trump administration staffers requested that it remove language in "Key Judgement 2" that detailed Russia's attempts to help Trump in 2020, Dan Coats, the former director of national intelligence, told The Times.
"I can affirm that one of my staffers who was aware of the controversy requested that I modify that assessment," Coats said. "But I said, 'No, we need to stick to what the analysts have said.'"
Shortly after that exchange, Coats learned through a tweet that Trump was forcing him into early retirement. Trump tweeted on July 28, 2019, that Coats' last day would be August 15 — months before Coats planned to retire.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2019
After Coats' departure, the National Intelligence Estimate was published with softer language describing Russia's potential motivation for interfering in the 2020 election. Instead of directly concluding that Russia wanted Trump to win in 2020, the report said that "Russian leaders probably assess that chances to improve relations with the US will diminish under a different US president."
An email reviewed by The Times suggested that the edits were made by Beth Sanner, an ODNI official who presents Trump's daily national intelligence briefings.
The episode is part of a broader conflict between Trump and US intelligence agencies, Draper reported. After a years-long FBI investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump's Republican allies in Congress are pushing an investigation into whether the FBI overstepped its authority.
