Overview

• Director John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified a heavily redacted CIA assessment and an accompanying email about Joe Biden’s December 2015 visit to Kyiv.
• An email dated Feb. 10, 2016 from a Presidential Daily Brief briefer said the vice president’s office “would strongly prefer the report not/not be disseminated,” and the report was not shared outside the agency.
• The assessment relayed that senior Ukrainian officials were disappointed by the visit and viewed the Biden family’s alleged business ties as evidence of a U.S. “double‑standard.”
• A senior CIA official said the reporting would have met dissemination criteria and called the outside intervention “extremely rare and unusual,” while noting redactions protect sources and methods.
• The documents were found in a late‑2024 internal review, and Republican lawmakers, including House Oversight Chair James Comer, are pressing for further scrutiny and alleging politicization of intelligence.