The Trump-Russia scandal made its formal public launch on January 6^th, 2017, when the office of then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper published an Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, dominating headlines and upending the incoming Donald Trump administration. The report declared Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an “influence campaign” in the 2016 presidential election — they never used the word “interference” — to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton and “harm her electability,” thanks to a “clear preference for President-elect [Donald] Trump.”

It was powerful stuff. And dead wrong.

“They cooked the intelligence,” says a source close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia scandal, whose full findings have until now been blocked from release. “They made it look like Putin supported Trump,” the source added. “The evidence points the other way.”