Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has renewed speculation that the FBI’s 2022 raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was driven by an effort to retrieve a sensitive congressional report that discredits the Intelligence Community’s official narrative surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The report in question — compiled in 2020 by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) — was formally titled:
The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA): “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election”, dated September 18, 2020, and approved for release by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2025.
Declassified under the direction of current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the 46-page oversight document sharply criticizes the methodology and conclusions of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which claimed with “high confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the presidency.
ODNI Releases Long-Withheld Oversight Report
The ICA oversight report was the product of a two-year investigation by the Republican-led HPSCI majority. It concludes that the Intelligence Community’s 2017 assessment relied on uncorroborated sources and did not adhere to standard tradecraft. The report alleges that dissenting analytical voices were sidelined, and that the ICA’s claim of Putin’s preference for Trump was “unsupported” by the underlying intelligence.
Despite former President Trump declassifying the report before leaving office in January 2021, it remained suppressed within the Intelligence Community for over four years. The public first saw the document when DNI Gabbard authorized its release on July 22, 2025.
According to the report’s preface, its objective was to review how the ICA — ordered by President Obama in December 2016 — was assembled, and whether it reflected genuine intelligence consensus or political bias.
Nunes: Trump May Have Possessed the Only Copy Outside Intelligence Control
In a recent interview with host Grant Stinchfield, Nunes stated that the Intelligence Community may have believed Trump retained the only physical copy of the oversight report outside government control when he left office. That suspicion, he argued, may have played a role in prompting the August 8, 2022, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
He further suggested that the report directly contradicted core premises of the Russia investigation and that some intelligence officials may have worked to keep it hidden for years.
Supported by Earlier White House Memo
Nunes’s assertions are supported by a February 2, 2018 letter from then-White House Counsel Don McGahn, which affirmed President Trump’s constitutional authority to declassify intelligence materials. That letter accompanied the release of a separate HPSCI Majority Staff Memorandum, which alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in surveillance activities related to the Trump campaign.
That 2018 memo detailed how the now-discredited Steele dossier, funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign, was central to the FBI’s FISA applications targeting campaign adviser Carter Page. The dossier’s political origins were not fully disclosed to the court, and portions of the document remained unverified.
Legal Venue Theory: Could Florida Be a Charging Jurisdiction?
Some legal observers have speculated that the Department of Justice may have viewed the Mar-a-Lago raid as a potential basis for shifting legal venue from Washington, D.C. to Florida. If the retrieval of the declassified report is considered the final act in a broader conspiracy, it could provide jurisdictional grounding for federal charges outside the D.C. circuit.
Nunes described such a move as a “Lawfare-stretch,” noting that over 90% of the activity related to the Russia probe occurred in D.C., but acknowledged the possibility of such legal maneuvering in politically sensitive prosecutions.
Report’s Findings vs. Durham’s Conclusions
The release of the HPSCI oversight report adds new fuel to the long-running debate over the legitimacy of the Russia collusion narrative. While the Durham Report, released in 2023, criticized the FBI’s opening of the Trump-Russia investigation and cited serious procedural failures, it did not dispute that Russia interfered in the election — nor did it reject the possibility that Putin favored Trump.
A declassified annex of the Durham investigation affirmed that substantial intelligence supported elements of the 2017 ICA, even as it acknowledged analytical weaknesses in other areas.
Key Takeaways
- The HPSCI oversight report, finalized in 2020, alleges that the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment was politically influenced and built on flawed tradecraft
- Trump declassified the report before leaving office, but it was not released until July 2025 by DNI Tulsi Gabbard
- Nunes believes the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago may have been an effort to recover the only physical copy of the document
- A 2018 White House letter confirms Trump’s authority to declassify sensitive materials
- The Durham Report offers a partial counterweight, affirming that some ICA conclusions were based on legitimate intelligence