Ratcliffe made the comments in an interview Friday with CBS News senior correspondent Catherine Herridge. “Well, as expected, it was heavily redacted in places,” Ratcliffe said, reacting to Friday’s release of the affidavit. “You know, I think he provided a blanket recitation of the fact that the FBI and the Justice Department believed there were classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But I didn’t see anything in the affidavit that would justify what still seems like an extreme approach by the FBI and the Department of Justice to retrieve these documents if they were in fact classified.” The affidavit stated that there was “probable cause” that evidence of obstruction would be found at Mar-a-Lago and that “there is probable cause to believe that evidence, contraband, proceeds of crime, or other items are being illegally possessed in violation of 18 USC § § 793(e), 2071, or 1519 shall be found in the STATUTES.” Trump had asked for the affidavit to be made public, and multiple media organizations, including CBS News, filed a request for its release. Ratcliffe, who served as Trump’s DNI from 2021 to 2021, said nothing he saw would help ease the nation’s tension. “I mean, I think there’s nothing in there that’s really going to reduce the tensions that are so high in this country with the American people about whether or not this was justified,” Ratcliffe told Herridge. “I think one of the unfortunate things about the approach of the FBI and the DOJ here, Katherine, is if you set out to deepen the divisions between, you know, Americans and increase a level of skepticism or mistrust of the FBI and the DOJ , then managed to enter a raid on the former president based on ambiguous statutes that have been unevenly applied in the past or never before interpreted to a former president who clearly has the right to have classified information as President.” As CBS News previously reported, a former president must turn over all presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration by the end of his term under the Presidential Records Act. This includes classified documents. On August 8, FBI agents conducted a search of Mar-a-Lago, authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland. They seized 11 sets of classified documents, according to the unsealed search warrant.
In the interview, Ratcliffe also addressed the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ratcliffe said the information revealed more than he can address publicly, but that he had a “high degree of confidence” that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Well, the intelligence showed a lot more than I’m allowed to talk about publicly, because, you know, when it comes to, we’re talking about protecting sources and methods, it’s still kind of limited when it comes to our counterintelligence capabilities. the Chinese Communist Party,” Ratcliffe said. “And so I want to keep guarding it… But let me just say this. As the person who had the most access to the most intelligence, you know, in the intelligence community, we talk about degrees of confidence, low degree of confidence, medium degrees of confidence, high degrees of confidence. I had high confidence that the origin of COVID-19 was at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I was now the top intelligence official. That was my opinion.” In August 2021, the US intelligence community was unclear in its assessment of the origin of the virus, following a three-month investigation ordered by President Biden. An unclassified version of the report said the intelligence community is divided over whether the virus originated in a lab leak or was transmitted from animals to humans naturally.

Kathryn Watson

Kathryn Watson is a political reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, DC