❓WHAT HAPPENED: Top Trump officials have denied a CNN report claiming U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites failed to destroy core components. Notably, the report was penned by Natasha Bertrand, who was also a key figure in the promotion of the bogus Steele Dossier and the infamous letter from 51 intelligence officials alleging the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Natasha Bertrand, and unnamed CNN sources.
📍WHEN & WHERE: U.S. military strikes occurred last weekend on three Iranian nuclear facilities; CNN report published June 24, 2025.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program.” – Karoline Leavitt
🎯IMPACT: The conflicting reports on the strikes raise questions about the motivations behind leaked assessments, possibly by deep state factions in favor of more extensive U.S. involvement in a war with Iran.
Top Trump administration officials have denied a CNN report alleging that U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites failed to destroy core components of the country’s nuclear program. The CNN report is supposedly based on an early U.S. intelligence assessment. Notably, its lead author is Natasha Bertrand—a journalist notorious for laundering information for partisan actors within the intelligence and security community, such as an infamous, discredited letter from 51 intelligence officials wrongly suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 election.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the CNN report, calling it “flat-out wrong” and attributing the leak to a “low-level loser” in the intelligence community. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” Leavitt said.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also refuted the claims, stating, “Based on everything we have seen, and I’ve seen it all, our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly.” He added that the impact of the strikes is “buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran.”
CNN’s report claimed the strikes “did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program” and suggested they may have only set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by months. The report cited a supposed early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which is still ongoing and subject to change as more intelligence becomes available.
In addition to the aforementioned intelligence community efforts to undermine the Hunter Biden laptop story, Bertrand has also pushed the bogus Steele Dossier that spurred the Russiagate investigation into Trump.
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