General Discussion

The problem likely isn't what they don't know. It's what to do with what they DO know. That might have been the case during the last 2 Dem administrations.

Now before I get castigated, this is simply a thought experiment based on the fact that US intel is extraordinarily good at what they do, and know a whole hell of a lot about a whole bunch of things. Before the Ukraine invasion, it seemed US intel was reading Putin's emails before he did.

The thinking might have been we're on a political knife edge between a national security threat and seeming to weaponize the intel community for political gain. I get your likely response, but unlike evidence from a criminal investigation, many of the details around national intelligence info can't be made public without threatening sources and methods. People's lives in some cases. See the Wikileaks disaster. So proving something like a compromised candidate and / or president in the public sphere, particularly in the age of social media, may be close to impossible. And the resulting shit storm from Republicans and big chunk of the electorate over "I can't tell you all the details, you've just got to trust us" would be ginormous. You can imagine the accusations against a sitting Dem admin. and where all that might go.

If all this was the case, this may have been a situation of two "less than optimal" choices for at least one, maybe two Dem administrations. And it was debatable at the time which one was worse. Maybe the worst choice was made. Certainly feels that way, but that's easy to say in hindsight.