Washington DC [US], July 23 : Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, on Wednesday released a slew of documents that she said implicate members of the Obama administration for weaponising US intelligence.
Gabbard said that Obama promoted lies that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped US President Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
In a post on X, she said, "New evidence has emerged of the most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history. Per President Donald Trump's directive, I have declassified a House Intelligence Committee oversight majority staff report that exposes how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false, promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election. In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people, working with their partners in the media to promote the lie, in order to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him."
https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1948007534960198036
Obama's office issued a rare statement in response:
"Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one," said spokesman Patrick Rodenbush. "These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio."
There's still no evidence the 2020 election was rigged. There's plenty of evidence that Trump tried to subvert the results. The inflation problem is not necessarily solved, especially if Trump's tariffs go into effect, CNN reported.
We caught Hillary Clinton. We caught Barack Hussein Obama. They're the ones -- and then you have many, many people under them. (Former national security adviser) Susan Rice. They're all there. The names are all there. And I guess they figured they're going to put this in classified information and nobody will ever see it again, but it doesn't work that way.
However, there's no evidence for this type of conspiracy, as per CNN.
According to the New York Times, the document was a report that the House Intelligence Committee originally drafted in 2017, when Republicans led the panel. The report took issue with the conclusion reached in December 2016 that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had favoured Trump.
Kash Patel, now Mr. Trump's F.B.I. director, was a key author of the report released on Wednesday, according to officials. Only Republicans on the committee participated in the drafting of the 2017 report and revisions in 2020, as reported by The New York Times.
The House report found that most of the judgments made by the intelligence community in 2016 were sound. But it argued that the work was rushed, as a recent tradecraft analysis by the C.I.A. also found. The assessment that Mr. Putin had favoured Trump did not follow the "professional criteria" of the other findings, the House report said, as per the New York Times.