With the liberal broadcast networks having ignored until Monday night the bombshell report from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and House Intelligence Committee about the Obama regime’s role in concocting the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, Gabbard made sure the liberal White House press corps heard the findings that then-President Obama and his intelligence chiefs created, contorted, and forwarded false claims about then-President-elect Trump.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt buried them before Gabbard even took to the podium:
Before diving into extensive detail of the findings about what took place in late 2016 and early 2017, Gabbard asserted this Obama-led conspiracy theory about Russia working to steal the election was done “with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump and launching what would be a years-long coup against him and his administration.”
Gabbard began with the fact that Russia’s goals in 2016 were to destablize the U.S. electoral process writ large, not do so to throw it to Trump. Nonetheless, she said President Obama and then-CIA Director John Brennan forged ahead anyway, ignoring the intelligence community believed Russia was preparing dirt on Hillary Clinton:
Next, she moved to more specifics, including removing reference from the Presidential Daily Brief drafted on December 8, 2016 about Russia having had no affect on the election outcome as it would have been seen by Trump (click “expand”):
The intelligence community assessment omitted reliably sourced information, such as how some Russian intelligence officials were “planning for candidate Hillary Clinton’s victory,” while others assessed neither Trump nor Clinton would respect Russia’s interests . As was reflected in the ODNI documents that we released on Friday, multiple intelligence community assessments released in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, concluded that Russia had neither the intent nor capability to impact the outcome of the U.S. election. On December 5 of 2016, the FBI and ODNI gave the House Intelligence Committee its first post-election classified briefing in which there was no mention of Putin aspiring to elect Trump by either agency. The Presidential Daily Brief drafted on December 8 of 2016, stated that no Russian or criminal actors impacted vote counts. This document was pulled just hours before it was to be published due to “new guidance.” If it had been published, it would have been briefed to both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump. On December 9, 2016, a National Security Council meeting was called to gather President Obama’s senior national security officials, which included CIA Director Brennan. Then Obama DNI James Clapper, Susan Rice, and others. Following that secret meeting, DNI Clapper’s assistant sent an email to the intelligence community with the subject line “POTUS tasking on Russia election meddling,” tasking ODNI leaders to create a new assessment per the President’s request. The House Intelligence Committee oversight report that we released today reveals that “unlike routine intelligence community analysis, the intelligence community assessment was a high profile product ordered by the President” — President Obama. It directed senior intelligence community agency heads and created an intelligence community assessment limited to just five analysts using one principal drafter. This is not something that occurs in the normal path of producing an intelligence community assessment that reflects the views across the intelligence community . The production of this intelligence community assessment was subject to unusual directives directly from the President and senior political appointees, especially the former director of the CIA, John Brennan. The House Intelligence Committee oversight report also shows how, later that same day on December 9, Brennan ordered the publication of ‘substandard reporting’ on Russian activities which had previously been withheld from publication of prior assessments because the information was judged to have not met long standing publication standards. Some of the information later used in the Obama ordered assessment over the objections of veteran CIA officers was “unclear or from unknown sources.” The Intelligence Committee’s oversight report reveals that CIA Director Brennan overruled senior CIA officers who challenged the Obama ordered intelligence assessment stating, ‘we don’t have direct information that Putin wanted to get Trump elected.” Yet the Obama directed assessment was published on January 6, 2017, which explicitly stated, “we assess Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.” The CIA and FBI then led by John Brennan and James Comey expressed high confidence in this judgment while the NSA expressed moderate confidence. Yet, as the report we released today shows, the ICA, the Intelligence community assessment did not cite any report where Putin indicated helping Trump win was an objective. The opposite is true.
Gabbard’s third and final section touched on the Steele Dossier, saying Brennan knew it was false, but still had Obama, the CIA, and co. forge ahead as “a politically motivated, manufactured document” and funnel it to the press.
“The implications of this are far reaching and have to do with the integrity of our democratic republic. It has to do with an outgoing President taking action to manufacture intelligence to undermine and usurp the will of the American people in that election and launch what would be a years-long coup against the incoming President of the United States, Donald Trump,” she concluded.
They opened up to questions, first to “new media seat” recipient Emily Jashinsky of the UnHerd and MK Media:
CBS’s Ed O’Keefe challenged Gabbard to explain why the findings of this report are coming to light when there have been other reports about Russia and 2016, including one from 2020 by the Senate Intelligence Committee:
Our friend Reagan Reese of the Daily Caller came next, focusing on the erasure of Russian meddling (or lack thereof) from the fateful 2016 daily brief:
Reese also respectfully challenged the argument Obama could face prosecution, acknowledging the 2024 Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity (click “expand”):
REESE: One more. Maybe for your or Karoline: The President said yesterday that Obama committed treason. Do you or the White House believe that the Supreme Court’s immunity decision protects Obama from prosecution?
LEAVITT: I can speak to the President’s feelings on this matter. He spoke to you yesterday in the Oval office, but I also spoke to him about this morning. And he wants to see all of those who perpetuated this fraud against our country, who betrayed our country, and the Constitution, to be thoroughly investigated and held accountable. And it’s been, you know, ten years of this. I would just add, based on everything the director has said and declassified, all of you in this room should go through and look at this report and review the intelligence. Because, unfortunately, that has not happens. Many of the people who perpetuated this hoax — Clapper, by Andy McCabe, James Comey and others — have been hired by major networks in this room to go on television and continue to spew these lies, knowing that they are lies. And, if you all recall, just flash back to 2016 and the years after, the entire Trump one presidency was embroiled in this scandal that was perpetuated by the Democratic Party. And you had major Democratic Party officials in this city — mainly Adam Schiff, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren — who went on television and told the American people Donald Trump is an asset of Russia. It was a lie. They always knew. Hillary Clinton herself said that President Trump would be a puppet for pollutant. Senator Tim Kaine at the time called President Trump Vladimir Putin’s defense lawyers. Adam Schiff stated in one of the worst things that a lawmaker can do is tell the American people I know something you don’t know, it’s classified and I can’t tell you. And that’s what he said. I can tell you the case is more than that. I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now. Not enough people in this room, enough journalists in this country pushed Adam Schiff to say what are you talking about and what evidence do you have. Everybody just ran with the lies. It led to impeachments. It led to the division of our country. So many Americans, from listening to outlets in this room, believed in these lies and it’s a complete scam and it’s a scandal and the President wants to see accountability for that.
Real Clear Politics’s Philip Wegmann followed up by inviting Gabbard to respond to the statement from an Obama spokesman declaring her agency’s findings a nothingburger:
Like Reese, Wegmann’s second question was more probing: “You’ve long been an opponent of weaponization in government. How do you respond to criticism that referring Obama administration officials, and even potentially the former President, is just more weaponization, and this is a potential race to the bottom?”
Gabbard replied it’s “a very disrespectful attack on the American people who...deserve to have faith and trust in the integrity of our democratic republic, which is under bent — which has been undermined by President Obama through his direction of this manufactured, fake intelligence document, knowing that it was filled with lies and knowing that it would and could then be used for all of the actions that came after.”
With time winding down in her availability, one of the last reporters called on was CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who wondered if her team’s findings undermine now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s role in the 2020 Senate report and if all this was being done “to improve your standing with the President”:
Gabbard and Leavitt weren’t having any of this from the former conservative reporter (click “expand”):
GABBARD: Well, first, I want to correct something that you stated, which was citing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report as being one and the same. I think you said the intelligence community. The Senate Intelligence Committee has a very different function than the office of the Director of National Intelligence. The evidence and the intelligence that has been declassified and released is irrefutable. I’m going to let Karoline speak to Secretary Rubio.
LEAVITT: I’ll speak to both questions. First, on Secretary Rubio, he put out a statement in 2020 following that Senate Intelligence Committee report, and he said what they found is troubling. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling,” which the director of National Intelligence just confirmed for all of you that Russia was trying to sow distrust and chaos. But what’s the outrage in this that Secretary Rubio did not say at the time — the Democrats were saying at the time, is the fact that the intelligence community was concocting this narrative that the President colluded with the Russians, that the President’s son was holding secret meetings with the Russians, all of these lies that were never true and he also said at that time “we discovered deeply troubling actions taken by the FBI” under Comey, “particularly their acceptance and willingness to rely on the Steele Dossier without verifying its methodology or sourcing.” The Steele dossier, that many outlets in this room ran as the gospel truth, and it was cooked up and paid for by the Clinton campaign. As for your second question, Kaitlin, I think who is saying that that that she would release this to try to boost her standing with the President? Who has said that?
COLLINS: Well, the President has publicly undermined her when it came to Iran. He said she was wrong. He told me that she didn’t know what she was talking about. That was on Air Force One, on camera.
LEAVITT: No, the only people who are suggesting that the director of national intelligence would release evidence to try to boost her standing with the President are the people in this room who constantly try to sow distrust and chaos amongst the President’s cabinet —
COLLINS: [Inaudible] by the Attorney General Bill Barr at the time.
LEAVITT: — and it is not working. I — I am -- I will — I will just answer your question directly. I am with the president of the United States every day. He has the utmost confidence in Director Gabbard. He always has. He continues to. And that is true of his entire cabinet, who is all working as one team to deliver on the promises this President made.
With all of this hubbub, the flagship network morning and evening newscasts can no longer truly ignore this.
To see the relevant transcript from the July 23 briefing, click here.
