Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, has released a document criticising the Obama administration for allegedly politicising intelligence findings. The document claims that officials manipulated conclusions about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, which ultimately resulted in Donald Trump’s victory.
Unveiled during a press conference at the White House, the release has drawn praise from President Trump. Linked to a 2017 report by the House Intelligence Committee, these newly disclosed documents challenge the earlier assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin favoured Trump in the election.
Gabbard’s ‘irrefutable evidence’
Tulsi Gabbard, along with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, revealed new details during a White House press briefing alleging the “gross politicisation and manipulation of intelligence by the Obama administration”. The director added that there is “irrefutable evidence” about the former president’s administrative efforts to create a false intelligence community assessment.
During the meeting it was added, “They knew it would promote this contrived narrative… selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.” The documents, Gabbard confirmed, would continue to refer to the Department of Justice and the FBI. “The evidence that we have found, and that we have released, directly points to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. Multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence confirm that fact,” Gabbard said.
This comes after Trump being under sharp criticism for his alleged mention in the Epstein files and his attack on the Obama administration seems to be a “distract and deflect” effort as per an NYT report. Before the declassification, Gabbard took to X and shared, “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…”
She added that this was a conspiracy to subvert and promote the lie that undermined the “legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him.”
Obama calls document ‘nonsense’
A response from the Obama office came as a rare statement to the allegation in Gabbard’s document. “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.
It was also added that the claims made by the Trump administration were “affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.” It was reiterated that this was an effort to distract and was called baseless, bizarre and outrageous.