Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Fox News Tuesday to call out former President Barack Obama and the media for distracting the public from a crucial detail regarding the Russia collusion narrative.
Obama’s spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush, dismissed President Donald Trump’s allegations of treason, calling them “outrageous” during a press conference on Tuesday. During an appearance on “The Will Cain Show,” Gabbard said that neither Obama’s office nor Democratic lawmakers are addressing a key shift in how the intelligence community assessed Russian interference.
“This is the thing that I think people should pay attention to is neither the message from President Obama’s office, neither the statements coming from Democrats in Congress today and their friends in the propaganda media, none of them are addressing this fact that there was a shift,” Gabbard said. “A 180-degree shift from the intelligence community’s assessment leading up to the election to the one that President Obama directed be produced after Donald Trump won the election that completely contradicted those assessments that had come previously.”
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Gabbard also criticized Democratic lawmakers, including Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and Democratic Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, for deflecting attention from the issue rather than addressing the contradictions.
“It’s the art of deflection coming from former President Obama, as well as his friends who are still in Congress today, Senator Warner and Congressman Jim Himes. Really all basically saying that exact same statement, which doesn’t actually address the issue that was revealed in great detail in the over 100 documents that we released last week, in the documents that we will be releasing later this week,” Gabbard said when asked about Obama’s statement. “The undeniable fact that you laid out in your introduction to this segment, is that the intelligence community had one assessment, that Russia did not have the intent or capability to try to impact the outcome of the U.S. election leading up to Election Day.”
Gabbard pointed out that the intelligence community initially concluded there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election, even Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
“The same assessment was made after Donald Trump was elected by the American people as president in 2016, defeating Hillary Clinton. And it wasn’t until after that polled president’s daily brief document that you referenced that the Principals Committee was called in the National Security Council, and President Obama then directed his DNI James Clapper to lead the effort to create this new intelligence community assessment that detailed not if — but how — Moscow attempted to influence the outcome of the U.S. election,” Gabbard said.
Gabbard condemned the intelligence community’s subsequent Jan. 2017 assessment, which she said was drafted under Obama’s direction. She said that the new document, which claimed high confidence in Russia’s election interference, was based on already discredited sources, such as the Steele dossier.
“John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey stated with high confidence this January intelligence community assessment that they drafted at the direction of President Obama. The fact is that they used already discredited information like the Steele dossier. They knew it was discredited at that time, yet they used it as a source for this document that they claim to have high confidence in,” Gabbard said. “They used intelligence that some of these intelligence community professionals rejected previously because of the lack of credibility and the lack of the ability to vet with any kind of content.”
Gabbard released a declassified file on Friday, which she said contains “overwhelming evidence” that Obama and his national security team “manufactured and politicized intelligence” following Trump’s 2016 win. The file reveals that there was no evidence linking Trump to Russian activities or suggesting Russia planned to manipulate the election via cyber means or directly alter the vote count.
The accompanying memo says that Clapper and the Department of Homeland Security withheld key context in their press release, failing to mention that the FBI and NSA had “low confidence” in blaming Russia for the Sept. 2016 data leaks. Despite this, the memo discusses”supporting evidence” indicating Russian involvement in hacking the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
