More than half a dozen former aides to President Barack Obama told NBC News they have devised a strategy to counter the explosive allegations of treason targeting him and senior members of his administration.
The aides, who all “dismiss” the accusations as “asinine,” emphasized the need to “balance unnecessarily giving oxygen to unfounded Trump administration claims and allowing them to balloon unchecked.”
Someone really needs to tell them it’s too late for that. The story has circulated for years; the documents released by DNI Tulsi Gabbard simply provided new evidence.
According to NBC, the former aides, most of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity, say the allegations “carr[y] the stench of desperation from a president straining to shift the focus from a burgeoning scandal around Jeffrey Epstein.”
Just like their brutal defeat in November, Democrats see this as a messaging problem. One former aide said, “The battle now is to play this even to make sure that thoughts don’t start to creep into more mainstream” audiences. This individual told NBC, “it was important to reach ‘mainstream Republicans,’ who would listen to editorial boards and those in Congress who deemed the allegations against Obama as ‘beyond the pale.'”
Do they really think mainstream Republicans will be influenced by editorials in The New York Times or The Washington Post? Or by a speech from Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, or Mitch McConnell? Please.
The effort began last week with a Fox News op-ed penned by the highly partisan Ned Price, a former State Department spokesman under President Joe Biden and later the deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. His piece, titled Americans should beware of Gabbard’s ‘dangerous distraction’ with revisionist history of 2016 election, likely did little to sway hearts and minds.
Price believes it’s “imperative to reach conservative audiences with a response,” according to the report. He noted:
This wasn’t a piece I would have written for any mainstream or left-of-center outlet. This was designed solely and exclusively for Fox News, because that’s where this fire of disinformation is raging. I thought it was important … to inject facts into that very venue in the hope that at least a few people would read it and be exposed to what actually transpired in 2016.
Government reports are now a “fire of disinformation?” Kind of like how the Hunter Biden laptop story had all the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation?”
The report said the former aides were concerned about what could come next from the Trump administration. They worry that they “could grow more bullish to draw attention away from a string of explosive Epstein stories that Trump is struggling to tamp down.”
The Democrats are going to have to come up with something a whole lot better than that to counter these charges.
Former CIA Director John Brennan told NBC, “I don’t know what is ahead, and I don’t know what their plans and intentions are. I just find all of this very troubling when it is being done by individuals who serve in such important positions and know what they are doing is wrong.”
Does Brennan even hear himself? Republicans and many independents found it troubling that individuals serving in such senior positions of the Obama administration — including the president himself — were doing what they knew was wrong.
“There is no factual basis for the allegations that Tulsi Gabbard is making. She’s cherry-picking things from various documents that are out of context and mischaracterized,” Brennan said.
He added, “To me, it’s clear either she has not read the intelligence community assessment or she is purposely, willfully lying about the contents.”
But the documents say what they say. And I think Brennan knows that.
At any rate, NBC reports:
Broadly, the former Obama aides unequivocally say that there is zero merit to the allegations and that they do not believe they will lead anywhere. They point to a 2020 Senate investigation, which endorsed intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia had spread disinformation online and leaked stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy and help Trump. Trump-appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, which endorsed the findings.
That’s all well and good, but the committee based its conclusions on the information available at the time. The newly released documents, however, significantly alter the narrative.
After repeating the Epstein-related distraction theory two more times — bringing the total to four mentions — the report, mercifully, ends.
It is just as much in NBC’s interest — and that of the broader legacy media — to bury this story as it is for the former Obama administration officials at its center. After all, these outlets played a pivotal role in advancing the Russian collusion narrative. Their complicity has come at a steep cost: a profound erosion of public trust that began in the early days of that hoax and continues to this day. Yet instead of reckoning with their failures and returning to rigorous, unbiased journalism, they appear determined to double down on the very practices that led to their credibility crisis in the first place.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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