As we all know, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified and released more than 100 documents related to the real collusion of 2016 — between President Barack Obama and his top lieutenants in the months before and after the presidential election.
Although it had long been believed that Obama was aware of and involved in the politicization of intelligence designed to ensnare his successor’s administration in a web of legal and political entanglements, the newly released documents provide the clearest insight yet into his role in the scandal.
But Gabbard didn’t stop there. She became the first Trump administration official to publicly use the words “Obama” and “treason” in the same sentence. For many of us, it was a moment of relief—a green light to finally say out loud what we’ve discussed in private for years.
Unsurprisingly, legacy media outlets have remained largely silent about the document release. This is in keeping with their pattern of avoiding coverage that could be politically damaging to the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Republicans have welcomed the move, claiming the new documents confirm the long-suspected corruption of the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election (ICA) and its use as a political weapon to delegitimize the incoming Trump administration.
Gabbard shared some very good news on Sunday during an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. First, she announced that additional documents would be released in the coming week.
Better still, Gabbard revealed that whistleblowers from within the intelligence community have come forward since Friday. Among them are individuals who worked on the original Intelligence Community Assessment—the one that concluded Russia had attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, but those efforts had no impact on the final outcome.
In the exchange below, Bartiromo asks Gabbard, “Will we ever see anyone held accountable for this incredible lie on the American people?”
Gabbard replied:
I will do all that I can, and we have whistleblowers, actually, Maria, coming forward now, after we released these documents, because there are people who were around, who were working within the Intelligence Community at this time, who were so disgusted by what happened. We are starting to see some of them coming out of the woodwork here, because they, too, like you and I and the American people, want to see justice delivered.So we’re going to provide everything that we have, everything that we will continue to gather, to the Department of Justice for that direct intent and that direct purpose. There must be indictments. Those responsible, no matter how powerful they are and were at that time, no matter who was involved in creating this treasonous conspiracy against the American people, they all must be held accountable.
In May, CIA Director John Ratcliffe commissioned members of the agency’s Directorate of Analysis to conduct a “lessons-learned” review of the ICA. Ratcliffe released the results of that review earlier this month.
The New York Post’s Miranda Devine summed up its findings:
The review found that the ICA was deliberately corrupted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who were “excessively involved” in its drafting, and rushed its completion in a “chaotic,” “atypical” and “markedly unconventional” process that raised questions of a “potential political motive.”…Brennan’s decision to include the discredited Steele dossier, over the objections of the CIA’s most senior Russia experts, “undermined the credibility” of the assessment.
According to the review, “the ICA authors and multiple senior CIA managers — including the two senior leaders of the CIA mission center responsible for Russia — strongly opposed including the Dossier, asserting that it did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards. … CIA’s Deputy Director for Analysis (DDA) warned in an email to Brennan on December 29 that including it in any form risked ‘the credibility of the entire paper.’”
If some of these individuals are coming forward now, their testimony could help the Department of Justice build a stronger case against those responsible for what increasingly looks a lot like treason.
In an interview with Devine, Ratcliffe said, “This was Obama, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan deciding ‘We’re going to screw Trump.’”
He continued:
It was, ‘We’re going to create this and put the imprimatur of an IC assessment in a way that nobody can question it.’ They stamped it as Russian collusion and then classified it so nobody could see it.This led to Mueller [special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry, which concluded after two years that there was no Trump-Russia collusion]. It put the seal of approval of the intelligence community that Russia was helping Trump and that the Steele dossier was the scandal of our lifetime. It ate up the first two years of his [Trump’s first] presidency.You see how Brennan and Clapper and Comey manipulated [and] silenced all the career professionals and railroaded the process.
I’ll leave you with this:
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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