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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims to have uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” But the foundation for her case is misleading.
Gabbard’s claim relies heavily on an alleged contradiction between a Jan. 6, 2017, intelligence assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an “influence campaign” in an attempt to help elect Donald Trump and earlier intelligence assessments that concluded Russia did not successfully use cyberattacks on election infrastructure in the 2016 election. But those two assessments are not in contradiction.
“No one ever claimed Russia altered votes, but everyone claims that Russia tried to interfere on Trump’s behalf,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a video message posted on X on July 21. That interference was “well documented” and “well vetted” not only by the Intelligence Community but also by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee and as part of then special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s report, he said.
Nonetheless, on Fox News on July 20, Gabbard said she was “referring all of the documents that we have uncovered to the Department of Justice and the FBI for a criminal referral,” adding, “In my view, we have the evidence to be able to move forward and bring about justice, yes, to prosecute and indict those responsible.”
Trump has picked up on Gabbard’s statements, posting to Truth Social a fake video showing Obama being handcuffed by FBI agents as well as a message that said there is now “Irrefutable EVIDENCE” that Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden perpetrated “THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!”
In a press conference on July 22, Trump claimed Gabbard had “caught President Obama absolutely cold. … And there should be very severe consequences for that.”
“After what they did to me and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people,” Trump said. “Obama’s been caught directly. … Look, he’s guilty. … This was treason, this was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”
Obama’s office responded on July 22 with a statement on Gabbard’s memo and release of unsealed documents, saying, “Nothing in the document issued undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.”
“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Obama’s office said.
Gabbard’s Case
Gabbard, who was a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who ran for the party’s nomination in 2020 and left the party in 2022, announced on July 18 what she said was “new evidence” of an Obama administration “conspiracy to subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.”
In her press release, Gabbard wrote, “In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) consistently assessed that Russia is ‘probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.’” As her unsealed documents show, Gabbard was citing a Sept. 9, 2016, email from an intelligence official who wrote, “Russia probably is not … trying to influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure.” (Emphasis is ours.)
Gabbard misleadingly claimed the assessments changed after a White House meeting of Obama’s top National Security Council principals on Dec. 9, 2016.
She said the IC was tasked with creating a new assessment at Obama’s request that led to the Jan. 6, 2017, release of a declassified Intelligence Community report that concluded “President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.” In addition to a sophisticated social media campaign in support of Trump’s candidacy, the report said Russian intelligence services gained access to the Democratic National Committee computer network and released hacked material to WikiLeaks and other outlets “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”
Gabbard claimed that assessment “directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months.” Gabbard created a timeline that purports to detail how the Intelligence Community’s assessment changed over time, and she linked to 114 pages of newly unsealed intelligence documents and communications to lay out her case.
But Gabbard conflated assessments that Russia was not successful in hacking voting infrastructure to alter the election results with intelligence documenting Russia’s efforts to influence the election by swaying the American electorate’s opinions.
For example, Gabbard cited:
- An Aug. 31, 2016, email from a Department of Homeland Security official to then DNI James Clapper about an analysis of local voting infrastructure that found “there is no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means.”
- A Sept. 9, 2016, memo from an official in Clapper’s office arguing that a presidential briefing should note that Russia “probably is not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means” to “manipulate … election infrastructure.”
- A Sept. 12, 2016, Intelligence Community assessment on cyberthreats to the election that concluded, “We judge that foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks on the diverse set of information technologies and infrastructures used to support the November 2016 US presidential election.”
- A post-election series of talking points prepared for Clapper to deliver in a Dec. 7 presidential briefing report, including that “[f]oreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and that “[w]e have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”
Gabbard claimed the assessment changed after a Dec. 9, 2016, meeting of National Security Council principals, including Clapper, John Brennan, and Susan Rice, the then CIA director, and national security adviser, respectively.
The Gabbard memo accompanying her press release cited a subsequent email from Clapper’s assistant to his top aides directing them to “produce an assessment per the President’s request, that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities.” (The unclassified version is what was released on Jan. 6, 2017.) That Obama had ordered an investigation and assessment into a wider scope of malicious cyberactivity was widely reported in the press at the time.
The evening of that NSC meeting, the Gabbard memo alleged, someone leaked the following story to the Washington Post, which Gabbard deems false.
Washington Post, Dec. 9, 2016: The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
The article made no mention of attempts to interfere with voting equipment. Rather, it cited the hacking and release of the DNC emails, which was described as “part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.”
In an interview on Fox News on July 20, Gabbard called for prosecution of Obama administration officials responsible for “treasonous conspiracy” and a “yearslong coup” against Trump. She said they did so by “creating this piece of manufactured intelligence that claims that Russia had helped Donald Trump get elected” and relying on an intelligence assessment that “contradicted every other assessment that had been made previously in the months leading up to the election that said exactly the opposite, that Russia neither had neither the intent nor the capability to try to — quote unquote — ‘hack’ the United States’ election for the presidency of the United States.”
“There was a shift, 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,” Gabbard said in an interview on Fox News on July 22.
But again, Gabbard is conflating statements about Russian attempts or success in altering voting infrastructure with assessments about Russian attempts to influence the election outcome via a sophisticated social media campaign and by releasing hacked DNC emails. Several subsequent and exhaustive reports supported the findings about a Russian influence campaign contained in the IC’s Jan. 6, 2017, assessment.
Reports Support IC Assessment
According to the 2019 report released by special counsel Mueller, “[T]he Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents.”
Regarding Mueller’s inquiry into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russians, the report said that “the investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away.”
It continued: “Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”
But that does not mean that the Russians did not attempt to influence the election — they did, the Mueller investigation concluded.
The special counsel’s office in February 2018 secured an indictment against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for their role in that interference. In July of that year, 12 Russian military officers were also indicted.
Similarly, in April 2020, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee released its report examining the Intelligence Community’s assessment of Russian election interference, concluding “the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
The Intelligence Community Assessment “reflects strong tradecraft” and “sound analytical reasoning,” then Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, said at the time. “The Committee found no reason to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions.”
One of the members of the committee was then Sen. Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state.
“Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy,” Rubio stated on Aug. 18, 2020, when the report was released publicly. “We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over one million pages of documents. No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive. We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.”
Rubio also added, “What the Committee did find however is very troubling. We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”
“Let there be no doubt, the Russians did meddle, and they continue to meddle, along with Iran and China,” Rubio said in a Fox Business News interview on Aug. 20, 2020.
Rubio also criticized the FBI for “their acceptance and willingness to rely on the ‘Steele Dossier’ without verifying its methodology or sourcing.”
The “dossier” is a series of memos compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele on supposed contacts between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign. It alleged the Russian government had compromising information on Trump. Steele was hired by the research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by a law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC.
A 2019 Justice Department inspector general report criticized the use of the Steele dossier in an application from the DOJ and FBI under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct electronic surveillance on a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.
A special counsel, John Durham, appointed in Trump’s first term to “investigate the investigators,” released a report in May 2023 that was highly critical of the FBI’s decision to launch a full investigation into potential links between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — and for using the Steele dossier.
Durham’s investigation, however, led to criminal charges against just three people. And only one, an FBI lawyer, was convicted (though sentenced to no jail time) for making a false statement that was used to extend the court-approved surveillance of a former Trump campaign official. Although the Durham report did not delve deeply into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential campaign, Durham did credit the Mueller and Senate Intelligence Committee reports for “the amount of important information gathered, and the contributions they have made to our understanding of Russian election interference efforts,” citing them as “a tribute to the diligent work and dedication of those charged with the responsibility of conducting them.”
Asked on Fox News on July 20 why none of those previous investigations concluded — as Gabbard has — that multiple members of the Obama administration had participated in a “treasonous conspiracy,” Gabbard said: “There is no rational or logical explanation for why they failed.”
“The only logical conclusion that I can draw in this … is that there was direct intent to cover up the truth about what occurred and who was responsible and the broad network of how this seditious conspiracy was concocted and who exactly was responsible for carrying it out,” Gabbard said.
But Gabbard’s claim of a “treasonous conspiracy” distorts the facts and relies on a nonexistent contradiction in the 2017 intelligence assessment. The January 2017 IC report, in addition to outlining an “influence campaign” in support of Trump, also concluded that while “Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards,” the Department of Homeland Security “assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”
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