Tag: russiagate

The Intelligence Community Needs To Be Dismantled

At the direction of President Barack Obama in late 2016, our intelligence agencies pulled off what can only be described as a coup and a treasonous conspiracy against President-elect Donald Trump — a conspiracy that continued throughout his entire first term in office, hobbling his presidency and thwarting the will of the American electorate.

That’s what the bombshell documents released this week by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reveal: a criminal scheme, at the highest levels of the federal government, to deprive Trump the fruits of his electoral victory and, by extension, the American people of meaningful self-government.

At the center of this scheme was President Obama and his intelligence chiefs, who in December 2016 launched a conspiracy to prevent Trump from taking office or, failing that, to hamstring his presidency. “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact,” Gabbard said Wednesday, adding that her office has forwarded all documents to the Justice Department and FBI “to investigate the criminal implications of this.”

It’s possible that those responsible for this long-running coup will face some kind of criminal prosecution and possibly conviction, but it’s highly unlikely. No one should hold their breath waiting for an Obama mugshot, as well-deserved as that might be given what he and his top officials did.

However, that doesn’t mean that nothing at all can be done. The conspiracy that these documents reveal should lead to a thorough reform of our intelligence agencies — not for the sake of political retribution, but for the survival of our republic. Simply put, our intelligence agencies as currently constituted are incompatible with republican self-government and the rule of law. They now function here in America much as they have functioned abroad for decades: as coup machines, undermining national sovereignty and imposing their will over and against the will of the electorate.

If nothing else comes of this scandal, it should be this: the complete dismantling of the intelligence community and its total reconstitution into agencies that can be held accountable to democratically-elected leaders. Right now, it’s accountable to no one, as the recent revelations demonstrate.

What makes such reform difficult isn’t just the power and insularity of these agencies, but that in this particular case they were weaponized by an outgoing president, Obama, who gave his intel chiefs a directive to push out a narrative, backed by official intelligence assessments, that Moscow stole the election for Trump. If a corrupt president is able to use the intel agencies like this, then reform of the agencies is necessary to prevent it from ever happening again.

The ins and outs of how all this happened, and what exactly Obama and his intelligence chiefs did in November and December of 2016, is admittedly a bit confusing, especially for those who never followed or perhaps have forgotten what happened back then and why we should care now, more than eight years later.

My colleagues here at The Federalist have in recent days done the heavy lifting of laying it all out in clear and unmistakable terms: Mollie Hemingway explained how top intelligence officials were overruled by Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, who insisted on the “key judgment” in a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that Russia had interfered in the election because Moscow “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” The intelligence officials knew there was no evidence to substantiate that claim, which became a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative that Trump conspired with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election.

Shawn Fleetwood wrote about newly declassified records showing that “the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.” That report, the above-mentioned ICA, relied on the infamous Steele dossier as evidence that Trump colluded with Moscow. Why? Because that was the only evidence they had to substantiate the explosive claim. The Steele dossier was of course an outlandish piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, and everything in it was fabricated.

Keep in mind the key part of all this is that after Trump won the 2016 election, but before he took office, Obama, Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey, along with other top intel officials, deliberately manipulated the ICA so they could claim that Moscow had helped Trump steal the election. Russia has for a long time meddled in our elections, seeking to sow chaos and undermine the democratic process. But in 2016, Obama and his intel chiefs decided to manufacture a narrative that this time Russia didn’t just want to sow chaos, it wanted to help Trump win and then intervened to make that happen. That’s the central claim of the Russia collusion hoax, and what we learned this week is that it was all based on totally bogus evidence — evidence that was cobbled together at the behest of Obama himself.

But the Obama team didn’t stop there. As my colleague Sean Davis has explained, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body. The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA.”

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New Docs Contradict Top Obama Officials’ Claims Steele Dossier Wasn’t Included In Critical Russiagate Report

Newly declassified records show the phony dossier intel agencies used to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was included in a critical Obama-era report on Russia’s activities in the 2016 election — despite claims from top Obama officials that it wasn’t.

The information was disclosed Wednesday in a declassified 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Approved for release by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the unsealed records paint a damning picture of how high-ranking Obama administration officials included unsubstantiated dirt about Trump in its 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Moscow’s shenanigans in the 2016 contest.

That ICA, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted, included a “‘key judgment’ … that Russia had interfered in the election specifically because Putin and the Russian government ‘aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.’”

The declassified report released Wednesday not only significantly undermines the ICA’s “key judgement,” but it also contradicts claims made by top Obama officials that salacious information from the infamous Steele dossier were not incorporated into the main body of the 2017 ICA.

As a quick refresher, the allegations that ultimately became the dossier were compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn had been hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign’s law firm (Perkins Coie) to dig up dirt on Trump ahead of the 2016 election. The dossier was ultimately shopped by Steele to the FBI in early July 2016 and later used by the agency to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page.

The report unsealed by Gabbard reveals that the dossier’s “most significant claims — that Russia launched cyber activities to leak political emails — were little more than a regurgitation of stories previously published by multiple media outlets prior to the creation of the dossier.” It further disclosed that dossier reports containing salacious allegations about Trump’s character and alleged collusion with Moscow “were either proven false or unsubstantiated.”

Equally significant, however, are the report’s following paragraphs, which detail how the dossier was “referenced in the ICA main body text and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex” — “[c]ontradicting public claims by [then-CIA Director John Brennan] that the dossier ‘was not in any way‘ incorporated into the ICA.”

“By devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports,” the 2020 HPSCI analysis reads. “The ICA referred to the dossier as ‘Russian plans and intentions,’ falsely implying to high-level US policymakers that the dossier had intelligence value for understanding Moscow’s influence operations.”

As summarized by Federalist CEO Sean Davis, “Obama intel officials then prepared separate versions of the ICA — one for Congress, which did not include references to Steele dossier in the main body, a declassified version for public release which also excluded the dossier even though it was unclassified, and one for Obama and other executive branch officials, which included the Steele dossier references in the main body.”

“The newly declassified review of the ICA concluded that this sleight of hand was done to allow top intel officials to avoid any public scrutiny or accountability for their inclusion of false, Clinton-funded opposition research in an ICA,” Davis added.

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Tulsi Gabbard Suggests Obama May be Guilty of Treason – “The Expressed Intent and What Followed Afterward Can Only be Described as a Years-Long Coup and Treasonous Conspiracy”

Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday told reporters at the White House that she believes Obama and members of his administration are guilty of a “treasonous conspiracy” to overthrow then-President-elect Donald Trump in 2016.

Gabbard made a surprise appearance during yesterday’s White House press briefing after releasing the second batch of previously undisclosed documents that include more proof that Barack Obama directly gave the order to push the falsified Russia Collusion hoax.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Gabbard told reporters that the DOJ is investigating all of the documents, including criminal acts by Barack Obama.

“I’m leaving the criminal charges to the Department of Justice,” Gabbard said when asked if Obama was guilty of treason.

“I am not an attorney, but as I’ve said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake, manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assesments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our Republic, in an attempt to undermine President Trump’s administration.”

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Russiagate Explained: The Sins Of The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment

A key part of the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) review is about then-CIA director John Brennan’s reliance on an obscure fragment to determine in the 2017 ICA that Putin “aspired to help Trump’s chances of victory when possible.”

The fragment, which is in bold below, comes from a raw human source intelligence report, or HUMINT in intelligence-speak.

“Putin had made this decision [to leak DNC emails) after he had come to believe t h a t the Democratic nominee had better odds of winning the U.S. presidential election, and that [candidate Trump], whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.”

You might think that means Putin wanted Trump to win. That’s one interpretation.

But there were five different interpretations among the five people who wrote the ICA.

A senior CIA operations officers remarked: “We don’t know what was meant by that,” and “five people read it five ways,” the HPSCI reports says.

Usually that’s no problem, because as the Intelligence Community Directive standards (ICD 203) make clear, alternative interpretations should be included. Incredibly, the ICA failed to do that even though there was great disagreement on the fragment’s meaning.

The significance of this fragment to the ICA case that Putin “aspired” for candidate Trump to win cannot be overstated. The major “high confidence” judgment of the ICA rests on one opinion about a text fragment with uncertain meaning, that may be a garble, and for which it is not clear how it was obtained. This text-which would not have been published without DCIA’s orders to do so—is cited using only one interpretation of its meaning and without considering alternative interpretations.

The HPSCI gives some examples of alternative interpretations for “whose victory Putin was counting on.” Since the information was acquired in July 2016, it could have meant Putin “expected” a Trump victory at the upcoming Republican National Convention. The HPSCI notes that the convention’s outcome “was still uncertain to do active efforts to deny Trump a majority of convention delegates. This was a headline issue for the US political media at the time, though many pundits nonetheless expected — or ‘counted on’ — a Trump victory.”

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Obama’s Disgraced CIA Director John Brennan Lashes Out — Accuses Tulsi Gabbard of “Intentionally Lying” After She Exposes His Fraudulent Intel Reports

Obama’s scandal-plagued CIA Director John Brennan has lashed out at Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, accusing her of “intentionally lying” after she publicly exposed him for publishing fraudulent intelligence reports.

The report—declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—alleges that Brennan, together with Obama-era officials like James Clapper and James Comey, directed the creation of a misleading Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) claiming “Putin aspired to help President‑elect Trump’s election chances”

In October 2020, then-DNI John Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes from a July 2016 briefing he gave to President Obama and other senior officials, along with a related CIA memo sent to the FBI.

These documents originated from U.S. intelligence monitoring Russian activities and were declassified amid congressional oversight into the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Recent declassifications in July 2025, under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, include a HPSCI oversight report and DNI press releases (e.g., PR-15-25 and PR-18-25) on Obama-era actions. These build on prior materials, focusing on the ICA’s creation.

  • HPSCI Report Findings on Brennan:
    • Brennan ordered the ICA’s publication despite veteran CIA officers’ warnings it was “substandard” and relied on dubious sources, including the Steele dossier. He overruled objections, reportedly saying of the dossier, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
    • The ICA claimed Putin “aspired to help” Trump’s election by discrediting Clinton, but excluded intelligence contradicting this (e.g., reports Putin was neutral or prepared for a Clinton win). Only a “scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment” supported the claim.
    • Brennan directed inclusion of “substandard reporting” on December 9, 2016, after an Obama Oval Office meeting, ignoring standards because it was a presidential directive.
    • The report accuses Brennan of misleading lawmakers by denying dossier use in the ICA, though it was referenced in the text and annex.
  • DNI PR-18-25 Revelations:
    • Brennan and IC leaders “mischaracterized intelligence” to create a “contrived false narrative” of Putin’s Trump preference, suppressing contradictory info that made the claim “implausible—if not ridiculous.”
    • Brennan overruled officers who noted “we don’t have direct information that Putin wanted to get Trump elected.”
    • In a December 2016 memo, Brennan stated: “There is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election.”
    • The ICA was unusually directed by senior officials like Brennan, using just five analysts and one principal drafter.
  • DNI PR-15-25 Revelations:
    • Brennan attended a December 9, 2016, White House meeting where Obama directed creation of the ICA to detail Russian “tools” influencing the election. No direct quotes from Brennan, but it implies his involvement in what the release calls a “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Trump.

The irony is rich. Here is John Brennan—architect of the Russia Collusion Hoax, signer of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop disinformation letter, and key player in weaponizing U.S. intelligence against political opponents—lecturing anyone about ethics and honesty.

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CNN Analyst Doubles Down on Stupid, Suggesting Trump Admin ‘Helping Russia’ by Sharing New Details on Collusion Hoax

Now that Tulsi Gabbard is sharing shocking new details on the Russia collusion hoax that implicate former President Obama, some people on the left are having a hard time facing the facts.

Enter CNN national security analyst Beth Sanner, who insisted this week that there is nothing to this, and that the Trump administration is actually helping Russia by advancing the story.

So in her mind, Trump is STILL working for Russia, in a way. There is no fixing these people.

The New York Post reports:

CNN analyst accuses Trump admin of aiding Russia by releasing ‘cherry-picked’ intel on Trump-Russia collusion investigation

CNN National Security Analyst Beth Sanner accused the Trump administration of aiding Russia after the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, declassified a report prepared by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence back in 2020 on Wednesday.

Sanner slammed the administration on Wednesday for releasing the report, which she claimed included “cherry-picked examples” that ran contrary to the intelligence community’s assessment at the time that Russian President Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election in hopes of helping President Donald Trump win.

“What I don’t appreciate is that these are cherry-picked examples that they are quibbling, angels dancing on the head of a pin when we have volumes of reporting,” she asserted.

“You’re always going to find one report that’s different, OK, whatever.”

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CNN Caught in Shameful Act of Censorship as Tulsi Exposes How Far Obama Went to Create the Russia Collusion Hoax

Something ridiculous just happened. Just as Tulsi Gabbard was speaking about Obama’s crimes of staging a hoax to steal an election, CNN decided to censor her and mute her mic, so you couldn’t hear it.

But the more you try to take away someone’s voice, the more people want to hear what they have to say. I searched for and found the audio elsewhere, so you can listen to and judge what Tulsi said for yourself.

Happy Wednesday. It’s July 23, 2025, and we’ve just experienced another wild news day. Here are the top 10 essential and buried stories I found in my daily news hunt.

#10 – CNN abruptly CUTS AWAY as Tulsi Gabbard exposes how far Obama went to create the Russia collusion hoax.

They MUTED her mic and put words in her mouth. Unbelievable.

Here’s what they didn’t want you to hear:

“Multiple intelligence community assessments released in the months leading up to the November 2016 election concluded that Russia had neither the INTENT nor CAPABILITY to impact the outcome of the US election. On December 5 of 2016, the FBI and ODNI gave the House Intelligence Committee its first post-election classified briefing in which there was no mention of Putin aspiring to elect Trump by either agency.

“The Presidential Daily Brief drafted on December 8th of 2016 stated that NO Russian or criminal actors impacted vote counts. This document was pulled just hours before it was to be published due to quote, unquote, ‘new guidance.’ If it had been published, it would have been briefed to both President Obama and President-Elect Donald Trump.

“On December 9, 2016, a National Security Council meeting was called to gather President Obama’s senior national security officials, which included CIA Director Brennan, then-Obama DNI James Clapper, Susan Rice, and others. Following that secret meeting, DNI Clapper’s assistant sent an email to the intelligence community with the subject line ‘POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling.’

“Tasking ODNI leaders to create a NEW assessment per the PRESIDENT’S request. The House Intelligence Committee Oversight Report that we released today reveals that, quote, ‘unlike routine intelligence community analysis, the intelligence community assessment was a high-profile product ORDERED by the President, PRESIDENT OBAMA.’

“It directed senior intelligence community agency heads and created an intelligence community assessment limited to just FIVE analysts using ONE principal drafter. This is NOT SOMETHING that occurs in the normal path of producing an intelligence community assessment that reflects the views across the intelligence community.”

No wonder CNN muted her mic. She just exposed how Obama handpicked analysts to craft a hoax—and sold it as fact to undermine Trump’s presidency for years.

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Flashback: 7 Media Mouthpieces Who Repeated The Lie That Russia ‘Hacked’ The 2016 Election

The corporate media have insisted for years that Russia hacked the 2016 election or colluded with Trump to steal it. The hoax was already thoroughly debunked, but documents released by Tulsi Gabbard on Friday revealed that the Obama administration “manufactured” the evidence behind the narrative.

A House report Gabbard declassified on Wednesday further revealed how the Obama administration manipulated the contents of an intelligence report to push the claim that Putin “aspired” to help Trump. The “only classified information” cited as evidence for the assertion was “one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence” in a “substandard” report. Nonetheless, the corporate media for years acted as willing propaganda arms for the Democrat Party, uncritically and relentlessly peddling the claim that Russia helped Donald Trump win in 2016. 

Following the release of the DNI report on Friday and the House report on Wednesday, legacy outlets unsurprisingly rushed to downplay the bombshells. While the media continue to run cover for themselves and the Obama administration, here is a reminder of seven Democrat mouthpieces who perpetuated the Russia collusion hoax. 

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After Spreading Russia Hoax Lies, Media Lie Again To Bury Evidence They Lied

Newly declassified documents confirm that Obama-era intelligence officials pushed the discredited Steele dossier that served as the nexus of the Russia collusion hoax in a bid to kneecap Donald Trump before he could set foot in the White House. But instead of reckoning with the truth, the propaganda press is scrambling to discredit the revelations — not because the evidence is lacking, but because it’s a damning indictment of the media’s complicity.

Nine years ago, the media breathlessly peddled the now discredited claim that then-candidate Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. At the heart of the hoax was the Steele dossier — opposition research created by a former British spy, paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and laundered into the intelligence community.

On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence showing — among other things — that members of the intelligence community were concerned with several aspects of the dossier, such as credibility. In fact, according to the report, two senior CIA officers contended that the dossier should have been omitted from the ICA “because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards.” In fact, the information in the dossier was so flawed that “every CIA analyst and operations officer” asked about the dossier made sure to “emphasize that they had nothing to do with the decision to include Annex A” and could not “vouch” for it.

Pretty damming, right? And that’ not even half of it. Additional coverage of the findings can be found here, here, and here.

One would think the media would be all over a story this explosive — historic levels of government corruption and a weaponized intel apparatus. While a functioning press would be digging into this (like us here at The Federalist!), the propaganda press is actually doing the opposite, trying to discredit the news.

“Trump’s intel chief Tulsi Gabbard reignites political battles with 2016 election documents on Russia,” CBS News’ Olivia Victoria Gazis wrote.

“‘It’s just wildly misleading’: Why the administration’s latest allegations about the Russia investigation don’t add up,” read a headline from CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Katie Bo Lillis.

Ironically, Herb and Lillis (the latter of which was involved in a massive defamation case this year that ended with a jury finding CNN is literally fake news) claim the declassified document “conflate[s] and misrepresent[s]” the findings of the intelligence community. But according to the declassified report, the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) “misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports.”

“Trump rehashes years-old grievances on Russia investigation after new intelligence report,” The Associated Press’ Erick Tucker and Chris Megerian wrote. According to the Bobbsey twins, decisions to review the corrupt intelligence apparatus and their involvement in the 2016 Russia collusion hoax is “backward-looking.”

“Gabbard Releases New Documents Targeting Obama Administration,” The New York Times’ Julian E. Barnes wrote.

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There Was No Peaceful Transfer Of Power In 2017

“The peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. And over the next few months, we are going to show that to the world.”

Those are the words of then-President Barack Obama days after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. As it turns out, like many remarks issued throughout the course of his disastrous presidency, it was a complete and total lie.

Amid the backdrop of his “I heart democracy!” schtick, the 44th president was covertly working alongside the heads of America’s intelligence agencies to subvert democracy. Thanks to newly declassified records released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Americans (and the world) are able to see for themselves how Obama and Co. aimed to undermine Trump’s 2016 victory, sabotage his presidency, and ultimately thwart the will of the people.

While expansive and broaching numerous subject areas, the biggest takeaway from the document dump is that Obama and several key players — namely, former FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and DNI James Clapper — sought to provide validity to the baseless Clinton-manufactured narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. One of the main ways they attempted to do this was through the compilation of an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which Obama ordered in early December 2016 to identify “Russian activities and intentions in recent U.S. elections.”

The newly disclosed documents not only dismantle the FBI and CIA’s high confidence claim that a major part of Moscow’s shenanigans in the 2016 contest was “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances,” but that intelligence directly contradicting that narrative was left out of the ICA altogether. What was included in the ICA is unsubstantiated dirt bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign — despite prior claims from the Three Intel Stooges (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) that it wasn’t.

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