Tulsi Gabbard, the Smear Machine, and the Battle for America’s Intelligence Integrity

In a time of growing distrust in institutions and blatant political double standards, the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has exposed the festering rot in America’s political and intelligence establishment.

Gabbard is a decorated combat veteran and former congresswoman. Once hailed as a rising star in the Democrat party, she has since been relentlessly smeared—from being labeled a “Russian asset” to even being placed on a terrorist watchlist during the Biden-Harris administration. These attacks aren’t just absurd; they expose how deeply politicized the intelligence community has become.

As DNI, Gabbard would oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a $70 billion budget. Her pending Senate confirmation—where Republicans hold the majority—reignited the predictable chorus of partisan attacks. But the real issue isn’t her qualifications, it’s that Washington fears what her leadership represents: independence, accountability, and a return to intelligence gathering as a national security mission—not a political weapon.

The Clinton Smear and the Politics of Personal Destruction

The “Russian asset” lie leveled against Gabbard is as transparent as it is baseless. The smear originated with none other than Hillary Clinton, who insidiously suggested in 2019 that Gabbard was being “groomed” by Russia to sabotage the 2020 election. Clinton—a political figure infamous for conspiracy theories and deflection—provided no evidence because there was none.

The sheer recklessness of Clinton’s smear should have made it a political joke—yet much of the chattering political class and legacy media ran with it. CNN, The New York Times, and others breathlessly analyzed Clinton’s remark, amplifying it with vague speculation and partisan spin. The same media that demands proof of election fraud or censorship claims had no problem laundering an evidence-free accusation from a former presidential candidate with a track record of deception.

Gabbard did not stay silent. She fired back, calling Clinton “the queen of warmongers” and exposing the smear for what it was: a desperate attempt to destroy an independent voice that refused to fall in line with the Democrat party’s regime-change mantra.

This tried-and-true tactic of the political class and their media acolytes is as dirty as it is effective. Once told, a lie creates a self-perpetuating cycle—a narrative endlessly repeated and amplified, inflicting lasting damage despite never being legitimate in the first place.

The smear took on a life of its own, metastasizing into a media-approved slander that is still repeated today by Democrat operatives, former intelligence officials, internet trolls, and corporate media lackeys.

This phenomenon is how the politics of personal destruction works. The accusation doesn’t need to be true—it just needs to be repeated. The Clinton machine, aided by its intelligence community allies, set the narrative, and the press dutifully carried it forward, tarnishing Gabbard’s name without substantively addressing the facts.

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Sweden Says No Sabotage In Baltic Sea Cable Damage, Releases Seized Ship (But Russia!)

The mainstream media narrative of Russian ‘shadow fleet’ vessels traversing the Baltic Sea in a clandestine anti-NATO operation to sabotage vital underwater communications cables linking European nations continues to unravel at rapid pace.

Swedish authorities have issued the results of their official investigation into Malta-flagged Vezhen ship, following the discovery of damage to a fiber-optic cable between Sweden and Latvia on Jan. 26. Authorities had immediately seized the cargo ship on suspicion it intentionally damaged the cable.

But in a sudden turn, as of Monday the Vezhen has been released after the investigation found no wrong-doing. It was not the result of sabotage or any intentional plot, investigators now say.

“The investigation concerning a cable break between Sweden and Latvia in the Baltic Sea has clarified that it is not a case of gross sabotage,” Swedish prosecutors said in a new statement.

“It has been established that a combination of weather conditions and deficiencies in equipment and seamanship contributed to the cable break,” Senior Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist added in the statement.

The consensus is that as the vessel was transporting fertilizer from Ust-Luga, Russia to South America – a ship anchor was damaged and unintentionally dropped into the sea during extremely bad weather, which is when the damage to the cable occurred. The incident is one of several cable incidents in regional waters still being investigated as suspected Russian sabotage.

Now that the ship has resumed its journey to South America, its operator has indicated it may stop for repairs in nearby Denmark.

A statement by ship operator Navigation Maritime Bulgare (Navibulgar) to AFP said Swedish authorities formally notified the crew that “there is no reason to believe that sabotage or malicious act was committed on board by our crew.”

It said the crew members, who had been detained along with the ship, are in good health and that they are resuming the journey. A week ago the company had vehemently denied that this was an act of sabotage, and called on Sweden to quickly release the vessel. 

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Lindsey Graham’s Exchange With Kash Patel Reminds Us How Corrupt the FBI Has Become

While Democrats are using Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing for FBI Director to rant and rave about Jan. 6, at least one Republican used his time to illustrate why so many people no longer trust the Bureau.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) brought up Patel’s work investigating FBI operation Crossfire Hurricane, an effort aimed at promoting the hoax that President Donald Trump collaborated with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Patel was instrumental in exposing the hoax and the weaponization of the FBI against Trump. Graham brought up a text message exchange between former agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in which they showed anti-Trump bias.

Okay. It was opened up on July 31st, 2016, and here’s what Strzok said, And damn, this feels momentous because this matters…‘Super glad to be on this voyage with you.’ That’s to Page. Page responds a couple of months later, ‘he’s not ever going to be president, right?’

Graham recounted Strzok replied, “No, he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

“Is it fair to say that the people in charge of investigating Crossfire Hurricane hated Trump’s guts?” Graham asked.

Patel answered in the affirmative.

The conversation turned to former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who was the subject of surveillance during the 2016 race. “Do you know that the FBI secured warrants against him on four different occasions?” Graham asked.

Patel answered yes. Graham continued, asking if Patel knew that the Bureau relied on false information from the Steele Dossier to obtain the FISA warrant used to justify their spying on a member of the Trump campaign.

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Justice! President Trump Revokes Security Clearances of ALL 51 ‘Spies Who Lied’ and Former NSA Advisor John Bolton

Tonight, in his first evening back in the Oval Office, President Trump signed a slew of Executive Orders and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan 6 hostages and pardoned all of the remaining political prisoners from the protests at the US Capitol.

He withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization.

He reversed a plethora of Joe Biden’s Executive Orders, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “Promoting Access to Voting” EO 14019, which allowed all federal agencies to be utilized essentially as voter registration drives.

But perhaps one of the most significant EOs, besides the pardoning of 1500 J6ers, is the “Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information.”

The order highlights the 51 former intel officials who coordinated with the Biden campaign to suggest that the Hunter Biden laptop was “a part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

The letter was in response to the New York Post article written by Miranda Devine that led to widespread censorship on Twitter, now X, Facebook, YouTube that would get you banned for simply mentioning the article in some cases.

Some of the officials that were signatories to that letter held security clearances and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.

According to the EO, senior CIA officials were aware of the contents of the letter after it was submitted to the CIA Prepublication Classification.  It was later learned that the FBI at that time had possession of the laptop and had validated its authenticity.

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Why is Russiagate’s Origin Story Redacted?

On January 11, 2019, at the peak of Russiagate mania and months before the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deflating report, the New York Times for the first time made public a remarkable fact. In “FBI Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia,” a trio of Times reporters revealed that in the days after Donald Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Bureau “began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia.”

The country first learned the FBI was investigating “any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government” when Comey testified in Congress in March, 2017. Comey then was referring to the FBI’s much-ballyhooed Crossfire Hurricane probe, which was opened in July, 2016 and targeted the likes of George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

This second FBI probe disclosed by the Times in 2019 carried far more explosive implications, making its delayed disclosure unusual. It’s one thing for the FBI to investigate possible “links” between foreigners and a presidential campaign. It’s another for Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe to open an investigation into whether a sitting president, i.e. his boss, is “working on behalf of Russia.”

“Imagine even opening this investigation up on just your average Joe,” says Aaron Maté of RealClear Investigations. “That would be crazy, unless you have some real predication. But this is the fucking president. Andrew McCabe decides that he can do this. On what basis?”

Either the FBI had evidence to start such an investigation, which would be damning to Trump, or it didn’t, which would be damning to the FBI. Which was it?

The 2019 Times story suggested the FBI probe was begun in part to determine if Trump’s “firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.” Beyond that, details were scant, and once the new investigation was folded into Robert Mueller’s inquiry, the reasons for its opening disappeared into the proverbial dustbin of history. Even when Special Counsel John Durham issued his report on the FBI and Crossfire Hurricane, he made just one mention of this second investigation, saying it was beyond his purview:

We also have not interpreted the Order as directing us to consider the handling ofthe investigation into President Trump opened by the FBI on May 16, 2017.

Nobody seemed to care what this second investigation was about, or what evidence was submitted to justify its opening, until Aaron and RealClear in December, 2022 sent a Freedom of Information request. They sought a copy of the original document explaining why the FBI opened a new “Sensitive Investigative Matter” on May 16, 2017. It took over two full years for the Bureau to respond. The answer was a middle finger: six pages, almost entirely redacted, with the exception of a few paragraphs.

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FBI still hiding key Russiagate details, newly released document shows

As Donald Trump re-enters the White House on a pledge to end national security state overreach, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still hiding critical details on the Russia conspiracy investigation that engulfed his first term.

In response to a Freedom of Information request that I filed in August 2022, the FBI on December 31, more than two years later, released a heavily redacted copy of the document that opened an explosive and unprecedented counterintelligence probe of the sitting president as an agent of the Russian government.

The Electronic Communication, dated May 16, 2017, claimed to have an “articulable factual basis” to suspect that Trump “wittingly or unwittingly” was illegally acting on behalf of Russia, and accordingly posing “threats to the national security of the United States.” The FBI’s “goal,” it added, was “to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation.” It additionally sought to uncover whether Trump and unnamed “others” obstructed “any associated FBI investigation” – a reference to Crossfire Hurricane, the initial FBI inquiry into the Trump campaign’s suspected cooperation with an alleged Russian interference plot in the 2016 election.

While Crossfire Hurricane, which was formally opened on July 31, 2016, had by that point focused on members of Trump’s orbit, the May 2017 probe was specifically targeted at the president himself during his fourth month in office. The investigation of Trump was undertaken at the behest of then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, one week after Trump had fired his former boss and mentor, James B. Comey.

According to the declassified document, McCabe’s decision was approved by FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap, who had also signed off on the opening of Crossfire Hurricane; and Jim Baker, the FBI general counsel. Baker was a longtime friend of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and a key figure in the dissemination of Clinton-funded disinformation to the FBI that falsely tied Trump to Russia. In his FBI role, Baker personally circulated the conspiracy theory, manufactured by “researchers” working with the Clinton campaign, that the Trump campaign and Russia were communicating via a secret server. After leaving the FBI, Baker served as deputy general counsel at Twitter, where he backed the company’s censorship of reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, based on yet another conspiracy theory that the laptop files were Russian disinformation.

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A Liar and the Father of Lies

Since 2001 (when I started paying close attention), I have observed the United States government commit a series of massive frauds for the benefit of its cronies in the Military-Industrial Complex, Wall Street, and—most recently in 2020-2021—for the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.

In 2016, the racketeers who run the U.S. government were threatened by the improbable election of Donald Trump, and they immediately set about trying to sabotage it. Using the FBI as their primary tool, they fabricated the story that Trump had won the election by colluding with agents of the Russian government.

On the face of it, the story was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard, and it was then that I realized that America’s so-called “educated class” is ignorant and childish. The sheer magnitude of the lie that was told twenty-four seven for months on end was stupendous to behold, and it reminded of Jesus telling the Pharisees—with stunning frankness—that they are sons of the devil.

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

I’m impressed by the great literary quality of this verse (John 8:44), and I wonder if it inspired Shakespeare when he created his villains Iago and Richard III, who are, first and foremost, liars. As Iago says of his plan to destroy Othello:

The Moor is of a free and open nature,

That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,

And will as tenderly be led by the nose. As asses are.

I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

Or Richard III says about his plot to seize the English crown:

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous. I thought of this line this morning when I read a an essay by fellow Substack authors Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke titled “Alexander Downer Exposes FBI’s Deceit in Opening Russia Investigation”

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The Spies Who Hate Us

Brownstone Institute has been tracking a little-known federal agency for years. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security created after 9-11. It is called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. It was created in 2018 out of a 2017 executive order that seemed to make sense. It was a mandate to secure American digital infrastructure against foreign attack and infiltration. 

And yet during the Covid year, it assumed three huge jobs. It was the agency responsible for dividing the workforce between essential and nonessential. It led the way on censorship efforts. And it handled election security for 2020 and 2022, which, if you understand the implications of that, should make you spit out your coffee upon learning. 

More than any other agency, it became the operationally relevant government during this period. It was the agency that worked through third parties and packet-switching networking to take down your Facebook group. It worked through all kinds of intermediaries to keep a lid on Twitter. It managed LinkedIn, Instagram, and most of the other mainstream platforms in a way that made you feel like your opinions were too crazy to see the light of day. 

The most astonishing court document just came out. It was unearthed in the course of litigation undertaken by America First Legal. It has no redaction. It is a reverse chronicle of most of what they did from February 2020 until last year. It is 500 pages long. The version available now takes an age to download, so we shrunk it and put it on fast view so you can see the entire thing. 

What you discover is this. Everything that the intelligence agencies did not like during this period – doubting lockdowns, dismissing masking, questioning the vaccine, and so on – was targeted through a variety of cutouts among NGOs, universities, and private-sector fact-checkers. It was all labeled as Russian and Chinese propaganda so as to fit in with CISA’s mandate. Then it was throttled and taken down. It managed remarkable feats such as getting WhatsApp to stop allowing bulk sharing. 

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Was Russia or the Deep State Behind the 57 Polling Locations Across the Country that Received Bomb Threats?

During and after the 2024 Election, at least 57 polling locations across the country received bomb threats. Was this a targeted operation by Russia, China, or the Deep State?

report from NBC from election night claimed that at least 50 election locations were targeted across multiple battleground states with bomb threats.

Hoax bomb threats targeting polling places and election offices briefly disrupted voting in five battleground states, with the FBI saying the threats in four of those states came from Russian email domains. The origin of the threats in the fifth state was not clear.

The threats targeted at least 50 sites across Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, authorities said.

…The Russian Embassy in the U.S. said any accusation that it was behind the threats was “vicious slander” and “nonsense,” according to the government-owned news service RIA Novosti.

In Pennsylvania there were at least 13 voting locations throughout the state that reported bomb threats. The threats were reportedly received via email. Most were reported on election day.

An email announcing a bomb threat at the Chester County Government Services Center on 601 Westtown Road in West Chester was sent to Chester County Voter Services on Tuesday night, shortly before polls closed, according to investigators.

Chester County Emergency Officials responded to the building which was evacuated. The Chester County Sheriff’s Office K9 Unit conducted a sweep and determined the threat was unfounded. The building was later reopened.

The FBI blamed this incident [email] being from overseas origin. Does anyone trust this guy?

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Elon Musk Delivers Harrowing News to ‘Treasonous’ Liar and Leaker Alexander Vindman After He Seemingly Accuses Musk of Selling State Secrets to Putin

Ukrainian-born Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (US Army Ret.) may be about to pay the ultimate price for his crimes against America if the world’s richest man has any say.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Vindman was a crucial figure in the first impeachment of President Trump over his “perfect” phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019. But he was caught repeatedly lying during his testimony before Congress, which made him a leftist hero.

The truth is that Vindman was a leaker who thought his opinions overruled the Trump administration. He was moved from the White House with his twin brother (who was unfortunately elected to Congress this month) after his unsuccessful attempt, along with Eric Ciaramella, to remove the sitting president from office.

Even Vindman’s boss testified that he was a leaker and a liar who could not be trusted.

Vindman has now made things worse for himself after hurling a disgusting smear toward X owner and DOGE co-chairman Elon Musk in a late October MSNBC interview uncovered by X users on Wednesday.

In the interview, Vindman said Russian President Vladimir Putin is using Musk to do his bidding. This includes Musk potentially selling state secrets to Russia.

“Clearly, Putin has a type. He likes narcissists and egomaniacs that he knows as a case officer can easily pander to manipulate, to do his dirty work,” Vindman said. “Russia has been using different levers — whether that’s corruption networks, in this case, its influencers like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk, to kind of sow discord.”

“It’s possible that some of that is seeping through,” Vindman added. “He’s (Putin) been using the richest man in the world to do his bidding. In some cases, that’s encouraging him probably to support Donald Trump.

“That’s not speculation. We see how far Elon has gone. And then using Twitter as a disinformation platform.”

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