Legacy media outlets that pushed the Russia collusion hoax are downplaying bombshell documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which reveal that the Obama administration suppressed intelligence proving that Russian meddling did not impact the 2016 election. 

The documents show that President Barack Obama ordered a new intelligence community assessment into alleged Russian meddling just one day after the suppression of an intel draft report showed Russia had no impact on election results. In response to the documents, media outlets have accused Gabbard of “rewriting” history around the Obama administration’s role in perpetuating the Russia narrative.  

On Tuesday, CNN published an article suggesting that Gabbard was “misleading” the public about the Russia hoax, saying that her “allegations about the Russia investigation don’t add up.” NBC published an article claiming that Gabbard was attempting to “rewrite the history of the 2016 election.” 

The articles claim that Gabbard said there were no Russian efforts to interfere in the election at all. But Gabbard’s memo on the declassified documents actually notes that there “is still supporting evidence indicating the Russian government directed hacking” of the Democratic National Committee. 

What the media outlets dismiss is that the newly-released documents show a consensus in December 2019 from intelligence officials that Russia did not impact the outcome of the election, and that Russia did not have the ability to actually impact the election results.

For example, talking points from the office of then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper on December 7 found that “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and that “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”

A Presidential Daily Briefing draft for December 8, 2016, contains the same points. 

“We assess Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure,” intelligence officials stated in the unpublished draft.

An intelligence official killed the publication of the draft that day due to “high administration interest,” and the FBI yanked co-authorship to draft a dissent. 

Just one day later, on December 9, Obama asked the intelligence community to come up with a new assessment of Russian meddling. That same day, The Washington Post published an article citing anonymous intelligence officials who said that the CIA concluded that Russia “intervened” to help Trump win the presidency, “rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” 

As Gabbard’s memo notes, “there is no official [intelligence community] assessment that contains that conclusion.”

CNN’s Tuesday article also cited unnamed “congressional sources” who disputed Gabbard’s claim that the discredited Steele Dossier — paid for by the Clinton campaign — informed the January 2017 intelligence assessment commissioned by Obama that claimed a larger role for Russia in the 2016 election. 

However, as documents released by Gabbard show, an intelligence community whistleblower was informed that the Steele Dossier “was a factor” in the Obama 2017 Russia intelligence assessment. Then-CIA Director John Ratcliffe also found that the dossier was included in the assessment, writing in a recent report that this “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”

Both CNN and NBC also said that the intelligence community never claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election. But nearly two-thirds of Democrats polled in 2018 believed that Russian hacking changed voting totals in the election. 

That came after headlines like “Obama orders review of Russian election-related hacking” from CNN and “U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack” from NBC. 

Gabbard has reportedly sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department over the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment in January 2017.

“There’s no question in my mind that this intelligence community assessment that President Obama ordered be published which contained a manufactured intelligence document — it’s worse than even politicization of intelligence,” Gabbard told Fox News last week. “It was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama and his team’s objective, which was undermining President Trump’s presidency and subverting the will of the American people.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired back on Tuesday after former President Barack Obama issued a statement attacking her claims and those of President Donald Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe that Obama and his team manipulated intelligence to sabotage Trump’s first term.

“Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader,” Trump said. “Hillary Clinton was right there with him, and so was Sleepy Joe Biden, and so were the rest of them — [former FBI Director Jim] Comey, [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, the whole group. They tried to rig an election, and then they got caught.”

Obama’s statement followed the Department of Justice reportedly confirming it had received a criminal referral from Gabbard. DNI files have shown that on December 7, 2016, an intelligence assessment reiterated that Russia did not interfere with the 2016 election. Still, the next day, the editor of that assessment canceled the brief “based on new guidance.” The day after that, Obama convened the National Security Council principals and ordered a new assessment. On January 6, 2017, the new unclassified assessment was released.

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush stated on Tuesday. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

“It’s the art of deflection, coming from Obama, as well as his friends, who are still in Congress today…really all basically saying that exact same statement, which doesn’t actually address the issue that was revealed in great detail in the over 100 documents that we released last week and the documents that we will be releasing later this week,” Gabbard told guest-host Lara Trump on Fox News’s Will Cain Show.

“The intelligence community had one assessment, that Russia did not have the intent or capability to try to impact the outcome of the U.S. election leading up to  Election Day,” she continued. “The same assessment was made after Donald Trump was elected by the American people as president in 2016 defeating Hillary Clinton. And it wasn’t until after that pulled president’s daily briefing document that you referenced that the Principals Committee was called and the National Security Council, and President Obama then directed his then DNI, James Clapper, to lead the effort to create this new intelligence community assessment.”

“Neither the message from President Obama’s office, neither the statements coming from Democrats in Congress today and their friends in the propaganda media, none of them are addressing this fact: that 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,” she stated.

“You saw John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey stated with high confidence this January intelligence community assessment that they drafted at the direction of President Obama,” she pointed out. “The fact is that they used already discredited information like the Steele dossier; they knew it was discredited at that time yet they used it as a source for this document that they claimed to have high confidence in. They used intelligence that some of these intelligence community professionals rejected previously because of the lack of credibility and the lack of the ability to vet with any kind of confidence whether or not that information or intelligence was accurate and could be used for an assessment.”

“There’s a long laundry list of facts and intelligence reporting that directly contradicts the statement coming from President Obama’s office and those who are trying to deflect away from what actually happened, which was after Donald Trump was elected, led by President Obama, there was an effort to create in a doc, a document that was created to serve as a foundation for what would be a years-long coup against President Trump, therefore trying to subvert the will of the American people who sent him to the White House in 2016,” she asserted.

“I’m very encouraged by the fact that we have whistleblowers coming forward who are intelligence community professionals who were there when this happened and who were disgusted by it and are heartened at the possibility and the hope that the truth will see the light of day,” Gabbard added.

“The most important thing is that the American people see accountability, which is why we are referring and have already sent all of the documents that we have currently and any others that we get in the future to the Department of Justice to bring about that accountability, to ensure that the integrity of our democratic republic exists,” she concluded.