By DAVID KLEPPER, ERIC TUCKER and CHRIS MEGERIAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard is responsible for guarding America’s secrets and discovering threats from overseas. But when she made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday, her targets were President Donald Trump’s political enemies.
Escalating her attempts to undermine the long-settled conclusion that Russia tried to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency nearly a decade ago, she unspooled what she called unshakeable proof that then-President Barack Obama and his advisers plotted nothing short of a coup.
“They conspired to subvert the will of the American people,” she said, claiming they fabricated evidence to taint Trump’s victory.
Little of what she said was new, and much of it was baseless. Gabbard said her investigation into the former Democratic administration was designed to stop the weaponization of national security institutions, but it spurred more questions about her own independence atop a spying system intended to provide unvarnished intelligence.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who ran for president herself before joining Trump’s idiosyncratic political ecosystem, seemed prepared to use her presentation to burnish her own standing. She was trailed by her cinematographer husband, who held a video camera to capture the moment.
And Trump, who had previously expressed public doubts about Gabbard’s analysis of Iran’s nuclear program, appeared satisfied. He posted a video of her remarks, pinning them at the top of his social media feed.
It was a display that cemented Gabbard’s role as one of Trump’s chief agents of retribution, delivering official recognition of Trump’s grievances about the Russia investigation that shadowed his first term. The focus on a years-old scandal also served Trump’s attempts to shift attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case and questions about the president’s own association with an abuser of underage girls.
Gabbard touts her latest release
During her White House remarks, Gabbard said she has referred the documents to the Justice Department to consider for a possible criminal investigation.
Obama’s post-presidential office declined to comment Wednesday but issued a rare response a day earlier. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” said Patrick Rodenbush, an Obama spokesman.
The White House rejected questions about the timing of Gabbard’s revelations and whether they were designed to curry favor with Trump or distract attention from the administration’s handling of files relating to Epstein.
Still, Trump was quick to reward Gabbard’s loyalty this week, calling her “the hottest person in the room.”
On Wednesday, she released a report by Republican staff of the House Intelligence Committee during the first Trump administration. It does not dispute that Russia interfered in the 2016 election but cites what it says were tradecraft failings in the assessment reached by the intelligence community that Russian President Vladimir Putin influenced the election because he intended for Trump to win.
Gabbard went beyond some of the conclusions of the report in describing its findings from the White House podium. She, along with the report, also seized on the fact that a dossier including uncorroborated tips and salacious gossip about Trump’s ties to Russia was referenced in an annex of an intelligence community assessment made public in 2017 that detailed Russia’s interference.
It was not the basis for the FBI’s decision to open an investigation in July 2016 into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, but Trump supporters have seized on the unverified innuendo in the document to try to undercut the broader probe.
Timing of the reports prompt questions
Gabbard said she didn’t know why the reports weren’t released during Trump’s first administration. Her office did not respond to questions about the timing of the release.
Responding to a question from a reporter about Gabbard’s motivations, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused journalists of looking for a story where there wasn’t one.
“The only people who are suggesting that she would release evidence to boost her standing are the people in this room,” Leavitt said.
Trump, however, has said he wants the media, and the public, to focus on Gabbard’s report and not his ties to Epstein.
“We caught Hillary Clinton. We caught Barack Hussein Obama … you ought take a look at that and stop talking about nonsense,” Trump said Tuesday.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe served briefly as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term but did not release any of the information declassified by Gabbard. The CIA declined to comment on Gabbard’s remarks Wednesday.
Trump and Gabbard’s evolving relationship
Gabbard told Congress in April that Iran wasn’t actively seeking a nuclear weapon, and Trump dismissed her assessment just before U.S. strikes on Iran.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump said in June on Air Force One when asked about Gabbard’s testimony.
Gabbard recently shared her findings in an Oval Office meeting with Trump, according to two administration officials who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Afterward, one of the officials said, Trump expressed satisfaction that Gabbard’s findings aligned with his own beliefs about the Russia investigation.
Other recent releases on the Russia investigation
On Friday, Gabbard’s office released a report that downplayed the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election by highlighting Obama administration emails showing officials had concluded before and after the presidential race that Moscow had not hacked state election systems to manipulate votes in Trump’s favor.
But Obama’s Democratic administration never suggested otherwise, even as it exposed other means by which Russia interfered in the election, including through a massive hack-and-leak operation of Democratic emails by intelligence operatives working with WikiLeaks, as well as a covert influence campaign aimed at swaying public opinion and sowing discord through fake social media posts.
Earlier this month Ratcliffe released a report earlier this month criticizing the 2017 investigation into the election, but it did not address multiple investigations since then, including a report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 that reached the same conclusion about Russia’s influence and motives.
Democrats call for Gabbard’s resignation
Lawmakers from both parties have long stressed the need for an independent intelligence service. Democrats said Gabbard’s reports show she has placed partisanship and loyalty to Trump over her duty and some have called for her resignation.
“It seems as though the Trump administration is willing to declassify anything and everything except the Epstein files,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Wednesday.
Warner predicted Gabbard’s actions could prompt U.S. allies to share less information for fear it would be politicized or recklessly declassified.
But Gabbard enjoys strong support among Republicans. Rep. Rick Crawford, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and Ratcliffe were working to put the intelligence community “on the path to regaining the trust of the American people.”
Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, said Gabbard hasn’t offered any reason to ignore the many earlier investigations into Russia’s efforts.
“The Director is free to disagree with the Intelligence Community Assessment’s conclusion that Putin favored Donald Trump, but her view stands in stark contrast to the verdict rendered by multiple credible investigations,” Himes said in a statement. “Including the bipartisan report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee.”
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