Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a new report shredding the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help President Donald Trump win in 2016.
According to the report, originally created in 2020, “The judgment that Putin developed a ‘clear preference’ for candidate Trump and ‘aspired to help his chances of victory’ did not adhere to the tenets of the ICD (Intelligence Community Directive) analytical standards.”
The idea that Putin wanted to assist Trump was based on “one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports,” the declassified documents read.
The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) “did not cite any report where Putin directly indicated helping Trump win was the objective,” the report notes. “That judgment rests on a questionable interpretation of this one unclear fragment of a sentence.”
“Unlike routine [Intelligence Community] analysis, the ICA was a high-profile product ordered by the President, directed by senior IC agency heads, and created by just five CIA analysts, using one principal drafter,” the report states. “Production of the ICA was subject to unusual directives from the President and senior political appointees, and particularly DCIA. The draft was not properly coordinated within CIA or the IC, ensuring it would be published without significant challenges to its conclusions.”
Recommendations included in the report involved greater peer review, requiring that political appointees recuse themselves from sensitive assessments during presidential transitions, and urged for greater context statement policies to avoid misleading citations.
Gabbard shared the findings on social media, asserting that “President Obama, former Director of the CIA John Brennan, and others fabricated the Russia Hoax, suppressed intelligence showing Putin was preparing for a Clinton victory, manufactured findings from shoddy sources, disobeyed IC standards, and knowingly lied to the American people.”
Then-President Obama “ordered the Intelligence Community to create an Intelligence Community Assessment they knew was false, promoting a contrived narrative, with the intent of undermining the legitimacy and power of a duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump,” Gabbard added.
President Donald Trump accused Obama of treason, stating that information brought to light by Gabbard is part of the “biggest scandal in the history of our country.”
“What they did to this country in 2016, starting in 2016, but going up all the way, going up to 2020 and the election, they tried to rig the election and they got caught,” Trump told reporters, adding, “And there should be very severe consequences for that.
Gabbard’s move to release the report builds upon documents released last week revealing that the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”
