"Irrefutable evidence": Tulsi Gabbard says Obama directed false intel assessment to delegitimize Trump

Times of Oman

24-07-2025

Washington: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, along with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, revealed new details during a White House press briefing alleging the "gross politicisation and manipulation of intelligence by the Obama administration".
"There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false," Gabbard said during the briefing. "They knew it would promote this contrived narrative... selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn't."
Expanding on the nature of the documents, Gabbard added that all the materials reviewed "There was a gross politicization and manipulation of intelligence by the Obama administration intended to delegitimize President Trump even before he was inaugurated." She further stated, "Ultimately, they sought to usurp the will of the American people."
She also confirmed that these documents have been referred, and will continue to be referred, to the Department of Justice and the FBI. "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.
Backing her statements, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, on Wednesday released a slew of documents that she said implicate members of the Obama administration for weaponising US intelligence, adding further weight to the claims presented during the press briefing.
Gabbard said that Obama promoted lies that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped US President Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
In a post on X, she said, "New evidence has emerged of the most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history. Per President Donald Trump's directive, I have declassified a House Intelligence Committee oversight majority staff report that exposes how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false, promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election. In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people, working with their partners in the media to promote the lie, in order to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him."
Obama's office issued a rare statement in response:
"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. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one," said spokesman Patrick Rodenbush. "These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio."
There's still no evidence the 2020 election was rigged. There's plenty of evidence that Trump tried to subvert the results. The inflation problem is not necessarily solved, especially if Trump's tariffs go into effect, CNN reported.
We caught Hillary Clinton. We caught Barack Hussein Obama. They're the ones -- and then you have many, many people under them. (Former national security adviser) Susan Rice. They're all there. The names are all there. And I guess they figured they're going to put this in classified information and nobody will ever see it again, but it doesn't work that way.