Latest news with #RussiaInterference
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
JD Vance Claims Indictments Are Coming in Trump's Favorite Scandal
Vice President JD Vance promised indictments were coming in Tulsi Gabbard's brazen quest to blame President Obama's intelligence officials for Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Fox News host Maria Bartiromo pressed Vance on the MAGA scandal on Sunday Morning Futures, asking him whether he expects to see indictments against Obama intelligence officials. Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has claimed the officials manipulated intelligence to link Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election interference and denied that Russia worked to boost Trump. She has since sent criminal referrals to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has launched a grand jury investigation. MAGA supporters have accused the administration of trying to distract from Trump's ties to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Still, Vance played the game with Bartiromo, going so far as to say that indictments were coming for 'defrauding the American people, defrauding the intelligence agencies, lying about what the intel said.' 'That's a violation of the people's trust, that's a violation of what our intelligence services should be doing, and I absolutely think they broke the law,' Vance said. 'You're going to see a lot of people get indicted for that.' A Vance spokesperson did not respond to an immediate request for comment. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment when approached by the Daily Beast. Vance did not say who exactly would be indicted, but Gabbard has tried to claim everyone from former CIA director John Brennan to former President Obama himself could be implicated in her conspiracy. Earlier in the interview, Vance—who graduated from Yale Law School and worked as a corporate lawyer for years—had tried to acknowledge the legal bar for indictments while expressing his desire for them to proceed. 'I absolutely want to see indictments,' Vance said. 'Of course, you've got to have the law follow the facts here. You don't just indict people to indict people. You indict people because they broke the law.' The White House has expressed glee at Bondi's decision to launch the grand jury probe, even as supporters have bristled at Gabbard's efforts. 'Following the compelling case outlined by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, which exposed clear and blatant weaponization by corrupt intelligence officials acting at the behest of the Democrat Party and likely former President Obama, the Administration remains committed to conducting a thorough investigation,' White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Daily Beast last week. An Obama spokesperson lambasted the administration's quest in a rare statement last month. 'The bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,' Obama's office said in a statement.
France 24
05-08-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Trump's DOJ to open grand jury probe into Obama officials over 'Russiagate'
US Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into allegations that members of Democratic former president Barack Obama's administration manufactured intelligence on Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The Justice Department said late last month it was forming a strike force to assess claims made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about "alleged weaponization of the U.S. intelligence community". Republican US President Donald Trump has leaped on comments from Gabbard in which she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian interference. Fox News first reported that Bondi personally ordered an unnamed federal prosecutor to initiate legal proceedings and the prosecutor is expected to present department evidence to a grand jury, which could consider an indictment if the Justice Department pursued a criminal case. The report cited a letter from Bondi and a source. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment. Last month, Trump accused Obama of treason, alleging, without providing evidence, that the Democrat led an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump won the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. A spokesperson for Obama had denounced Trump's claims, saying "these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction". Gabbard had declassified documents and said the information she released showed a "treasonous conspiracy" in 2016 by top Obama officials to undermine Trump, claims that Democrats called false and politically motivated. An assessment by the US intelligence community published in January 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking, and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and bolster Trump, who won that election. The assessment determined the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow's efforts actually changed voting outcomes. Russia has denied it attempted to interfere in US elections.
Reuters
05-08-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US DOJ to open grand jury to investigate Obama officials, source says
WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation into allegations that members of Democratic former President Barack Obama's administration manufactured intelligence on Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The Justice Department said late last month it was forming a strike force to assess claims made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about "alleged weaponization of the U.S. intelligence community." Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has leaped on comments from Gabbard in which she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian interference. Fox News first reported that Bondi personally ordered an unnamed federal prosecutor to initiate legal proceedings and the prosecutor is expected to present department evidence to a grand jury, which could consider an indictment if the Justice Department pursued a criminal case. The report cited a letter from Bondi and a source. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment. Referring to the probe in a post on Truth Social, Trump said: "The TRUTH always wins out. This is great news." Last month, Trump accused Obama of treason, alleging, without providing evidence, that the Democrat led an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump won the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. A spokesperson for Obama had denounced Trump's claims, saying "these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction." Gabbard had declassified documents and said the information she released showed a "treasonous conspiracy" in 2016 by top Obama officials to undermine Trump, claims that Democrats called false and politically motivated. An assessment by the U.S. intelligence community published in January 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking, and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and bolster Trump, who won that election. The assessment determined the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow's efforts actually changed voting outcomes. Russia has denied it attempted to interfere in U.S. elections.
Reuters
04-08-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US DOJ to open grand jury probe into Obama officials, source says
WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to launch a grand jury probe into allegations that members of Democratic former President Barack Obama's administration manufactured intelligence on Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The Justice Department said late last month it was forming a strike force to assess claims made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about "alleged weaponization of the U.S. intelligence community." Republican U.S. President Donald Trump has leaped on comments from Gabbard in which she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian interference. Fox News first reported that Bondi personally ordered an unnamed federal prosecutor to initiate legal proceedings and the prosecutor is expected to present department evidence to a grand jury, which could consider an indictment if the Justice Department pursued a criminal case. The report cited a letter from Bondi and a source. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment. Last month, Trump accused Obama of treason, alleging, without providing evidence, that the Democrat led an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump won the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. A spokesperson for Obama had denounced Trump's claims, saying "these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction." Gabbard had declassified documents and said the information she released showed a "treasonous conspiracy" in 2016 by top Obama officials to undermine Trump, claims that Democrats called false and politically motivated. An assessment by the U.S. intelligence community published in January 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking, and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and bolster Trump, who won that election. The assessment determined the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow's efforts actually changed voting outcomes. Russia has denied it attempted to interfere in U.S. elections.
Yahoo
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Durham disclosures further undermine Gabbard's claims of plot against Trump
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, hoped to uncover evidence that Barack Obama and his national security team conspired to undermine Donald Trump in a slow-motion coup. But if her crusade was aimed at proving that Obama embarked on a 'treasonous conspiracy' to falsely show that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump, Gabbard made a mistake. A previously classified annexe to a report by another special counsel, John Durham – appointed towards the end of Trump's first presidency – has further undermined Gabbard's case. It was a quixotic enterprise from the start. After all, the 2019 report from Robert Mueller, the original special counsel appointed to investigate the Russia allegations, and a bipartisan five-volume report the following year from the Senate intelligence committee – then chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump's secretary of state – both affirmed the offending January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which expressed 'high confidence' in Russian interference. Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, seemed to validate the intelligence's premise in 2018 when, standing beside Trump at a news conference in Helsinki, he admitted wanting him to win. The newly unclassified 29-page document from Durham, made public this week, contains a deflating conclusion for Gabbard. It confirms that Russian spies were behind the emails that were originally released as the result of a Russian cyber-hack of internal Democratic information channels and which Trump supporters believed showed the campaign of Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, conspiring to accuse him of colluding with Moscow. 'The office's best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails that purport to be from Benardo were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of the US-based thinktanks,' Durham writes. He is referring to Leonard Benardo, of the Open Society Foundation, funded by George Soros, a philanthropist and bete noire of Trump's Maga base. One of the emails purportedly from Benardo proposes a plan 'to demonize Putin and Trump' and adds: 'Later the FBI will put more oil on the fire.' That message and others, including from a Clinton foreign policy aide, Julianne Smith, became part of the so-called 'Clinton Plan intelligence'. Benardo and Smith disputed ever writing such emails. In his 2023 report annexe, released on Thursday in heavily redacted form, Durham at least upholds Benardo's disavowal – concluding that it has been cobbled together from other individuals' emails to produce something more incriminating than the actuality. For Gabbard, who is feverishly trying to prove the existence of a 'deep state' determined to sabotage Trump, emails suspected to have been confected by Russia is hardly a brilliant look in her evidence package. Some former intelligence insiders find that unsurprising – dismissing the idea as a Trump-inspired fiction. 'Trump is lying when he speaks of a 'deep state',' said Fulton Armstrong, a retired CIA analyst who served under Democratic and Republican administrations. 'But if there were one, it would not be Democrat. The culture of that world is deeply Republican.' The national intelligence director – who has never served in the intelligence services or sat on its eponymous congressional committee when she was in the House of Representatives – is likely to see Durham's finding as immaterial to her quest to put Obama officials on trial for 'manufacturing' intelligence. But Gabbard's insistence – echoing her boss's view – on the existence of a plot to torpedo Trump was dismissed on Friday by John Brennan, the CIA director under Obama, who told the New Yorker that Obama issued instructions that intelligence showing Russian meddling to be kept hush-hush, at least until polling day, to ensure a fair election. 'He made very clear to us [that] he wanted us to try to uncover everything the Russians were doing, but also not to do anything that would in any way interfere in the election,' Brennan said. Gabbard has cited a 2020 House of Representatives intelligence committee report – endorsed only by its Republican members – challenging the assertion that Putin wanted to Trump to win. However, Michael Van Landingham, one of the CIA authors of the 2017 intelligence assessment now in her crosshairs, said credible intelligence cast the Russian leader's motives in an unambiguous light. 'The primary evidence to get to Putin's mindset was a clandestine source that said, essentially, when Putin realized that Clinton would win the election, he ordered an influence campaign against Hillary Clinton,' Van Landingham told PBS News Hour. 'Then we saw a series of events that happened with the hacked US materials by the Russian special services or intelligence services to leak those materials similar to the information a clandestine source had provided. At the same time, we saw lots of members of the Russian media portraying Donald Trump in a more positive light. 'There was other information … collected by the US intelligence community … over time, having a high-quality, clandestine source telling you that Putin was counting on Trump's victory, having members of the Russian state saying Trump would be better to work with because of his views on Russia that don't represent the US establishment, all of those things gave us high confidence that Putin wanted Trump to win.'
