On the heels of revoking security clearances for 37 current and former intelligence officials, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” and emphasized the seriousness of the alleged acts involving the 2017 Russiagate “hoax.”
Gabbard called the efforts to undermine the incoming Trump administration “seditious conspiracy.”
“[T]he intelligence community assessed in the months leading up to that November 2016 election that, yes, Russia was trying to interfere in our election by sowing discord and chaos, but stating over and over again that Russia did not appear to have any preference for one candidate over the other,” Gabbard said. “They viewed both as equally bad for Russia’s interest. The big shift that happened around the — what is now commonly known as Russiagate was after the election, in early December, President Obama called a meeting of his national security council leadership. From that meeting, there was directive that was delivered from President Obama to then Obama’s DNI James Clapper to then CIA Director John Brennan to come up with a new intelligence community assessment that contradicted the ones that had been produced previously by the intelligence community.”
She continued, “This new one said that Russia, Putin did try to interfere in the election because he wanted Trump to win. They did this using shoddy intelligence, little pieces of intelligence gathered from places that intelligence professionals refused to reference previously because they knew it was substandard and did not meet the quality and the credibility that is expected of them as intelligence professionals. And they used the Steele dossier knowing — John Brennan knew, James Clapper knew, others within the intelligence community knew that the Steele dossier was a political manufactured document intended to be weaponized against then candidate Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump won the election. The American people voted for Donald Trump in 2016. So, these intelligence leaders and John Brennan and James Clapper and James Comey, then director of the FBI, then used this Steele dossier as a source for this Obama directed new intelligence assessment, again, stating and alleging that Putin, Russia tried to help Trump win the election, clearly showing a preference for Donald Trump. Now, if you go to ODNI.gov, people will say, ‘Well, Tulsi, this is just your view or your interpretation.'”
“No, it’s all in hundreds of pages of documents that I’ve declassified and released that show point by point exactly what happened through this timeline that showed this very dangerous thing that occurred in the creation of Russiagate, the creation of this manufactured intelligence assessment that essentially had the intent of undermining the voices and votes of the American people who elected Donald Trump,” Gabbard added. “They were not happy with the outcome of that election. And so, they created this politicized, weaponized piece of fake intelligence that, as you mentioned, then went on to serve as a foundation for everything that came after. The multiple investigations, the years-long Mueller investigation, two congressional impeachments, investigations in the raid at Mar-a-Lago, the list goes on and on. Ultimately, the real crime here was against the American people because this action singularly undermined the integrity of our Democratic republic. What to speak of the fact that some of those folks and those individuals that we revoked — directed the revocation of security clearances from today by — under the direction of President Trump, they aided and abetted in this action, this seditious conspiracy that undermined our democracy, undermined our republic, and broke that sacred trust that every one of these professionals is supposed to have from the American people.”
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