
Gabbard releases new documents targeting Obama administration
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Gabbard has won praise from Trump for her investigation into the intelligence findings and spoke at length about how the 2016 assessment was part of a witch hunt against him. Trump has been under sharp criticism for his handling of documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and his attacks on the Obama administration appear to be part of a distract-and-deflect strategy.
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Gabbard reiterated her assertion that the intelligence assessment was intended to undermine Trump's presidency.
'In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people,' she wrote, '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.'
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The House report found that most of the judgments made by the intelligence community in 2016 were sound. But it argued that the work was rushed, as a recent tradecraft analysis by the CIA also found. The assessment that Putin had favored Trump did not follow the 'professional criteria' of the other findings, the House report said.
The findings were at odds with a bipartisan series of Senate reports that later affirmed the work of the CIA and the other intelligence agencies on the 2016 assessment.
The judgment about Putin's preference, the report said, was based on a single source who was biased against the Russian government. The raw intelligence was fragmentary and lacked context, the report added.
The overall view of the House Intelligence Committee was well known, and members frequently took issue with the finding. But the full report with details of the CIA's work on the 2016 intelligence assessment has not been released.
Trump administration officials have maintained that the 2016 intelligence review was tainted by unverified information in a dossier prepared by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. The so-called Steele dossier was mentioned in a classified annex to the report, but former officials said the CIA did not take it seriously and did not allow it to influence their assessment.
Few if any of the claims in the dossier about Trump have been verified in the ensuing years.
Attacking the conclusions of the 2016 assessment that Russia sought to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and boost Trump has been a hobby horse of some of the president's supporters. Republicans have long taken particular aim at the idea that the Kremlin favored Trump, arguing instead that Russia was simply trying to sow chaos or undermine democratic institutions.
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The attacks on the documents have intensified in recent weeks as first the CIA and then Gabbard's office have raised questions about the effort.
Bipartisan Senate reviews have validated the CIA's work in 2016, and John H. Durham, a special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William Barr during Trump's first term, also failed to find any evidence undermining the intelligence agencies' conclusions.
While Trump's Republican supporters criticized the assessment during his first term, Trump focused much of his ire on Robert Mueller, the former FBI director appointed to investigate any ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Since Trump's return to office, the CIA and Gabbard have tried to sow doubts about the assessment. Gabbard has contended that the intelligence work in 2016 was not just flawed but also amounted to a conspiracy against Trump.
On Friday, Gabbard issued a report that she said exposed a 'treasonous conspiracy,' claiming senior Obama administration officials had pressured the intelligence committee to change its views on Russian meddling. The documents presented showed that the Obama administration was eager to quickly complete its work but not that the intelligence agencies altered their conclusions.
Trump has praised Gabbard, after criticizing her work just weeks earlier. Referring to Gabbard's report, Trump said Tuesday that while in office, President Barack Obama 'was trying to lead a coup.'
Gabbard has said she wants to end the weaponization of intelligence. She has condemned politicians for what she sees as the use of selective bits of intelligence against their opponents.
While she has portrayed the release of the documents as a corrective to the errors and missteps of the Obama administration, former officials and even some allies of Gabbard have said her effort to throw a lifeline to Trump is an example of the very politicization she has vowed to stamp out.
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Trump can't save Olympic sports through executive order, but he can by funding them
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Commentary: Paramount appeased Trump — but now it has to battle Colbert and all his friends
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Trump sued the network last year as an individual, claiming the show distorted a 2024 interview with Kamala Harris, Trump's foe in the presidential election, to give her favorable treatment. Shortly after taking office in January, Trump appointed loyalist Brendan Carr to head the FCC. Then Trump converted the formerly independent agency into an arm of the White House's policy and political operations. One of Carr's first moves as Trump's FCC boss was opening an investigation into the CBS for its interview with Harris, an unprecedented effort to use government power to intimidate a news organization. 'The chairman of the FCC has cagily created a new and coercive technique for operating outside the agency's established statutes and procedures to attack corporate decisions he and Donald Trump do not like,' former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler, now of the Brookings Institution, wrote in February. 'Prime targets are media company editorial decisions.' 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President Trump's executive order on college sports: Here's what it actually means
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday morning in the nation's capital, NCAA president Charlie Baker spoke to a few dozen members and guests of the National Press Club — an operation located in Washington's downtown, just a short walk to the White House. Just hours later, the association's years-long fight for federal intervention in college sports received, perhaps, a boost from the man living just a few blocks away. President Donald Trump released his long-awaited executive order related to college athletics, announcing in a five-page order titled 'SAVING COLLEGE SPORTS' that he is directing members of his cabinet to create policy around several aspects of the industry that protect the NCAA and conferences from enforcing and creating rules to govern it. But what exactly does Trump's executive order mean? What will it change, if anything, about college sports' athlete compensation and transfer environment? The short answer, at least for now, is not very much. The longer answer is … well … there are still questions. What are the most important items in the order? Trump's executive order has been a long time coming. In fact, just last week Yahoo Sports obtained a copy of a draft of the order, which isn't wholly different to the one he signed and released on Thursday. Above anything else, the order's preamble describes the college athletics landscape as having been subject to unfair court rulings that 'created an out-of-control, rudderless system' which is 'under unprecedented threat.' 'Waves of recent litigation against collegiate athletics governing rules have eliminated limits on athlete compensation, pay-for-play recruiting inducements, and transfers between universities, unleashing a sea change that threatens the viability of college sports,' Trump writes in the order. He goes on to write critically that some schools are paying their athletes as much as $50 million this year from a combination of House settlement-related revenue share and third-party NIL. 'A national solution is urgently needed to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women's sports,' he writes. How he plans to do this is to direct various members of his cabinet — the attorney general, secretary of labor, secretary of education, etc. — to create policy around several concepts that the NCAA and conferences have been requesting help on from Congress for years. Among those: Protecting scholarships for non-revenue sports: The executive order, most notably, requires schools to maintain or even increase the number of scholarships they provide to non-revenue sports. This is geared to protect Olympic and women's sports that are at risk of elimination as schools direct more funding away from those and to the sports that generate the revenue like football and men's basketball. Those with $125 million or budgets (most of the power league schools) must provide more scholarship opportunities than they did last year, for instance. Those with budgets of $50 million must provide at least the same, as seen in a screen shot of the section here. Prohibit third-party, 'pay-for-play': You might call this the prohibition of booster collective pay to athletes, which, in a way, codifies the House settlement terms that prohibit collective pay to athletes if they are not deemed to be for legitimate endorsement or commercial opportunities. This issue is at the heart of negotiations among attorneys that is expected to result in a resolution soon that permits collectives to operate in a more open capacity than first thought. The executive order reinforces that provision in the House settlement. How does Trump plan to enforce these parameters? Well, that remains a bit murky, but he suggests in the order that members of his cabinet, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, have 30 days to create a plan on the enforcement of such, including potentially withholding federal funding for violators, opening up Title IX investigations, etc. Athlete employment: Trump directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to 'clarify the status of college athletes' — an obvious gesture toward the ongoing debate over courts potentially deeming college athletes as employees. As stated in the order preamble, Trump is against college athletes becoming employees and is clearly, with this directive, ordering cabinet members and the NLRB — he appoints the board — to rule that college athletes are students. Ironically enough, while many college leaders fight against employment, some of them believe collective bargaining is the only solution for the industry. Limited liability protection: This is another issue the NCAA and conferences have spent millions of dollars and six years lobbying for. They want to be protected from legal challenges so they can enforce their rules over things such as transfers, roster limits, booster pay — many of which have been deemed illegal by courts. Trump clearly disagrees with these court rulings, as he notes in the preamble. The order directs the attorney general and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to create policies to protect the 'long-term availability of college athletic scholarship and opportunities' when such is 'unreasonably challenged under antitrust' law. The attorney general and the FTC have 60 days to create such a plan, the order says. What are the immediate impacts of the executive order? The answer here is potentially … nothing. Trump's cabinet members — many of whom are quite busy with other more pressing matters — will need to make policy around these subjects. The specifics of that policy will dictate exactly how pivotal, if at all, this order is. What is a certainty is that whatever policies are created are not law and will likely be subject to legal scrutiny. Congressional action and court rulings are law in this country — not executive orders, legal experts tell Yahoo Sports. Baker even suggested this during his talk Thursday morning. 'You can't fix this stuff from executive order,' he said. 'Our focus for now really needs to be trying to get stuff dealt with through the legislative process.' As it turns out, Wednesday was a historic day for college sports with regard to congressional legislation. An all-encompassing federal college sports bill made its way out of committee for the first time since the NCAA's lobbying efforts began nearly six years ago. The SCORE Act, bipartisan but pro-Republican and NCAA-friendly legislation that many Democrats are against, received the necessary votes to advance out of committees and is eligible for debate on the House floor when members return in September from their traditional summer break. In many ways, the Score Act grants the NCAA and conferences similar protections as Trump's order. Above anything, Trump's executive order may get Congress to more urgently and swiftly push the bill across the goal line. However, if it does advance out of the House, the SCORE Act faces stiff pushback in a divided U.S. Senate, where at least seven Democrats are needed to overcome the filibuster and reach the 60-vote margin for any bill passage. The Senate, though, has been working toward the introduction of its own legislation, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, who, much like Trump, has made college sports regulation a priority. He's been in negotiations now for months with several Democrats, most notably Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and Cory Booker. No agreement has been reached despite more than a year of intense talks. Will Trump's executive order change that? It's one of many questions on the topic that remains a mystery.