As Waltz faces UN post hearings, an update on the Signal situation that led to his initial ousting
Months after the chat was disclosed, questions remain over the controversy, including if federal laws were violated, if classified information was exposed on the commercial messaging app and if anyone else will face consequences.
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Here's what we know and don't know:
Known
: Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked. It is not approved for carrying classified information. On March 14, one day before the strikes, the Defense Department cautioned personnel about the vulnerability of Signal, specifically that Russia was attempting to hack the app, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak to the press and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One known vulnerability is that a malicious actor, if they have access to a person's phone, can link their own device to the user's Signal — and monitor messages remotely.
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Not known
: How frequently the administration and the Defense Department use Signal for sensitive government communications, and whether those on the chat were using unauthorized personal devices to transmit or receive those messages. The department put out an instruction in 2023 restricting what information could be posted on unauthorized and unclassified systems.
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would not say whether she was accessing the information on her personal phone or government-issued phone, citing an ongoing investigation by the National Security Council.
Known
: The government has a requirement under the Presidential Records Act to archive all of those planning discussions.
Not known
: Whether anyone in the group archived the messages as required by law to a government server. The images of the text chain posted by The Atlantic show that the messages were set to disappear in one week.
Known
: Hegseth had an internet connection that bypassed the Pentagon's security protocols — known in the IT industry as a 'dirty' internet line — set up in his office to use Signal on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line have told The Associated Press.
Other Pentagon offices have used them, particularly if there's a need to monitor information or websites that would otherwise be blocked. The biggest advantage of using such a line is that the user would not show up as an IP address assigned to the Defense Department — essentially the user is masked, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with military network security.
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Not known
: If use of the line left any Defense-related materials more vulnerable than they would have been on a Pentagon secure line.
Known
: The chat group included 18 members, including Jeffrey Goldberg, top editor of The Atlantic. The group, called 'Houthi PC Small Group,' likely for Houthi 'principals committee' — was comprised of Trump's senior-most advisers on national security, including Gabbard, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. The National Security Council said the text chain 'appears to be authentic.'
Not known
: How Goldberg got added. Waltz said he built the message chain and didn't know how Goldberg ended up on the chat. He called it a mistake.
Known
: Just hours before the attack on the Houthis in Yemen began, Hegseth shared details on the timing, targets, weapons and sequence of strikes that would take place.
Not known
: Whether the information was classified. Gabbard, Ratcliffe and the White House have all said it was not classified, and Hegseth said the same in a post on social media. Democrats said that strains credulity.
Known
: Hegseth has adamantly denied that 'war plans' were texted on Signal, something current and former U.S. officials called 'semantics.' War plans carry a specific meaning. They often refer to the numbered and highly classified planning documents — sometimes thousands of pages long — that would inform U.S. decisions in case of a major conflict.
But the information Hegseth did post — specific attack details selecting human and weapons storage targets — was a subset of those plans and was likely informed by the same classified intelligence. Posting those details to an unclassified app risked tipping off adversaries of the pending attack and could have put U.S. service members at risk, multiple U.S. officials said.
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Sharing that information on a commercial app like Signal in advance of a strike 'would be a violation of everything that we're about,' said former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who served under Democratic President Barack Obama.
Not known
: If anyone outside the messaging group got access to the Signal texts.
Known
: Hegseth began cracking down on unauthorized leaks of information inside the Defense Department, and his chief of staff issued a memo on March 21 saying the Pentagon would use polygraph tests to determine the sources of recent leaks and prosecute them.
Not known
: Whether Hegseth will take responsibility for the unauthorized release of national defense information regarding the attack plans on the Houthis. Trump in March bristled at a suggestion that Hegseth should step down, saying 'He's doing a great job. He had nothing to do with it.'
Known
: In April, Dan Caldwell, a senior Hegseth adviser who in the Signal chat had been designated as the secretary's point person, was
Not known
: If any others affiliated with the Signal situation will face reprisals.
Known
: Also in April, Hegseth was forced to defend himself against a second assertion that he shared classified material through an unapproved and unsecured network, this time taking airstrike information from a military communications channel and sharing it in a Signal chat with his wife, his brother and others. A person familiar with the chat confirmed to The AP that Hegseth pulled the information — such as launch times and bomb drop times of U.S. warplanes about to strike Houthi targets in Yemen — he posted in the chat from a secure communications channel used by U.S. Central Command.
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Not known
: If that's the extent of Hegseth's Signal usage.
Known
: The Pentagon's watchdog has begun looking into Hegseth's use of Signal, and also whether any of Hegseth's aides were asked to delete Signal messages that may have shared sensitive military information with a reporter.
Not known
: What the inspector general will find, or what will be done as a result of those findings.
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Gabbard's claims of an anti-Trump conspiracy are not supported by declassified documents
WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this month declassified material that she claimed proved a 'treasonous conspiracy' by the Obama administration in 2016 to politicize U.S. intelligence in service of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Donald Trump's election victory. As evidence, Gabbard cited newly declassified emails from Obama officials and a five-year-old classified House report in hopes of undermining the intelligence community's conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Trump and denigrate his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Russia's activities during the 2016 election remain some of the most examined events in recent history. The Kremlin's campaign and the subsequent U.S. government response were the subject of at least five major investigations by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence committee; two Justice Department special counsels; and the department's inspector general. Those investigations either concluded — or accepted the conclusion — that Russia embarked on a campaign to interfere in the election through the use of social media and hacked material. The House-led probe, conducted by Trump allies, also concurred that Russia ran an election interference campaign but said the purpose was to sow chaos in the U.S. rather than boost Trump. Several of the reports criticize the actions of Obama administration officials, particularly at the FBI, but do not dispute the fundamental findings that Moscow sought to interfere in the election. The Associated Press has reviewed those reports to evaluate how Gabbard's claims stack up: Russian election interference CLAIM: 'The intelligence community had one assessment: that Russia did not have the intent and capability to try to impact the outcome of the U.S. election leading up to Election Day. The same assessment was made after the election.' — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday. The documents Gabbard released do not support her claim. She cites a handful of emails from 2016 in which officials conclude that Russia had no intention of manipulating the U.S. vote count through cyberattacks on voting systems. President Barack Obama's administration never alleged that voting infrastructure was tampered with. Rather, the administration said Russia ran a covert influence campaign using hacked and stolen material from prominent Democrats. Russian operatives then used that information as part of state-funded media and social media operations to inflame U.S. public opinion. More than two dozen Russians were indicted in 2018 in connection with those efforts. Republican-led investigations in Congress have affirmed that conclusion, and the emails that Gabbard released do not contradict that finding. Shift in assessment? CLAIM: 'There was a shift, a 180-degree shift, from the intelligence community's assessment leading up to the election to the one that President Obama directed be produced after Donald Trump won the election that completely contradicted those assessments that had come previously.' — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday. There was no shift. The emails Gabbard released show that a Department of Homeland Security official in August 2016 told then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper there was 'no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count.' The public assessment the Obama administration made public in January 2017 reached the same conclusion: 'DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying." Putin's intent CLAIM: 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.' — Gabbard on Truth Social Wednesday. The material declassified this week reveals some dissent within the intelligence community about whether Putin wanted to help Trump or simply inflame the U.S. public. That same question led to a partisan divide on the House Intelligence panel when it examined the matter several years later. Gabbard's memo released last week cites a 'whistleblower' who she says served in the intelligence community at the time and who is quoted as saying that he could not 'concur in good conscience' with the intelligence community's judgment that Russia had a 'decisive preference' for Trump. Such dissent and debate are not unusual in the drafting of intelligence reports. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee examined whether there was any political interference in the Obama administration's conclusions and reported that 'all analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper.' In 2018, Putin directly addressed the question of whether he preferred Trump at a press conference in Helsinki even as he sidestepped a question about whether he directed any of his subordinates to help Trump. 'Yes, I did,' Putin said. 'Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.' Steele dossier CLAIM: 'They used already discredited information like the Steele dossier — they knew it was discredited at the time.' — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday. The dossier refers to a collection of opposition research files compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, whose work was funded by Democrats during the 2016 election. Those files included uncorroborated tips and salacious gossip about Trump's ties to Russia, but the importance to the Russia investigation has sometimes been overstated. It was not the basis for the FBI's decision to open an investigation in July 2016 into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, the Justice Department's inspector general found. Some of the records released by Gabbard this week also reveal that it was a Central Intelligence Agency human source close to the Kremlin that the agency primarily relied on for its conclusion that Putin wanted to help Trump and hurt Clinton, not the Steele dossier. FBI agents on the case didn't even come to possess the dossier until weeks into their inquiry. Even so, Trump supporters have seized on the unverified innuendo in the document to undercut the broader Russia investigation. Many of Steele's claims have since been discredited or denied. It is true, however, that the FBI and Justice Department relied in part on the Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants to eavesdrop on the communications of a former Trump campaign adviser, the inspector general found. FBI agents continued to pursue those warrants even after questions arose about the credibility of Steele's reporting. The dossier was also summarized — over the objections of then-CIA Director John Brennan, he has said — in a two-page annex to the classified version of the intelligence community assessment.
Associated Press
9 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Gabbard's claims of an anti-Trump conspiracy are not supported by declassified documents
WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this month declassified material that she claimed proved a 'treasonous conspiracy' by the Obama administration in 2016 to politicize U.S. intelligence in service of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Donald Trump's election victory. As evidence, Gabbard cited newly declassified emails from Obama officials and a five-year-old classified House report in hopes of undermining the intelligence community's conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Trump and denigrate his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Russia's activities during the 2016 election remain some of the most examined events in recent history. The Kremlin's campaign and the subsequent U.S. government response were the subject of at least five major investigations by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence committee; two Justice Department special counsels; and the department's inspector general. Those investigations either concluded — or accepted the conclusion — that Russia embarked on a campaign to interfere in the election through the use of social media and hacked material. The House-led probe, conducted by Trump allies, also concurred that Russia ran an election interference campaign but said the purpose was to sow chaos in the U.S. rather than boost Trump. Several of the reports criticize the actions of Obama administration officials, particularly at the FBI, but do not dispute the fundamental findings that Moscow sought to interfere in the election. The Associated Press has reviewed those reports to evaluate how Gabbard's claims stack up: Russian election interferenceCLAIM: 'The intelligence community had one assessment: that Russia did not have the intent and capability to try to impact the outcome of the U.S. election leading up to Election Day. The same assessment was made after the election.' — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday. The documents Gabbard released do not support her claim. She cites a handful of emails from 2016 in which officials conclude that Russia had no intention of manipulating the U.S. vote count through cyberattacks on voting systems. President Barack Obama's administration never alleged that voting infrastructure was tampered with. Rather, the administration said Russia ran a covert influence campaign using hacked and stolen material from prominent Democrats. Russian operatives then used that information as part of state-funded media and social media operations to inflame U.S. public opinion. More than two dozen Russians were indicted in 2018 in connection with those efforts. Republican-led investigations in Congress have affirmed that conclusion, and the emails that Gabbard released do not contradict that finding. Shift in assessment? CLAIM: 'There was a shift, a 180-degree shift, from the intelligence community's assessment leading up to the election to the one that President Obama directed be produced after Donald Trump won the election that completely contradicted those assessments that had come previously.' — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday. There was no shift. The emails Gabbard released show that a Department of Homeland Security official in August 2016 told then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper there was 'no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count.' The public assessment the Obama administration made public in January 2017 reached the same conclusion: 'DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.' Putin's intent CLAIM: 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.' — Gabbard on Truth Social Wednesday. The material declassified this week reveals some dissent within the intelligence community about whether Putin wanted to help Trump or simply inflame the U.S. public. That same question led to a partisan divide on the House Intelligence panel when it examined the matter several years later. Gabbard's memo released last week cites a 'whistleblower' who she says served in the intelligence community at the time and who is quoted as saying that he could not 'concur in good conscience' with the intelligence community's judgment that Russia had a 'decisive preference' for Trump. Such dissent and debate are not unusual in the drafting of intelligence reports. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee examined whether there was any political interference in the Obama administration's conclusions and reported that 'all analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper.' In 2018, Putin directly addressed the question of whether he preferred Trump at a press conference in Helsinki even as he sidestepped a question about whether he directed any of his subordinates to help Trump. 'Yes, I did,' Putin said. 'Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.' Steele dossier CLAIM: 'They used already discredited information like the Steele dossier — they knew it was discredited at the time.' — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday. The dossier refers to a collection of opposition research files compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, whose work was funded by Democrats during the 2016 election. Those files included uncorroborated tips and salacious gossip about Trump's ties to Russia, but the importance to the Russia investigation has sometimes been overstated. It was not the basis for the FBI's decision to open an investigation in July 2016 into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, the Justice Department's inspector general found. Some of the records released by Gabbard this week also reveal that it was a Central Intelligence Agency human source close to the Kremlin that the agency primarily relied on for its conclusion that Putin wanted to help Trump and hurt Clinton, not the Steele dossier. FBI agents on the case didn't even come to possess the dossier until weeks into their inquiry. Even so, Trump supporters have seized on the unverified innuendo in the document to undercut the broader Russia investigation. Many of Steele's claims have since been discredited or denied. It is true, however, that the FBI and Justice Department relied in part on the Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants to eavesdrop on the communications of a former Trump campaign adviser, the inspector general found. FBI agents continued to pursue those warrants even after questions arose about the credibility of Steele's reporting. The dossier was also summarized — over the objections of then-CIA Director John Brennan, he has said — in a two-page annex to the classified version of the intelligence community assessment.
CNN
34 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump's Epstein nightmare worsens amid new revelations and a GOP revolt
Donald Trump Tulsi Gabbard Fighting disinformation RussiaFacebookTweetLink Follow The Jeffrey Epstein morass surrounding President Donald Trump is deepening amid growing defiance by some Republicans and despite the administration's most inflammatory attempt yet at distraction. New reports Wednesday that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that his name appeared in documents related to the case of Epstein, an accused sex trafficker, offered a plausible explanation for the president's growing fury over the drama. They will fuel accusations of a cover-up since the administration has refused to release the files. And although there is no evidence that Trump was involved in any wrongdoing or that he knew of Epstein's criminal activities when they ran in the same social circle decades ago, there is bound to be intense speculation about the nature of mentions about the president in the investigative files. The storm is also intensifying in Congress. A vote in the House Oversight Committee to subpoena the Department of Justice for files related to Epstein worsened Trump's political headache, since it revealed the appetite for more disclosure among some MAGA Republicans. The GOP-majority committee also voted to subpoena testimony from Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term. Trump responded to the ballooning crisis with the oldest trick in his political book, pushing a conspiracy theory against Barack Obama — a decade and a half after his false claims about the 44th president's birthplace electrified his coalition and political career. He enlisted the top US intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, who misleadingly claimed in a theatrical White House appearance that Obama's handling of Russian election meddling in 2016 amounted to a coup to destroy Trump's first presidency, a day after her boss accused his predecessor of treason. There is no evidence that Trump did anything wrong or illegal in his interactions with Epstein. But days of stalling by the White House and new disclosures drove speculation to a fever pitch over their relationship in the 1990s and early 2000s, long before the wealthy financier was charged with sex trafficking and abuse and died in prison in 2019. The frantic confluence of events Wednesday underscored Trump's failed attempts to put a lid on the Epstein drama, the most serious challenge to his authority over the MAGA base in either of his administrations. In fact, the storm is now gathering its own momentum, and it's increasingly hard to see how the president calms it. The controversy is overshadowing Trump's recent political successes, including trade deals he announced with Japan and the Philippines and recent legal victories enabling a key goal: the gutting of swaths of the federal government. And it's outracing House Speaker Mike Johnson's attempts to contain it. Among developments on Wednesday with the greatest capacity to damage Trump politically were revelations that Bondi warned him in May that his name appeared in documents related to the Epstein case. The conversation, which also included Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, was characterized by two White House officials as a 'routine briefing' that covered the scope of the Justice Department's findings. Trump's name appearing in the files, they said, was not the sole focus of the discussions. Bondi also told Trump that several other high-profile figures were mentioned. She also briefed that investigators did not find evidence of an Epstein client list or that suicide was not his cause of death — two key elements of a MAGA conspiracy. Simply being mentioned along with hundreds of others in documents does not imply wrongdoing by the president. And White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to CNN that Trump had kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club because he regarded Epstein as a 'creep.' Still, details of Bondi's briefing, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, offered new context about the political controversy that erupted over the Epstein files, since it took place three months after Bondi raised huge expectations for disclosure by telling Fox in February that she had Epstein's client list sitting on her desk. It's hardly a surprise that Trump was mentioned in the Epstein files, since his former friendship with the disgraced financier was well known. The men were pictured together on multiple occasions. And Trump's name was included in flight logs of Epstein's plane that were among documents released by Bondi earlier this year in a political stunt meant to reward conservative bloggers. But Wednesday's revelations are politically difficult for Trump since they will renew speculation that the administration's refusal to release Epstein documents, as his top aides promised on the campaign trail, is motivated by an attempt at a cover-up. Now that it is established that Trump's name is in the documents, speculation will go into overdrive on the nature of the mentions and whether they add to the public knowledge of Trump's ties to Epstein and whether he knew anything about the offenses with which the financier was later charged. Again, this does not imply Trump himself did something wrong. But since he's the sitting president, the focus on him and his handling of the Epstein matter in government will be intense. This is especially the case since Bondi and Kash Patel, who now heads the FBI, had vehemently demanded the release of Epstein documents before finding themselves on the other side of the conspiracy theory they had puffed up when they took top jobs. Their agencies issued a joint statement earlier this month saying that there was no evidence of a client list or to support the conspiracy theory that Epstein was murdered. But the pattern of inconsistencies and denials that typically fuel Washington's scandal machine are piling up. Trump, for instance, appeared to deny this month that Bondi had told him his name was in the Epstein files, which he then claimed were made up by Obama and fired former FBI Director James Comey. Ironically, the growing clamor is a test case of why grand jury material and other documents are typically sealed. That's partly out of a need to protect the reputations of people — including witnesses, victims and blameless third parties — who are identified during an investigation but are not charged with any offenses. But the MAGA movement is obsessed with conspiracy theories and has a bedrock belief that Washington is run by a cabal of 'deep state' elites who suppress the truth. This tempted Trump, Bondi and other officials to tap into the political well and to promise the release of previously sealed information on famous cases also including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. When the administration then refused to make public all the evidence about Epstein, top officials looked like they'd become avatars of the deep state they once decried. As anger built in the MAGA base, the Justice Department launched an effort to get court permission to unseal grand jury testimony in the case. But a federal judge in Florida on Wednesday ruled against the release of material that represents only a small portion of the thousands of documents in the Epstein case file. The DOJ move is a legal long shot, but it may still serve the purpose of building political cover for the administration as supporters demand more transparency. Trump's growing nightmare was exacerbated in a rare show of defiance by Republicans in Congress on Wednesday. A subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee voted 8-2 to subpoena the Department of Justice to release files related to Epstein. Republican Reps. Nancy Mace, Scott Perry and Brian Jack joined with Democrats in a revolt against Johnson's leadership. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, meanwhile, subpoenaed Maxwell, a day after Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, announced that he'd visit her in prison to see if she has more information on Epstein's offenses. Blanche's move raised alarms because Trump, with his pardon power, could commute her sentence or pardon her, suggesting an incentive for Maxwell to offer testimony that might help him. CNN's Kaitlan Collins, citing two people familiar with the meeting, reported that it is expected to take place on Thursday. The actions of the Oversight Committee suggested there is genuine desire for more accountability among some Republicans despite the possibility that it could inflict political damage on the president. This suggests that any hopes harbored by Trump and Johnson that the furor might abate over the summer recess will prove to be ill-founded. Johnson has accused Democrats of playing political games over Epstein, since the documents they now want released were not made public during the Biden administration. And he denied that his attempt to shut down House votes on the matter before September meant he was losing control of his conference. 'No one in Congress is blocking Epstein documents. No one in Congress is doing that,' the speaker said Wednesday. 'What we're doing here, Republicans are preventing Democrats from making a mockery of the Rules Committee process because we refuse to engage in their political charade.' But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer taunted Johnson, accusing him of 'skedaddling out of town early.' The New York Democrat added, 'If the speaker thinks he can make the Epstein escapade disappear by sending folks home early, he's got another thing coming.' The looming political question is whether fury over the Epstein saga among prominent MAGA media figures and influencers is mirrored more broadly in Trump's base. Summer recess town halls involving GOP members could begin to answer that question. A Quinnipiac poll released on July 16 showed splits on the issue. While 40% of Republicans backed how Trump was handling the issue, 36% disapproved. But a CBS/YouGov poll Sunday showed that only 11% of Republicans said Epstein-related issues matter a lot to how they evaluate Trump's presidency. Trump has responded to the building Epstein scandal with increasingly heated attempts to distract attention and to provide alternative programing for the conservative media universe. Gabbard's appearance in the White House briefing room on Wednesday represented the most striking effort yet to weaponize elements of the federal government to advance Trump's personal political aims. The director of national intelligence declassified a highly sensitive congressional report written by Republicans in the first Trump presidency to bolster her claim that the Obama team plotted to ruin her boss's first administration with its investigations and public statements on Russian election meddling. 'The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,' Gabbard said. She focused in particular on the report's conclusion that an intelligence community finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin developed a preference for Trump in 2016 and wanted to help him win was based on poor sourcing. 'They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true,' Gabbard said. While there was a debate among intelligence analysts about Putin's intent, Gabbard's presentation represented an attempt to cherry-pick evidence that is not reflected in other congressional and government assessments of Russian election meddling. The overwhelming consensus in Washington, including from a report released in 2020 by the Senate Intelligence Committee on which Secretary of State Marco Rubio served, is that Russian interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win and to hurt Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The documentation that Gabbard produced did not back up Trump's absurd claims of treason by Obama or her own assertion that there was an orchestrated plot to discredit Trump. Democrats accused her of jeopardizing the safety of US intelligence sources and offering valuable information to the Russians while sending a message to assets that it was not safe to report politically sensitive information. Even if Obama did something wrong, Trump's argument that he should be in prison would be undercut, ironically, by one of his own famous legal victories. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in a case related to Trump's indictment on charges of election interference related to the 2020 election that ex-presidents enjoy substantial immunity from prosecution. The choreographed outrage in the White House briefing room, meanwhile, showed that the Russian election-meddling controversy — one of Trump's greatest obsessions — is back and is sowing yet more division and mistrust among voters. Gabbard's decision to revive it was a reminder that Putin's scheme was one of the highest-yielding, lowest-cost intelligence operations in history.
