Trump's intel chief Tulsi Gabbard reignites political battles with 2016 election documents on Russia

CBS News

4 days ago

The release of more than 100 pages of declassified files and a memorandum by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has reignited political battles over Russia's actions during the 2016 presidential election, a topic that has long incensed President Trump and put the actions of the U.S. intelligence community in partisan crosshairs.
Gabbard's office on Friday alleged in the memorandum, which accompanied the files, that they contained what she called evidence of "suppression" and manipulation of the intelligence underlying a 2017 community-wide assessment of Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The files include email exchanges, excerpts from a President's Daily Brief and a readout from a principals committee meeting, chiefly from a period during the Obama administration.
In a statement and social media posts, Gabbard claimed the materials, which were marked declassified on July 17, 2025, were evidence of a "treasonous conspiracy" and "years-long coup" plotted by Obama administration officials against Mr. Trump, and said she would forward them to the Department of Justice as part of a criminal referral. She also said in subsequent media appearances that more declassifications about the matter would be made.
Democrats fiercely disputed her claims, pointing to the findings of a bipartisan Senate investigation that concluded Russia had attempted to influence the 2016 election. They accused Gabbard herself of misrepresenting intelligence findings and processes.
"What you saw from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was not just a lie, but a very dangerous lie, because when you start throwing around language like sedition and treason, somebody is going to get hurt," said Congressman Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" Sunday.
"[T]he intelligence community is full of very good people who do their jobs every single day, and now they're watching their leader do something that each and every one of them knows is dishonest," Himes said.
"This is just another example of the DNI trying to cook the books, rewrite history, and erode trust in the intelligence agencies she's supposed to be leading," Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement.
The memorandum released by Gabbard appears to conflate different kinds of Russian operations during the 2016 election cycle while alleging Obama administration officials fabricated a narrative designed to undermine Mr. Trump. It points several times to select phrases in the documents that say Russia lacked the intent or the capability to use cyber operations to target U.S. election infrastructure, change vote tallies, and overturn the election — which previous investigations agreed did not happen.
But while no evidence emerged to indicate Russia engaged in a vote-switching cyberattack, there was evidence that showed a multi-pronged Kremlin influence campaign that attempted to sway American voters. That influence campaign included hack-and-leak operations and social media posts designed to undermine the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and bolster then-candidate Trump's, according to the intelligence community's assessment.
In the years after the 2016 presidential election, multiple reviews of the intelligence community's findings — including the Senate report and an investigation led by special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Mr. Trump — reinforced its conclusions.
A CIA review of the tradecraft involved in the agency's assessment released earlier this month found some of its judgments may have been rushed and the confidence levels attached to one of them may have been too high, but it did not change the conclusion that Russia's efforts were designed to benefit Mr. Trump's candidacy.
Gabbard's statements on Friday were praised and recirculated multiple times by the president, senior White House officials and Republican lawmakers. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton wrote in a social media post, "It will take decades for the Intelligence Community to recover from the damage done during the Obama and Biden presidencies."
Senior White House official Stephen Miller wrote that Gabbard had "exposed the startling depths of a seditious coup against the Republic."
The memorandum also criticizes leaks from what it terms "IC officials" or "Deep State officials in the IC" — with "IC" referring to the intelligence community — to media outlets at the time the assessments were being drafted that said Russia had intervened in the election in an effort to help President Trump. The memo does not, however, identify these individuals or provide other evidence about the origin of those disclosures.
It also highlights instances in which certain agencies disputed or pushed to change language included in evolving intelligence assessments of Russia's cyber activity. For instance, it cites an FBI official who suggested in an exchange in September of 2016 that language about Russia's intent to use cyber attacks to disrupt the 2016 election be "softened."
"[W]e would prefer for the first sentence regarding Russia's intent to be softened," the official wrote. "The way it currently reads, it would indicate that we have definitive information that Russia does intend to disrupt our elections and we are uncomfortable making that assessment at this point."
Dissents from different agencies are common and conclusions can change as more intelligence is collected or analysis is done, according to current and former officials familiar with the drafting process for intelligence assessments. It is not clear from the redacted selection of emails released by Gabbard how the language flagged by the FBI was finalized.
Warner has expressed concerns about the effect of Gabbard's recent actions on intelligence sharing by partners of the United States, noting that representatives of the intelligence-sharing alliance known as the Five Eyes — which includes the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada — had approached him for answers.
"I have had Five Eye partners say, 'Warner, what the hell is going on?'" Warner said during a panel discussion at last week's Aspen Security forum, hours before the 2016 files were released. "I do believe our Five Eyes partners and others are not sharing as much information as they would." Gabrielle Ake
contributed to this report.