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  • 7/23/2025
During a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard spoke about documents declassified following President Trump accusing former President Obama of treason.
Transcript
00:00Tulsi thank you for being here. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. At President Trump's
00:08direction and with the support and coordination with the House Intelligence Committee Chairman
00:13Rick Crawford, today we've released a declassified oversight majority staff report
00:18that was produced in September of 2020. The stunning revelations that we are releasing today
00:26should be of concern to every American. This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This has to do
00:31with the integrity of our Democratic Republic and American voters having faith that the votes cast
00:37will count. There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national
00:44security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew
00:50was false. They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016
00:56election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true.
01:02It wasn't. The report that we released today shows in great detail how they carried this out. They
01:09manufactured findings from shoddy sources. They suppressed evidence and credible intelligence
01:15that disproved their false claims. They disobeyed traditional tradecraft intelligence community
01:22standards and withheld the truth from the American people. In doing so, they conspired to subvert the
01:28will of the American people who elected Donald Trump in that election in November of 2016. They worked with
01:35their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump
01:41and launching what would be a years-long coup against him and his administration. We're here today
01:48because the American people deserve the truth, they deserve accountability, and they deserve justice.
01:55The records that we released on Friday that were ODNI records, Senator Chuck Grassley's release on Monday of what is
02:01known as the Clinton Annex, which was an appendix to the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General's 2018 report,
02:09as well as the House Intelligence Committee's majority oversight report that we're releasing today,
02:14all come back to and confirm the same report. There was a gross politicization and manipulation
02:22of intelligence by the Obama administration intended to delegitimize President Trump even before he was
02:29inaugurated, ultimately usurping the will of the American people. I'm going to go over the key
02:34findings from the House Intelligence Report, which investigated the claims that were made by an
02:41intelligence community assessment ordered by President Obama and published in January of 2017.
02:48First, Putin's principal interests relating to the 2016 election were to undermine faith in the U.S.
02:53democratic process, not show any preference of a certain candidate. In fact, this report shows Putin
03:01held back leaking – held back from leaking compromising material on Hillary Clinton prior to the election,
03:08instead planning to release it after the election to weaken what Moscow viewed as an inevitable Clinton presidency.
03:16In the January 2017 intelligence community assessment that President Obama ordered,
03:20John Brennan, who was CIA director at the time, and the intelligence community, intentionally suppressed
03:26intelligence that showed Putin was saving the most damaging material that he had in his possession
03:33about Hillary Clinton until after her potential and likely victory.
03:39The report goes into great detail about the information that Russia and Putin had which – on Hillary Clinton,
03:45which included possible criminal acts, like secret meetings with multiple named U.S. religious organizations,
03:52in which State Department officials offered, in exchange for supporting Secretary Clinton's campaign
03:58for the presidency, significant increases in financing from the State Department.
04:04They also had documents that showed the patronage of the State Department to State Department employees
04:10who would go and support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. There were high-level DNC emails that
04:17detailed evidence of Hillary's, quote, psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression,
04:23and cheerfulness, and that then-Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.
04:32Then-CIA Director Brennan and the intelligence community mischaracterized intelligence and relied on dubious
04:37substandard sources to create a contrived false narrative that Putin developed a, quote, unquote,
04:42clear preference for Trump. Brennan and the IC misled lawmakers by referencing the debunked Steele dossier
04:50to assess, quote, unquote, Russia's plans and intentions, falsely suggesting that this dossier
04:56had intelligence value when he knew that it was discredited. The intelligence community excluded
05:02significant intelligence and ignored or selectively quoted reliable intelligence that
05:07contradicted the intelligence community assessment's key findings on Putin's alleged support for Trump,
05:13including this intelligence reporting, would have exposed the ICA's claim as implausible,
05:20if not ridiculous. The intelligence community assessment omitted reliably sourced information,
05:26such as how some Russian intelligence officials were, quote, unquote, planning for candidate Hillary Clinton's
05:31victory, while others assessed neither Trump nor Clinton would respect Russia's interests.
05:38As was reflected in the ODNI documents that we released on Friday, multiple intelligence community
05:43assessments released in the months leading up to the November 2016 election concluded that Russia had
05:49neither the intent nor capability to impact the outcome of the U.S. election. On December 5th of 2016,
05:56the FBI and ODNI gave the House Intelligence Committee its first post-election classified briefing in
06:03which there was no mention of Putin aspiring to elect Trump by either agency. The presidential daily brief
06:11drafted on December 8th of 2016 stated that no Russian or criminal actors impacted vote counts.
06:18This document was pulled just hours before it was to be published due to, quote, unquote,
06:23new guidance. If it had been published, it would have been briefed to both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.
06:31On December 9th, 2016, a National Security Council meeting was called to gather President Obama's senior national security officials,
06:37which included CIA Director Brennan, then Obama DNI James Clapper, Susan Rice, and others.
06:45Following that secret meeting, DNI Clapper's assistant sent an email to the intelligence community with the subject line,
06:51POTUS tasking on Russia election meddling, tasking ODNI leaders to create a new assessment per the President's request.
07:01The House Intelligence Committee oversight report that we released today reveals that, quote,
07:05unlike routine intelligence community analysis, the intelligence community assessment
07:10was a high-profile product ordered by the President, President Obama.
07:15It directed senior intelligence community agency heads and created an intelligence community assessment
07:22limited to just five analysts using one principal drafter.
07:27This is not something that occurs in the normal path of producing an intelligence community assessment
07:34that reflects the views across the intelligence community.
07:37The production of this intelligence community assessment was subject to unusual directives,
07:42directly from the President and senior political appointees, especially the former Director of the CIA, John Brennan.
07:50The House Intelligence Committee oversight report also shows how later that same day, on December 9th,
07:56Brennan ordered the publication of, quote, unquote, substandard reporting on Russian activities,
08:01which had previously been withheld from publication of prior assessments because the information was judged,
08:07quote, to have not met longstanding publication standards.
08:11Some of the information later used in the Obama ordered assessment over the objections of veteran CIA
08:18officers was, quote, unquote, unclear or from unknown sources.
08:24The Intelligence Committee's oversight report reveals that CIA Director Brennan
08:28overruled senior CIA officers who challenged the Obama-ordered intelligence assessment,
08:34stating, quote,
08:35We don't have direct information that Putin wanted to get Trump elected.
08:40Yet, the Obama-directed assessment was published on January 6th, 2017, which explicitly stated,
08:46quote,
08:47We assess Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances
08:52when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,
08:59end of quote.
09:01The CIA and FBI, then led by John Brennan and James Comey, expressed high confidence in this judgment,
09:09while the NSA expressed moderate confidence.
09:13Yet, as the report we released today shows, the ICA, the Intelligence Community Assessment, did not cite
09:19any report where Putin indicated helping Trump win was an objective. The opposite is true.
09:28With regards to the Steele dossier, we now know that one of the source documents that the Obama
09:32Administration used in the creation of this intelligence assessment in January of 2017
09:38was none other than the discredited, unverified Steele dossier.
09:42The House Intel report states, quote,
09:44Contradicting public claims by then CIA Director Brennan that the dossier was not in any way
09:50incorporated into this intelligence assessment. The dossier was referenced in the intelligence
09:56assessment's main body text and further detailed in a two-page assessment annex.
10:02John Brennan lied, and he denied using this dossier in this intelligence assessment that President
10:07Obama ordered because he knew it was discredited. It was a politically motivated, manufactured
10:13document. He directed senior CIA officials to use it anyway.
10:19CIA officer told the House Intelligence Committee staff as they investigated this, quote,
10:26the Director of the CIA, John Brennan, refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier's
10:32many flaws, responded, quote, yes, but doesn't it ring true? Even the bipartisan Senate Select Committee
10:40on Intelligence Report published in 2020 criticized the FBI's handling of the Steele dossier,
10:46noting its completely unverified nature and purposeful sidestepping of intelligence community
10:52procedures in its use. Now, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper,
10:58James Comey, and others, including their mouthpieces in the media, knowingly lied as they repeated the
11:04contrived narrative that was created in this January 2017 intelligence community assessment with high
11:10confidence as though it were fact. John Brennan, as CIA director, stated in a memo to his agency
11:18staff in December of 2016, saying, quote, there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature,
11:25and intent of Russian interference in our presidential elected election. This was reported by NBC News,
11:33confirming that Brennan, along with James Clapper and James Comey, agreed with the CIA's assessment
11:38that Russia intervened to help Trump win the presidency. As Obama's Director of National
11:43Intelligence, James Clapper was tasked with overseeing the creation of this assessment in January of
11:482017 by President Obama, and he expressed confidence in its findings. In a 2018 interview with the Harvard
11:56Gazette, he talked about how he provided Trump with the same classified assessment that President
12:02Obama received, which included the high confidence judgment that Putin directly ordered the hacking
12:08and election interference. Clapper then went on to add, I think they, the Russians, actually influenced
12:15the outcome. This is a brief summary of the details that you'll find within the House majority staff's
12:22report in their investigation into the Obama-directed January 2017 intelligence community assessment.
12:30That leads us to the very same conclusion that we announced in the release of our documents on
12:34Friday. The implications of this are far-reaching and have to do with the integrity of our Democratic
12:42Republic. It has to do with an outgoing President taking action to manufacture intelligence,
12:49to undermine and usurp the will of the American people in that election, and launch what would be
12:55a years-long coup against the incoming President of the United States, Donald Trump. Thank you.

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