(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Former President Barack Obama and his cabinet officials “manufactured and politicized” intelligence to trigger the years-long Russian collusion investigation into Donald Trump following his 2016 victory, newly released documents show.
This latest release is part of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s efforts to expose the years-long weaponization of the intelligence community against Trump, his allies, and his administration.
🧵 Americans will finally learn the truth about how in 2016, intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President @realDonaldTrump, subverting the… pic.twitter.com/UQKKZ5c4Op
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) July 18, 2025
As announced on Friday, Gabbard’s review of internal files concluded that intelligence showed foreign adversaries did not interfere in the election through cyber means. However, these assessments were abruptly discarded shortly before Trump was sworn in as president in 2017.
“The issue I am raising is not a partisan issue. It is one that concerns every American. The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government,” Gabbard said in a statement.
“Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,” she added.
The DNI asserted that leading up to the 2016 election, the intelligence community consistently assessed that Russia was “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.”
On Dec. 7, 2016, talking points for DNI James Clapper stated that foreign foes “did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”
But just a day later, the White House convened top Obama officials, triggering a sudden shift in the narrative.
On Dec. 8, James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch and Andrew McCabe met to discuss Russia.
Following that meeting, Clapper’s executive assistant emailed intelligence leaders instructing them to draft a new assessment “per the President’s request” that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.”
They didn’t stop there. According to Gabbard, Obama officials then “leaked false statements” to the legacy media, including The Washington Post.
Among those statements were, “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.”
Like clockwork, a new intelligence assessment was released on Jan. 6, 2017—just two weeks before Trump’s inauguration. This new assessment contradicted everything intelligence agencies had concluded just weeks earlier.
Gabbard condemned the backroom plot and confirmed that her findings had been referred to the DOJ.
“No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again,” she said.
