US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has accused former president Barack Obama of directing the manipulation of intelligence findings that suggested Russia interfered in the 2016 US election to benefit President Donald Trump.
"There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false," Gabbard told reporters at the White House.
.@DNIGabbard: "There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Barack Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they KNEW was false." pic.twitter.com/qJ033F6Qwv
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 23, 2025
"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. It wasn't," she added.
Gabbard’s claim comes as Trump escalates accusations against Obama, calling the affair a "coup" attempt.
"The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama," Trump said Tuesday.
"What they did to this country ... starting in 2016 but ... going up to 2020 ... they tried to rig the election, and they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that."
Obama’s office responded in a statement on Wednesday, calling the allegations "bizarre," "outrageous," and "a weak attempt at distraction."
"No evidence presented so far undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes," the statement said, pointing to a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio—now Trump’s secretary of state.
Gabbard releases declassified documentsGabbard released a tranche of declassified intelligence documents last week, followed by another release on Wednesday, which she says support the Trump administration’s accusations that Obama’s team fabricated elements of the Russia assessment.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded in a January 6, 2017 declassified report that "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," and that Moscow had a "clear preference" for then-candidate Trump.
While Gabbard did not dispute Russia’s intentions to sow discord, she argued that the Kremlin held back its most damaging information on Hillary Clinton because it assumed she would win.
"They had plans to release it just prior to her inauguration, to again sow discord and chaos in America," she said.
The Trump administration has tied the new disclosures to what it calls a "treasonous conspiracy" designed to sabotage Trump’s first presidency.
The timing of the accusations also comes amid mounting scrutiny over the Justice Department’s refusal to release documents tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
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Source: TRT