The unqualified director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is again proving her unfitness by claiming that former President Barack Obama and his administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” regarding the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In Gabbard’s retelling, based on some declassified materials, Obama and his administration worked to manufacture what the MAGA faithful have come to know as the “Russia hoax,” which is to say the reality that Vladimir Putin’s Russia endeavored to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Trump himself has now adopted this framing, referencing Obama’s “coup” and posting an AI-generated video of him smiling as the former president is arrested and put in prison.
The documents show nothing of the sort, obviously. It’s particularly galling for Trump of all people to accuse a former president of attempting to orchestrate a coup when he’s the only U.S. president to have actually done so. Remember Jan. 6?
The question of whether Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election is not an unexamined one; it is perhaps one of the most deeply investigated issues in recent American political history, having been the subject of multiple congressional and Justice Department inquiries, which all established to some extent that Russia did, in fact, intervene. There was no hoax.
In any case, as with being able to assert that Trump attempted a coup after the 2020 election by simply seeing it unfold on live TV with your own eyes, everyone witnessed the meddling during the 2016 election. Putin’s troll army and bots were all over the place, and were documented by entities beyond the federal government.
Gabbard is a well-known conspiracy herself, a known fan of Russian-aligned former Syrian despot Bashar Assad. Throughout her career in public life, she has repeatedly gravitated towards Russian talking points and propaganda, from downplaying Assad’s atrocities to opposing American assistance for Ukraine and questioning NATO. She was not qualified for her role when confirmed and we highly doubt she’s developed all the necessary skills learning on the job.
This fiasco demonstrates that she’s understood her position not as being a serious analyst of the troves of information this government produces from the 18 organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community, but a team player for Trump, a lesson that was no doubt reinforced when Trump publicly rebuked her assessment that Iran was not on the way towards developing nuclear weapons. Having seen what becomes of high-level officials who disagree with the king, she’ll put on whatever show Trump wants.
The timing of this whole affair could not possibly be more transparent. Trump can tell that for the first time since he entered public political life a decade ago, he is at real risk of portions of his hardcore base slipping through his fingers as he flounders on the Epstein documents scandal. He has no credible explanation for why all of a sudden he can’t release the promised files or even acknowledge that they exist, and so is leaning on his minions to make the public conversation about anything else.
It’s not working; perhaps some subset of his base will buy the distractions, but for once there seems to be broad bipartisan agreement against him on Epstein. That doesn’t make distractions like this any less dangerous.
