AG American Greatness - Revenge or Justice? Tulsi Gabbard’s doc dump revives a damning question: Did Obama’s intel chiefs knowingly push the Russia hoax to cripple Trump before he even took office? By Victor Davis Hanson July 24, 2025

 AG American Greatness

Revenge or Justice?

Tulsi Gabbard’s doc dump revives a damning question: Did Obama’s intel chiefs knowingly push the Russia hoax to cripple Trump before he even took office?

By Victor Davis Hanson

July 24, 2025

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents—with promises of much more to follow.

The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors—purportedly along with President Obama himself—in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency.

The released documents add some new details to what over the last decade has become accepted knowledge.

Congressional committees, special prosecutors, and the inspectors general had all previously issued reports that largely confirmed the general outlines of the skullduggery that began in 2015-16.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign, later aided by the top echelon of the FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence, sought—falsely—to seed a narrative that Trump had colluded directly with Russia to win unfairly the 2016 election.

When that campaign gambit failed to alter the 2016 results, the Obama administration doubled down during the transition to undermine the incoming Trump presidency.

Next, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “all-star” legal team found no evidence of direct Trump-Putin collusion to hijack the election. But his investigation did sabotage 22 months of Trump’s first term, marked by constant leaks and hysterical rumors that Trump was soon to be convicted and jailed as a “Russian asset.”

By 2020, the frustrated intelligence agencies and former “authorities” now absurdly further lied that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop had “all the earmarks”—once again—of Russian interference.

So, what could be new about Gabbard’s latest release?

One, after the 2016 election of Donald Trump but before his inauguration, Obama convened a strange meeting with his outgoing intelligence and investigatory heads—CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and a few others.

Contrary to a four-year Democrat Party narrative that “18 intelligence agencies” had long claimed Russian collusion, the top directors apprised Obama that their expert colleagues had found no such evidence of Trump-Putin collusion.

Yet outgoing President Obama allegedly directed them to ignore such an assessment. Instead, they began spreading narratives that President-elect Trump had been colluding with the Russians.

Leaks followed. Media hysteria crested. And soon Mueller and his left-wing “dream team” of lawyers targeted President Trump.

Further new information may confirm that Brennan’s CIA—and those he briefed in the Oval Office—had known for some time that the Russians themselves were confused about why they were falsely being accused of colluding with Trump to rig the election.

Of course, Russian operatives, like their Chinese counterparts, often seek to cause havoc in American institutions, such as hacking emails or spreading online disinformation. But they may have been nevertheless curious why Hillary Clinton was making such false accusations that they were working directly with Trump, and why the Obama administration was acting upon them.

Obama has now claimed these new charges are outrageous and beneath the dignity of the presidency.

He did not, however, flatly contradict the new information. He should have issued an unambiguous denial that he had never ordered his intelligence chiefs in December 2016 to ignore their associates’ assessments and instead to assume Trump’s collusion with Putin.

These sustained efforts of the Clinton campaign, Obama appointees, and ex-intelligence chiefs and their media counterparts between 2015 and 2020 severely undermined the 2016 Trump campaign.

They bushwhacked the 2017 presidential transition.

They hamstrung the Trump presidency.

And they may well have hurt Trump’s 2020 election bid.

Summed up, here is the damage caused by the Trump-Putin collusion lies.

1. They emboldened “experts” in 2020 to again lie blatantly and shamelessly to the American people that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was yet another fake product of Russian interference to help reelect Trump.

2. The media were equally guilty. Journalists partnered with current and ex-Obama appointees by disseminating fake documents like the Steele dossier and working with giants like Twitter and Facebook. During the 2020 campaign, the FBI and social media sought to censor accurate news stories that the laptop was indeed authentic and already verified as such by the FBI.

3. These operations may have had serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Dictatorial Russia is an adversary of the U.S.

But by needlessly and falsely claiming that Russia had intervened in two elections directly to partner with Donald Trump, Obama-era officials and Clinton-campaign activists destroyed President Trump’s own credibility to sustain a workable relationship with a nuclear Russia.

In addition, the lying and extra-legal operations of the FBI and CIA only further convinced the paranoid Russians that they could not trust the U.S. government—given it had been engaging in the very conspiracy lies that were more akin to its own than America’s.

Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others will likely never face legal consequences for the damage they’ve done to our institutions and foreign policy.

But that does not mean they should be exempt from an ongoing and disinterested effort to find and finally expose the whole truth. 

About Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

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Photo: US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 23, 2025. US President Donald Trump on July 22, 2025 accused his predecessor Barack Obama of treason and called for his prosecution over a report alleging that officials in the Democrat's administration manipulated information on Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to a report published on July 18 that asserted the Obama officials had been part of a "treasonous conspiracy." (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

Notable Replies

Avatar for Everett_Brunson

Everett_Brunson

July 24, 2025

My best advice is to read the documents for one’s self. It is all there and easily found at DNI dot Gov. One wonders what (if any) of the 114 pages released by Gabbard were ever seen by Mueller, Rubio, or Durham. The best way to control an investigation and receive a wanted outcome is to control what information is shared. And part of the email stream is concerned with just that-----what to share and at what security level.

In reading the actual documents, one also clearly sees the shift on Russia’s intentions regarding the disruption of the 2016 election. Where earlier assessments showed Russia felt that Clinton would win and the best use of collected dirt would be its release AFTER the election. Prior to the December 9th meeting at the White House, there was no mention of the Steel Dossier. That changed after. Also, the number of people tasked with writing the new PDB was reduced to five-----unheard of before. And which five? The usual suspects.

The culprits will throw as much mud as possible to hide the truth, but the internet has changed information gathering for all time. No longer can real truths be hidden or swept away.

Matt Taibbi is on the hunt and folks should pay close attention to what he is unearthing.

I sincerely doubt any of the rascals will be held to judicial account, but the court of public opinion is a totally other thing. It is crucial that the electorate be an informed electorate. No longer should the public be swayed by the mouthings and accusations of the actual perpetrators. Nor should anyone place any faith in a complicit press.

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Avatar for Christopher_Chantril

Christopher_Chantril

July 24, 2025

I believe we need a replay of the Road to Canossa, and humiliation of the Holy Roman Emperor before the Pope.

President Obama needs to be thoroughly humiliated so that no president tries this again for a while.

Avatar for afhack73

afhack73

July 24, 2025

Democrats’ criminal conspiracy against Trump should disqualify them as a party from ever again putting forth one of their own for president. But that sort of thing happens only in a world where the bad guys are afraid of the law, and these people are not. The best we can hope for in the wake of Democrats’ eight-year-long attacks on the country is that they should be good for at least twenty, and possibly thirty, years before they again see one of their own in the White House. The next time a Democrat or a gang of them does something blatantly criminal, try inserting the old Mafia in their place, and the clarity abounds.