Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a set of documents Wednesday that she described as newly declassified and significant to the origins of the Russia investigation tied to the 2016 presidential election.
Gabbard shared details of the materials with White House reporters during the daily briefing Wednesday afternoon, outlining what she said were findings related to actions taken by senior Obama administration officials and intelligence leadership before President Donald Trump took office.
According to Gabbard, the documents include a House Intelligence Committee report that had been stored in a Central Intelligence Agency vault for nearly a decade.
She said the materials show that senior officials during the Obama administration, including leadership at the FBI and CIA, advanced intelligence assessments that portrayed then-candidate Donald Trump as benefiting from Russian interference, despite what she characterized as a lack of reliable supporting evidence.
Gabbard said the report focuses on intelligence assessments produced in the final weeks of the Obama administration and alleges that information was altered or selectively presented to support conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.
She said the documents show that the underlying claims were known by officials at the time to be unsupported.
During a television segment summarizing the findings, Jesse Watters outlined four core claims that formed the basis of the Russia collusion narrative:
- That Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 election.
- That Putin took action to help Donald Trump win in 2016.
- That Russia possessed blackmail material against Trump, as alleged in the Steele dossier.
- That Russia attempted to collude directly with the Trump campaign.
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According to Gabbard, the documents indicate that none of these claims were supported by reliable intelligence and that officials were aware of that at the time the assessments were produced.
Gabbard said the newly released materials demonstrate that the intelligence community’s conclusions were presented to the public and incoming administration as credible despite internal intelligence assessments that contradicted those conclusions.
She described the documents as showing deliberate actions by senior officials to advance a narrative that Russia interfered to benefit Trump.
At the White House briefing, Gabbard confirmed that she has already referred the documents to federal law enforcement authorities for review.
Reporter Emily Jashinski asked Gabbard directly, “Do you believe that any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior?”
Gabbard responded, “We have referred, and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this.”
Jashinski followed up by asking, “For even former President Obama?”
Gabbard replied, “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirmed that fact.”
Gabbard said the referrals are part of her responsibility as Director of National Intelligence to ensure that potential criminal conduct uncovered through declassification is reviewed by the appropriate authorities.
She did not comment on what specific charges, if any, could result from a Justice Department investigation, noting that such determinations would be made by prosecutors.
The release of the documents comes amid renewed scrutiny of the origins of the Russia investigation and intelligence assessments produced in late 2016 and early 2017.
Multiple congressional inquiries over the past several years have examined aspects of those assessments, including the sourcing and reliability of intelligence used to support claims of Russian interference.
Gabbard said additional documents may be released following further declassification reviews and emphasized that her office will continue providing materials to the Department of Justice and the FBI as they conduct their review.
