Gabbard uses surprise White House appearance to attack Trump’s enemies on the Russia investigation
Washington – As a national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard is responsible for the protection of American secrets and the discovery of threats from abroad. But when she made a surprise appearance in the White House information room on Wednesday, her goals were the political enemies of President Donald Trump.
The climbing of her attempts to undermine the long conclusion that Russia tried to help Trump to beat Hillary Clinton for the presidency almost a decade ago, she shifted what she called unshakable proof that the president of the time, Barack Obama and his advisers, had nothing less than a coup.
“They conspired to overthrow the will of the American people,” she said, saying that they have made evidence to defile Trump’s victory.
Little of what she said was new, and a large part was baseless. Gabbard said his investigation into the former democratic administration had been designed to stop the armament of national security institutions, but that stimulated more questions about his own independence at the top of a spy system intended to provide unhappiness.
Gabbard, a former Hawaii Democrat deputy, who presented himself to the presidency herself before joining Trump’s idiosyncratic political ecosystem, seemed ready to use his presentation to sunbathe his own position. She was dragged by her husband as director of photography, who held a video camera to capture the moment.
And Trump, who had previously expressed public doubts about Gabbard’s analysis of the Iranian nuclear program, seemed satisfied. He posted a video of his remarks, pinning them at the top of his social media flow.
It was an exhibition that cemented the role of Gabbard as one of the main agents of Trump’s remuneration, offering official recognition of Trump’s grievances in the investigation in Russia which followed his first mandate. The emphasis on an elderly scandal also served Trump’s attempts to arouse the attention of the Jeffrey Epstein affair and questions about the president’s own association with a minor girl attacker.
During her remarks of the White House, Gabbard said that she had returned the documents to the Ministry of Justice to consider a possible criminal investigation. A few hours later, the ministry announced the creation of a “striking force” to investigate the conclusions.
Obama’s post -presidential office refused to comment on Wednesday but published a rare response a day earlier. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempted distraction,” said Patrick Rodenbush, spokesperson for Obama.
The White House rejected the questions on the calendar of Gabbard’s revelations and if they were designed to arouse Trump’s favor or distract the attention of management by the administration of Epstein files.
However, Trump quickly rewarded Gabbard’s loyalty this week, calling him “the hottest person in the play”.
On Wednesday, she published a report by republican staff of the Intelligence Committee of the Product Chamber during the first Trump administration. He did not dispute that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, but quotes what it says to be commercial commercial failures in the assessment affected by the intelligence community that Russian President Vladimir Putin influenced the election because he intended to win Trump.
Gabbard went beyond certain conclusions of the report by describing his conclusions of the White House podium. With the report, she also seized the fact that a file including non -corroborated advice and Salaces gossip on Trump’s links with Russia were referenced in a classified version of an intelligence community assessment published in 2017 which detailed Russia’s interference.
The file was not the basis of the FBI’s decision to open an investigation in July 2016 on the potential coordination between the Trump and Russia campaign, but Trump supporters seized the innuendo not verified in the document to try to reduce the wider investigation.
Gabbard said she didn’t know why the documents were not released during Trump’s first administration. His office did not answer questions at the time of the release.
Answering a question of a journalist about Gabbard’s motivations, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused journalists of seeking a story where there was none.
“The only people who suggest that she would disclose evidence to stimulate her position are the people in this room,” said Leavitt.
Trump, however, said he wanted the media and the public to focus on the Gabbard report and not his links with Epstein.
“We caught Hillary Clinton. We caught Barack Hussein Obama … You should take a look at that and stop talking about nonsense,” Trump said on Tuesday.
CIA director John Ratcliffe was briefly intelligence of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, but did not disclose any information reported by Gabbard. The CIA refused to comment on the remarks of Gabbard on Wednesday.
Gabbard told Congress in April that Iran did not actively seek a nuclear weapon, and Trump had rejected his assessment just before Iran strikes.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump said in June on Air Force One when he asked her questions about Gabbard’s testimony.
Gabbard recently shared his conclusions on the investigation in Russia at a meeting of the Oval Office with Trump, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Subsequently, one of the officials said Trump expressed his satisfaction that Gabbard’s conclusions aligned with his own beliefs.
Friday, the Gabbard office published a report which minimized the extent of the Russian interference in the 2016 elections by highlighting the emails of the Obama administration showing that the officials had concluded before and after the presidential race that Moscow had not hacked the electoral systems of the State to manipulate the votes in favor of Trump.
But the democratic administration of Obama has never suggested the opposite, even if it exposed other means by which Russia interfered in the elections, including thanks to a massive piracy and the flight of democrats by intelligence agents working with Wikileaks, as well as a campaign of secret influence aimed at influencing public opinion and sowing discord by false social networks.
Earlier this month, Ratcliffe published a report criticizing the aspects of the intelligence community assessment and suggesting that the process had been precipitated. The report has not addressed multiple surveys since then, including a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee led by the Republicans in 2020 which reached the same conclusion on the influence and motivations of Russia.
The legislators of the two parties have long stressed the need for an independent intelligence service. Democrats said Gabbard’s reports show that she has placed partisanry and loyalty to Trump about her duty and that some have called for his resignation.
“It seems that the Trump administration is ready to declassify anything and anything but Epstein files,” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said on Wednesday, the Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Warner predicted that Gabbard’s actions could encourage us to share less information that they are politicized or imprudent.
But Gabbard benefits from strong support among the Republicans. Representative Rick Crawford, president of House Intelligence Committee, said that she and Ratcliffe worked to put the intelligence community “on the path of retirement of the American people”.
Representative Jim Himes, the best democrat of the Chamber Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard had not offered any reason to ignore the many previous surveys on Russia’s efforts.
“The director is free to disagree with the conclusion of the assessment of the intelligence community that Putin favored Donald Trump, but his point of view contrasts strongly with the verdict rendered by several credible investigations,” said Himes in a statement. “Including the bipartite report published by the Senate Intelligence Committee.”
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