America's Talking - Gabbard Releases New Intel Claiming FBI, CIA ‘Knowingly Created’ Russia Hoax

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

(The Center Square) – Federal officials have released more documents indicating a Democratic-led intelligence community politically targeted President Donald Trump by claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin influenced the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report Wednesday that “exposes how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false.” Notably, the report found that the majority of the intelligence community’s judgements on Russia’s confirmed attempts to meddle with the 2016 election were “sound,” including its findings that Putin ordered “conventional and cyber influence operations” to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and the legitimacy of an expected Hillary Clinton presidency.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_058e7635-7e66-4413-b330-041110ad3105.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAlipp, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. President Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has referred documents to the Department of Justice related to what she called manufactured intelligence behind the Russian collusion hoax against President Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle. Gabbard implicated former President Barack Obama in the scam. using the words treasonous and coup to describe Obama's involvement. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's congressional reporter, Terrez Boudreau. Teres, tell us about these accusations. Yeah, so Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, she last week released a slew of documents that she said proved that former President Barack Obama

and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and essentially the higher-ups in his cabinet and in the intelligence agency purposefully dragged out and investigation into the 2016 election and tried to cherry pick different intelligence and use sources that weren't really trustworthy to de-legitimize the first Trump administration.

to de-legitimize the election. So that's the claim. And what these documents do show is that there were many instances in the investigation into the 2016 election and specifically whether or not or to what extent Russia interfered. And what the documents showed was that there were many different protocols and different rules and just ways of doing things that are meant to help keep bias and errors out of crucial investigations like this. And a lot of those were violated. There are many times these declassified documents that Gabib released,

it showed that there are many times when even some people in the intelligence communities were saying, hey, this doesn't quite seem right. the FBI at one point said we're not comfortable, they wrote in this document. We're not comfortable, essentially, they said, alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in order to help Trump win. There was evidence, and this was, this has been known, there is evidence that Russia tried to do certain cyber or other influence campaigns in order to, order to just destabilize the process or specifically to undermine faith just in the U.S. Democratic election process so that whoever became president, it would, it would be, you know, it could, people could be doubtful. But basically the reports and that, that, the reports that

the Obama administration conducted went a step further. This is what Trump and his followers called a Russia hoax. They went because they want a step further and they said, oh, Putin must have done these activities that we confirm that he did in order to help Trump

win. And so what it seems like what Gabbards, the documents that Gabbard has released, what it seems like is that they knew that or at least they had no proof that Russia and Putin and specifically were trying to help Trump win,

that was just a motive that the intelligence community slapped on to information. And so now there's this big uproar from the Trump administration because they're showing, see, you know, Obama and, you know, and his, his, the people who are with him were trying to, you know, destabilize and de-wagitimize and, you know, they threw around, like you said, the terms coup and treason. the duly elected president of the united states by essentially manipulating this investigation that was otherwise sound yeah those words like coup treasonous those are heavy words um to be thrown around about a former um president um Obama a spokesman for a former president Obama did respond this week just tell us what their response was yeah essentially it was a it was a pretty short

response essentially they called the accusations a weak attempt at distraction. They said they were bizarre. And the spokesperson said that nothing in these papers essentially provides any new information. We already knew that Russia did interfere. And then he kind of just left it at that. He didn't, he didn't really address the documents that kind of seemed to show that, again, that this was a coordinated effort. It's a coordinated investigation that seemed to go awry when different biases were inserted when there was intelligence that was cherry-picked or some that was omitted that seemed to disprove the whole notion that Putin was on Trump's side, so to speak. So there haven't, they haven't, so basically the Obama's spokesperson just denied everything but didn't

really quite go into the details. So it's unknown at the moment how this will continue going forward. So far, Gabrod's just releasing more and more documents and building on that theory. But there and she's asked the Justice, Department of Justice to kind of look into it as well. But there's no word yet of, you know, Obama or Clinton or anything. anybody going to court or testifying about that. So I know this, these are just allegations at this point, Therese. But let's assume some of these allegations are true.

Of course, under President Biden, the Justice Department brought criminal charges against the then former President Trump in 2023 and 2024. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in and said a president has immunity when he's he's acting in his official duties as president. That just sort of muddies the waters, I think. Well, let's say there was some criminal, let's just say the Obama administration did violate some federal laws with this. But he, I mean, could he face actual criminal charges? I believe it's-

And I know I'm asking you to speculate. Yes, again, this is all speculation, but it's possible. We've definitely seen as well in this second Trump administration that things that otherwise seem to not really fit into a normal political paradigm that happen. It's what do you think about that or not. So even though that seems kind of incredible that, oh, you know, Obama or other former high-ranking officials, could be prosecuted or something along those lines. It is possible. Again, speculation, but I get the feeling that with the Trump administration,

nothing is off the table at this point. Thank you for joining us today, Terrez. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.