Gabbard’s stunt was a despicable act of immense gaslighting. And she and Trump each called for Obama, Brennan, and others to be prosecuted. Trump went so far as to post an AI-generated video of FBI agents violently handcuffing and arresting Obama and tossing him into a prison cell. In the video, Obama is on his knees before Trump. Never has intelligence been so abused by an administration for purely political purposes. Gabbard’s move led the Justice Department to mount a criminal investigation of Brennan and others that is ongoing.
At the time, Gabbard also declassified and made public a secret report that cited Russian intelligence material from 2016 that claimed Hillary Clinton suffered from “intensified psycho-emotional problems,” was on a daily regimen of “heavy tranquilizers,” and had schemed to set up the Trump-Russia scandal to distract from her email controversy. But US intelligence analysts and FBI agents had previously judged this Russian material to be unreliable and possibly disinformation. So here was the top US intelligence official deploying unsubstantiated or phony Russian material—over the objections of CIA officials who worried its disclosure could compromise sources and methods—to smear an American politician. It was disgraceful.
Trump loved it. Gabbard had been on the outs with the White House prior to this for several reasons, including her release of a video that implied she opposed military action against Iran. Now Trump proclaimed her a “star.”
Recently, Gabbard was again in the hot seat. In March, the day after her ally Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over the Iran war, Gabbard testified before Congress on threats posed to the United States. Trump, according to Axios, was displeased that Gabbard at this hearing did not wholeheartedly endorse his war in Iran and personally scolded her. He was also apparently mad that she had protected Kent, who had publicly undercut his rationale for the war. (In his resignation letter, Kent said Iran posed no “imminent threat” to the United States.) Trump began asking his top advisers if he should give Gabbard the boot.
MAGA activist Laura Loomer tweeted that “Tulsi was done” and that the White House was about to show her the door. But this didn’t happen. Roger Stone, the longtime Trump adviser who was found guilty of lying to Congress during the Trump-Russia scandal (and subsequently pardoned by Trump), took credit for interceding with Trump and rescuing Gabbard. Axios quoted “a source familiar with Trump’s thinking” saying, “Roger sealed the deal. He saved Tulsi.”
Whether Stone’s influence mattered or not, Gabbard last week showed that she had learned the lesson of how to survive in Trumpland: She released more intelligence documents to discredit a Trump foe and to reveal yet another purported Deep State conspiracy against the president.
This time, the target was the whistleblower who in 2019 filed a complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, about the infamous phone call during which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to launch investigations to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, who was then running for president, and to prove that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election. The whistleblower maintained that Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election.”
When the acting DNI, John Maguire, declined to share this classified complaint with Congress, Atkinson informed Congress of its existence, triggering a brouhaha that soon led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Trump was not convicted by the Republican-controlled Senate, but he has always been steamed by the impeachment. Just as Gabbard is trying to airbrush away Putin’s intervention in the 2016 election, she’s now attempting to delegitimize and erase that first impeachment.
Last week, she released a handful of documents that she asserted exposed “a coordinated effort by elements within the Intelligence Community (IC), including a former Inspector General (IG), to manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump in 2019.” She insisted these records show that Atkinson “did not follow standard IG procedures and relied upon politicized, manufactured narratives” and that he took “actions to weaponize the Whistleblower process and exceed his statutory jurisdiction.”
Once more, she insisted that Trump was the victim of a nefarious cabal: “Deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that was used by Congress to usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected President of the United States.”
Yet again, Gabbard is pulling a big con. The materials she released do not back up the charge that Atkinson mishandled this case, and they certainly don’t prove a narrative was manufactured. In fact, the whistleblower’s complaint was largely confirmed when the Trump White House, under pressure, released a summary of his call with Zelenskyy. And that summary played a more critical role in the impeachment proceedings than the whistleblower’s complaint. During the Trump-Ukraine controversy, Maguire testified that the whistleblower “did the right thing.” Maguire also testified that Atkinson’s handling of the whistleblower complaint was done “by the book” and consistent with the law.
Gabbard went further then pumping out more disinformation. She sent the Justice Department criminal referrals for Atkinson, who Trump fired in April 2020, and the whistleblower, who has never been officially identified. (Conservative media, Donald Trump Jr., and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul revealed his name during the impeachment.)
This is another dangerous action from Gabbard, who once again is abusing intelligence to gin up a criminal case to feed Trump’s revenge fantasy. There is no case here. There was no Deep State plot. This is all about payback—and Gabbard keeping her job.
A few days ago, a pro-Trump conservative activist who believes Gabbard should be ousted told me that it’s obvious Gabbard is gathering intelligence records she can strategically release when necessary to protect her position. This MAGA influencer called this conduct reprehensible, noting that if Gabbard has evidence of Deep State conspiracies, she ought to put it all out.
But none of the material Gabbard has released so far proves the conspiracy theories she’s peddling. As an apparatchik for Dear Leader, she’s misrepresenting once-classified material to set up show trials and demonstrating she will lie and cheat for Trump—and to stay employed. Such a disingenuous DNI is a threat to national security. Nothing she says—in private to the president or in public—can be trusted.
Gabbard’s most recent efforts to deceive the public have not received the media attention they deserve. They ought to be front-page news, for Gabbard also is leading the administration’s effort to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Remember when she was photographed at the Atlanta site when FBI agents seized voting records and machines?
If Gabbard will manufacture false narratives and bogus evidence to support baseless criminal prosecutions of supposed Deep State conspirators and Trump critics, what might she do to cook up proof of Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 elections or to concoct phony evidence of fraud in the coming midterm elections?
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