US Intelligence Chief Claims Obama “Treasonous Conspiracy” to Undermine Trump in 2016

US Nation­al Intel­li­gence chief Tul­si Gab­bard has claimed the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion under­mined Don­ald Trump in 2016 through a “trea­so­nous con­spir­a­cy,” accord­ing to a new intel­li­gence report that attempts to dis­cred­it the assess­ment that Rus­sia favored Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion in 2016. On 18 July 2025, The New York Times report­ed that Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Tul­si Gab­bard released find­ings sug­gest­ing Oba­ma offi­cials forced the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty to alter con­clu­sions about Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence, draw­ing strong Demo­c­ra­t­ic crit­i­cism as polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and error-rid­den. The arti­cle begins:

The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence on Fri­day issued the lat­est in a series of reports from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion attempt­ing to under­mine the eight-year-old assess­ment that Rus­sia favored the elec­tion of Don­ald J. Trump in 2016. Tul­si Gab­bard, the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence, said the infor­ma­tion she was releas­ing showed a “trea­so­nous con­spir­a­cy in 2016” by top Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials to harm Mr. Trump. Democ­rats denounced the effort as polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed, error-rid­den and in con­tra­dic­tion with pre­vi­ous reviews of the assess­ment. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Himes of Con­necti­cut, the top Demo­c­rat on the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, called Ms. Gab­bard’s accu­sa­tion of trea­son “base­less.”

         Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/us/politics/gabbard-obama-trump-russia.html [pay­wall]

        For a sim­i­lar sto­ry, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/18/tulsi-gabbard-obama-2016-election-russia

Key Points

• Mul­ti­ple reviews, includ­ing a Repub­li­can-led Sen­ate report, backed intel­li­gence find­ings that Rus­sia tried to influ­ence the 2016 elec­tion by dam­ag­ing Clin­ton’s cam­paign and bol­ster­ing Trump
• The new report con­flates Russ­ian hack­ing attempts on elec­tion sys­tems with influ­ence oper­a­tions, sug­gest­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion forced the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty to alter conclusions
• Sen­a­tor Mark Warn­er crit­i­cized Gab­bard for “cook­ing the books” by com­par­ing dif­fer­ent Russ­ian activ­i­ties — unsuc­cess­ful infra­struc­ture hack­ing ver­sus suc­cess­ful influ­ence operations
• The CIA recent­ly referred for­mer direc­tor John Bren­nan to the FBI fora  crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion over the speed of the 2016 assess­men­t’s production

Tulsi Gabbard’s Role in the Global National Conservative Alliance

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.