Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents—with promises of much more to follow.
The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors—purportedly along with President Obama himself—in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency.
The released documents add some new details to what over the last decade has become accepted knowledge.
Congressional committees, special prosecutors, and the inspectors general had all previously issued reports that largely confirmed the general outlines of the skullduggery that began in 2015-16.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, later aided by the top echelon of the FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence, sought—falsely—to seed a narrative that Trump had colluded directly with Russia to win unfairly the 2016 election.
When that campaign gambit failed to alter the 2016 results, the Obama administration doubled down during the transition to undermine the incoming Trump presidency.
Next, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “all-star” legal team found no evidence of direct Trump-Putin collusion to hijack the election. But his investigation did sabotage 22 months of Trump’s first term, marked by constant leaks and hysterical rumors that Trump was soon to be convicted and jailed as a “Russian asset.”
By 2020, the frustrated intelligence agencies and former “authorities” now absurdly further lied that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop had “all the earmarks”—once again—of Russian interference.
So, what could be new about Gabbard’s latest release?
One, after the 2016 election of Donald Trump but before his inauguration, Obama convened a strange meeting with his outgoing intelligence and investigatory heads—CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and a few others.
Contrary to a four-year Democrat Party narrative that “18 intelligence agencies” had long claimed Russian collusion, the top directors apprised Obama that their expert colleagues had found no such evidence of Trump-Putin collusion.
Yet outgoing President Obama allegedly directed them to ignore such an assessment. Instead, they began spreading narratives that President-elect Trump had been colluding with the Russians.
Leaks followed. Media hysteria crested. And soon Mueller and his left-wing “dream team” of lawyers targeted President Trump.
Further new information may confirm that Brennan’s CIA—and those he briefed in the Oval Office—had known for some time that the Russians themselves were confused about why they were falsely being accused of colluding with Trump to rig the election.
Of course, Russian operatives, like their Chinese counterparts, often seek to cause havoc in American institutions, such as hacking emails or spreading online disinformation. But they may have been nevertheless curious why Hillary Clinton was making such false accusations that they were working directly with Trump, and why the Obama administration was acting upon them.
Obama has now claimed these new charges are outrageous and beneath the dignity of the presidency.
He did not, however, flatly contradict the new information. He should have issued an unambiguous denial that he had never ordered his intelligence chiefs in December 2016 to ignore their associates’ assessments and instead to assume Trump’s collusion with Putin.
These sustained efforts of the Clinton campaign, Obama appointees, and ex-intelligence chiefs and their media counterparts between 2015 and 2020 severely undermined the 2016 Trump campaign.
They bushwhacked the 2017 presidential transition.
They hamstrung the Trump presidency.
And they may well have hurt Trump’s 2020 election bid.
Summed up, here is the damage caused by the Trump-Putin collusion lies.
- They emboldened “experts” in 2020 to again lie blatantly and shamelessly to the American people that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was yet another fake product of Russian interference to help reelect Trump.
- The media were equally guilty. Journalists partnered with current and ex-Obama appointees by disseminating fake documents like the Steele dossier and working with giants like Twitter and Facebook. During the 2020 campaign, the FBI and social media sought to censor accurate news stories that the laptop was indeed authentic and already verified as such by the FBI.
- These operations may have had serious consequences for U.S. foreign policy. Dictatorial Russia is an adversary of the U.S.
But by needlessly and falsely claiming that Russia had intervened in two elections directly to partner with Donald Trump, Obama-era officials and Clinton-campaign activists destroyed President Trump’s own credibility to sustain a workable relationship with a nuclear Russia.
In addition, the lying and extra-legal operations of the FBI and CIA only further convinced the paranoid Russians that they could not trust the U.S. government—given it had been engaging in the very conspiracy lies that were more akin to its own than America’s.
Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others will likely never face legal consequences for the damage they’ve done to our institutions and foreign policy.
But that does not mean they should be exempt from an ongoing and disinterested effort to find and finally expose the whole truth.
I get sick of seeing these bad actors in government get away with evil. A tale as old as time !
I do understand the comment that the alleged perpetrators here will never face justice, but let me say it as clearly as possible:
If they do not face justice, then the United States is done as the Great Experiment in Liberty.
They have pulled back the curtain on the level of corruption here. This is the worst thing you could ever do if you’re not going to make the guilty pay. You send a message to the entire country: Yes, some people truly ARE above the law.
We, the People, get the message: If those holding me to the law don’t hold themselves to the same standards… then why should I ever obey them?
This delegitimizes the U.S. Government. If justice doesn’t come, a lot of Governors need to band together and announce our farewell to the Swamp that is DC. They have no right to tell us anything, and they certainly aren’t fulfilling their main duty to protect the God-given rights of the People.
Re-read the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps its time to apply those principles again.
Prosecute them all, make them lawyer up, spend millions in legal fees, and hammer them till they break . The democrats taught us the process is the punishment. Just ask Gen. Flynn, Bannon, Navarro, and Trump himself. An example must be made or they’ll do it again, and half the country still believes the lies. Justice requires it.
Modern politics is a winner takes all game more than ever before and in 2016 the democratic party was shockingly (Pelosi told me as much at a dem fundraiser in Palm Beach) destroyed and washed out to sea losing control of the house, senate, executive branch and 34 state governorships.
Obama and the dems rolled out their own version of the republican 08 playbook delay, distract, defame etc hoping to crawl to the midterms which the dems did successfully by winning the house back. Impeachments and lawfare followed reaching unprecedented heights after Trump left office. I hope he uses all his power legally to undo the injustices cast upon him
No more talk. Enough. Prosecute them all for their lies, deception & seditious behavior.
This cannot go unpunished. However, I’m afraid that the level of corruption in DC is so deep that should any of the Obama porkchops be charged with a crime, they will make a deal to name others. Next, the other will name others, and those others will name others. Ultimately, there will be a lot of pressure on Trump not to pursue charges.
I would say that the repercussions go a great deal further than the political landscape of the US. The Russiagate operation caused a large part of the US population to hate Putin, who they blame for putting an evil dictator in the White House. So, when Putin attacked Ukraine, was the heavy US support in part due to the falsehoods of Russiagate?
Fairly early on in the U-R war, there were opportunities to achieve a peace treaty, which multiple sources say were scuppered by the Biden admin. Since then, hundreds of thousands have died.
If Russiagate had never happened, would the Ukraine war have dragged into it’s third year? Would as many Russians and Ukrainians now be dead?
VDH: “By 2020, the frustrated intelligence agencies and former “authorities” now absurdly further lied that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop had “all the earmarks”—once again—of Russian interference.”
The original NY Post story had images of FBI subpoena documents and a receipt for the laptop from the repair shop – items that Brennan’s 51 spies assured us were classic earmarks of Russian info ops.
(These items are no longer at the NY Post page but can be retrieved through archive dot org with the page URL which I’m not sure I can post here)
Well stated outline of the Democrat malfeasance. It would be nice if they would all come clean, wouldn’t it? I will not hold my breath waiting for them to come clean nor waiting for any indictments of these scoundrels….
I found it particularly interesting that the Russians themselves were confused when Hillary’s campaign claimed “Russian collusion”, because they knew they hadn’t.