https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trumps-intelligence-chiefs-try-rewrite-history-2016-election-rcna220103
Trump's intelligence chiefs try to rewrite the history of the 2016 election
Five years ago, Marco Rubio said there was "irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.” Now, Tulsi Gabbard says that claim is “treasonous" and should be criminally investigated.
July 22, 2025, 2:00 AM MST
By Dan De Luce
President Donald Trump’s intelligence chiefs are conducting a systematic campaign to rewrite the history of the 2016 election, seeking to reverse an eight-year-old assessment that Russia waged an information war to boost Trump’s candidacy.
National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have cited declassified emails to allege in social media posts and television appearances that Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence and conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
But a bipartisan Senate investigation in 2020 and a recent CIA review both found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, launching a disinformation campaign designed to damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
A three-year investigation by special counsel John Durham (remember him? -- Suzi) reported no criminal conspiracy by Obama administration officials to sabotage Trump, and Durham filed no charges against CIA officials.
On Monday, Fox News reported that Gabbard’s office made a criminal referral to the Justice Department related to the 2017 intelligence assessment of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, without specifying the nature of the referral.
In an apparent reference to the report, Trump posted online a fake video generated by artificial intelligence of former President Barack Obama being led out of the Oval Office by police.
NBC News could not verify that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had filed a criminal referral. The Justice Department and the National Intelligence Director’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Distraction from Epstein case
The allegations from Trump’s intelligence chiefs come when he faces demands from many of his supporters to release files linked to financier Jeffrey Epstein. Democratic lawmakers accused the administration of seeking to distract from the Epstein case and to “rewrite” history for partisan purposes.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said the panel’s unanimous, bipartisan conclusion in 2020 was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.
“This is just another example of the DNI trying to cook the books, rewrite history, and erode trust in the intelligence agencies she’s supposed to be leading,” Warner said in a statement, referring to Gabbard.
On Friday, Gabbard alleged that declassified emails released by her office revealed a “treasonous conspiracy” by Obama administration officials to play up Russia’s actions during the 2016 election to undermine Trump’s authority as president.
“Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,” Gabbard said in a statement. She added that “every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
Gabbard was referring to a U.S. intelligence assessment in early 2017 that Russia had tried to skew the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. Russia orchestrated a leak of stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and created fake social media accounts. The 2020 Senate committee investigation, which interviewed more than 200 witnesses and reviewed a million documents over three years, came to the same conclusion.
Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, signed off on the committee’s findings at the time, when he was acting chair of the Intelligence Committee.
The committee found no evidence of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia, Rubio said in a statement after the report was released. But he added: “What the Committee did find however is very troubling. We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”
Trump has always bristled at the idea that Russia interfered in the election on his behalf and has accused intelligence and FBI officials of plotting against him.
Ratcliffe and Gabbard claims
Ratcliffe, the CIA director, released an internal agency review of the 2017 intelligence assessment of the 2016 election this month. The review found that some standard procedures were not followed, with analysts having been given an unusually short time to produce their report. But the review did not refute the findings of the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to interfere in the election.
Ratcliffe, however, argued on social media that the review showed that Democratic appointees “manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump.”
Both the intelligence agency assessment and the Senate investigation found that Russia hacked into voting systems in some states but did not try to change votes or alter ballot counting.
Gabbard’s office said that in December 2016, talking points were prepared for the national intelligence director at the time, James Clapper, stating: “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”
The National Intelligence Director’s Office suggested that intelligence about cyberattacks was later contradicted in a new finding. The intelligence agencies concluded in their assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Trump’s election chances, the ODNI noted.
'Doing Trump's bidding'
Democrats in Congress said Gabbard was conflating two separate issues: whether Russia sought to tamper with voting or whether Moscow tried to influence the election through disinformation and leaked emails stolen from the Democratic Party.
The Obama administration never said Russia had tried to alter votes through its cyber intrusions.
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard’s allegations of treason were “baseless” and an attempt to revive conspiracy claims that had already been debunked.
Gabbard is “rehashing decade-old false claims about the Obama Administration,” Himes said in a statement Friday. “Few episodes in our nation’s history have been investigated as thoroughly as the Intelligence Community’s warning in 2016 that Russia was interfering in the election.“
Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior intelligence official who served both Republican and Democratic presidents over more than three decades, said Gabbard’s “analysis is grossly flawed and inconsistent with the findings of years-long investigations by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate.”
He added that Gabbard’s partisan political behavior as director would be likely cause her to lose the trust of rank-and-file members of the country’s spy agencies.
The senior CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Susan Miller, rejected the CIA director’s portrayal of the analysis, though she objected to an annex that was added to the report.
Miller said she was angry at the time that senior officials chose to include an annex to the intelligence assessment referring to an unverified dossier about Trump compiled by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele.
But Miller said she agreed with the assessment’s core finding that Putin tried to aid Trump in 2016, and she accused Ratcliffe, the CIA’s current director, of engaging in partisan politics.
“He’s doing Trump’s bidding to go after those of us who dared to write a report that simply said the Russians tried to influence the election towards Trump,” Miller told the investigative newsletter SpyTalk. “And that’s a crime?”
@Suzianne saidYe she's making stuff up to flood the zone in the wake of Epstein findings and other bad news.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trumps-intelligence-chiefs-try-rewrite-history-2016-election-rcna220103
Trump's intelligence chiefs try to rewrite the history of the 2016 election
[i]Five years ago, Marco Rubio said there was "irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.” Now, Tulsi Gabbard says that claim is “treasonous" and should be criminally i ...[text shortened]... lection towards Trump,” Miller told the investigative newsletter SpyTalk. “And that’s a crime?” [/b]
John Durham spent $9 million tax dollars on a partisan witch hunt to locate any shred of evidence that Obama had anything to do with it - and came up empty.
Did Trump's people forget that already?
"... it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed --if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'."
George Orwell, 1984
@wildgrass saidYou little fellers won't soon forget what is on the horizon. Gabbard has it in government docs which have just been claissified. She appears real good at solving puzzles.
Ye she's making stuff up to flood the zone in the wake of Epstein findings and other bad news.
John Durham spent $9 million tax dollars on a partisan witch hunt to locate any shred of evidence that Obama had anything to do with it - and came up empty.
Did Trump's people forget that already?
Yeah, Obama will not 'do time', that is not the point. The jury when this all comes out is not going to be 12 jurors....it will be 340M people. If only just for them to learn what they have been mixed up in, and they will bail like rats on a sinking ship.
But just so you know, if you want to join us Repubs, we will demand IDs. And you cannot be here illegally.
@AverageJoe1 saidWhat's next, a reinvestigation of Watergate?
You little fellers won't soon forget what is on the horizon. Gabbard has it in government docs which have just been claissified. She appears real good at solving puzzles.
Yeah, Obama will not 'do time', that is not the point. The jury when this all comes out is not going to be 12 jurors....it will be 340M people. If only just for them to learn what they have bee ...[text shortened]... t so you know, if you want to join us Repubs, we will demand IDs. And you cannot be here illegally.
Do you remember John Durham? You started a dozen threads saying he was going to nab Obama for this exact same thing. He apologized and said there was no involvements from the admin. And that was more than 5 years ago.
@wildgrass saidObama was president when Carter Page was spied on. Who obtained the FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page based on the debunked Steele Dossier?
Ye she's making stuff up to flood the zone in the wake of Epstein findings and other bad news.
John Durham spent $9 million tax dollars on a partisan witch hunt to locate any shred of evidence that Obama had anything to do with it - and came up empty.
Did Trump's people forget that already?
@wildgrass saidWho is John Durham? And what is your source of information?
What's next, a reinvestigation of Watergate?
Do you remember John Durham? You started a dozen threads saying he was going to nab Obama for this exact same thing. He apologized and said there was no involvements from the admin. And that was more than 5 years ago.
@Metal-Brain saidAsk John Durham. Trump paid him $9 million from tax payers to look into all of this. He came out saying there was no wrongdoing.
Obama was president when Carter Page was spied on. Who obtained the FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page based on the debunked Steele Dossier?
@wildgrass saidNo. I have never heard of him or the things you said about him. What is your source?
Re you joking?
@Metal-Brain saidGoogle it. He spent years investigating this at taxpayers expense.
No. I have never heard of him or the things you said about him. What is your source?
@wildgrass saidI don't know John Durham. How could I ask him?
Ask John Durham. Trump paid him $9 million from tax payers to look into all of this. He came out saying there was no wrongdoing.
Why would Trump pay someone millions to find what he already knows? There is no evidence of Russian collusion to interfere with US elections. Carter Page was spied on because of the debunked Steele Dossier from a foreign spy attempting a coup in the USA which was paid for by Hillary Clinton.
@wildgrass saidYes I was still green then. Learned a lot from Obama😂😂😂😂😂and from Biden🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂😂😂🤣😂😂😂
What's next, a reinvestigation of Watergate?
Do you remember John Durham? You started a dozen threads saying he was going to nab Obama for this exact same thing. He apologized and said there was no involvements from the admin. And that was more than 5 years ago.
But turned out my hunch of slime was right. Durham a bum with a bad mustache!!
@wildgrass saidThere was involvement, misread your post. Did I miss something?
What's next, a reinvestigation of Watergate?
Do you remember John Durham? You started a dozen threads saying he was going to nab Obama for this exact same thing. He apologized and said there was no involvements from the admin. And that was more than 5 years ago.
@wildgrass saidI don't want any source if info, I want yours.
Google it. He spent years investigating this at taxpayers expense.
I want to know why you believe such nonsense.