by John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy
Obama is attempting to recast his presidency as one free from the politicization of the IC and DOJ, gliding past his own central role in covering for Clinton and launching the Russiagate saga. The historical records shows his deep connection to the DOJ's committing "lawfare" against Trump.
Pravda, Russia's longtime propaganda mouthpiece, has long practiced the art of projection: taking something controversial that Moscow did and trying to make it look like the United States did the same.
Former President Barack Obama ripped a page from the Pravda playbook with his recent appearance on Steven Colbert's show on CBS, suggesting the Trump Justice Department's crackdown on intelligence politicization and law enforcement abuses was somehow a "retribution campaign.
But the 44th president's rhetoric can't mask the growing body of evidence chronicling the direct role he played in shielding Hillary Clinton and concocting a false Russia collusion narrative that was designed to fool American voters during the 2016 election and hamper the start of Trump's first presidential term.
Colbert, an avowed fan of the former president, asked him which powers he believes a president should not have, during an interview at the new Obama presidential center this month.
“Well there are a couple that I followed even though they weren’t law. And I want — we’re going to have to do some work to return to this basic norm, and we now probably have to codify it,” Obama said. “The White House shouldn’t be able to direct the attorney general to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants prosecuted.”
Obama added that “the idea is that the attorney general is the people’s lawyer, it’s not the president’s consigliere.”
“So, restoring some sense of the Justice Department being independent in making judgments about specific cases and prosecutions,” Obama also said. “Now, I would consult with Eric Holder, my attorney general, around broad policy issues. That’s different than who do you charge, what case do you bring?”
Eric Holder, Obama’s own attorney general from 2009 to 2015, has insisted that he was Obama’s “wingman.”
"I’m still enjoying what I’m doing, there’s still work to be done,” Holder said in a 2013 radio interview. “I’m still the president’s wingman, so I’m there with my boy.”
The House voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress over his failure to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal, the first time Congress has taken such a dramatic move against a sitting Cabinet official, Politico reported in June 2012. The charges were never carried out by the Justice Department, which was, at that time, run by Holder.
One rule for me, another for thee
Even though as President Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general he had opposed the release of independent counsel Ken Starr’s report, Holder would later call for the full public release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report.
Obama also told Colbert of the “core principles of a democracy” that “we can survive a lot — bad policy, funky elections, there’s a bunch of stuff that, you know, we can overcome — we can’t overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system. The awesome power of the state. You can’t have a situation in which whoever is in charge of the government starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends.”
The factual record shows that Obama repeatedly opined publicly to help Clinton avoid criminal prosecution over her use of an illicit private email server to send classified emails and — as has been bolstered by recently-declassified documents — was a central figure at key points throughout the launch of the Russiagate saga.
Obama fingerprints all over Clinton email scandal and Russiagate saga
Obama was briefed on what has been dubbed the “Clinton Plan intelligence," which indicated Clinton was seeking to falsely link Trump to Russia to distract from her own classified email server scandal in the summer of 2016. The FBI launched the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation targeting Trump in July 2016 anyway.
Obama also directed the creation of a new Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian meddling only after Trump was victorious in November 2016.
The post-election January 2017 ICA was put together by just the CIA, FBI, and NSA — led at the time by then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers, and since-fired FBI Director James Comey — with input from then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Then in December 2016 Obama preemptively endorsed claims that the CIA had concluded that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s goal in 2016 had been to help Trump and to hurt Clinton even before the deeply flawed ICA had ever reached that conclusion.
And the then-president was part of key discussions in January 2017 related to the FBI’s targeting of Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, including a so-called “by the book” meeting in the Oval Office, and was briefed on the baseless and debunked dossier by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.
“There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asserted from the podium at the White House press briefing room last year. “They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.”
A spokesperson for Obama released a statement in response to Gabbard’s allegations, where he sought to deny Gabbard’s claims.
Obama spox: "a weak attempt at distraction."
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” the Obama statement read.
“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio," the former president's statement said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee wrongly concluded in April and August 2020 reports that Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier was not used in the body of the ICA and that the dossier claims were not used to underpin any of the ICA’s findings, but that phony dossier was adopted. That allegation — that the Steele Dossier was not relied upon was a conclusion debunked by a House Intelligence Committee report declassified last year and by a CIA review released in 2025.
The bombshell House Intelligence Committee report declassified by Gabbard last summer revealed that, despite repeated denials, the 2016 ICA on Russian election meddling pointed to — and relied in part — on the debunked Steele Dossier. The key part of that assessment was to force home the disputed conclusion that Putin had tried to help Trump win.
Obama repeatedly sought to help Clinton dodge prosecution in email scandal
Obama made repeated public statements in 2015 and 2016 in which he strongly implied that his Justice Department should not charge Clinton with any crimes related to her use of an illicit private email server.
“I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Obama told 60 Minutes in October 2015. “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.” Obama added that “we don't get an impression that here there was purposely efforts — on — in — to hide something or to squirrel away information.”
The New York Times reported at the time that “those statements angered FBI agents who have been working for months to determine whether Mrs. Clinton’s email setup did in fact put any of the nation’s secrets at risk” and that “to investigators, it sounded as if Mr. Obama had already decided the answers to their questions and cleared anyone involved of wrongdoing.”
Obama told Fox News in April 2016 that “what I’ve also said is that — and she has acknowledged — that there’s a carelessness, in terms of managing emails, that she has owned, and she recognizes [...] I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America’s national security,” Obama added.
DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz revealed in a 2018 that Obama was one of a select number of U.S. government officials who had emailed with Clinton through her private email server.
“FBI analysts and Prosecutor 2 told us that former President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account. Obama, like other high level government officials, used a pseudonym for his username on his official government email account,” Horowitz said in a footnote. “The analysts told us that they questioned whether Obama’s email address (combined with salutations that revealed that the emails were being exchanged with Obama) or other information contained in the emails were classified and, thus, sent the emails to relevant USIC agencies for classification review. However, they stated that the USIC agencies determined that none of the emails contained classified information.”
Comey cleared Clinton of criminal wrongdoing for transmitting classified information on an insecure and private email server in his speech on July 5, 2016. Comey claimed in his speech about the Clinton case at the time that “although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Comey gave the speech after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton in June 2016. Lynch had refused to recuse herself from the case while also saying she would accept Comey’s decision on what charges to bring against Clinton.
Comey listed Clinton’s numerous improper and potentially illegal actions, including the fact that 110 emails in 52 email chains contained classified information at the time they were sent or received by Clinton — but he would not recommend charging her with any crimes. The phrase “gross negligence” appeared in early drafts of Comey’s remarks, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, previously revealed, but Comey would use the term “extremely careless” instead of “gross negligence.”
A specific statute — 18 U.S. Code § 793 — deals in part with “gross negligence” in the handling of national defense information, which Clinton came under scrutiny for possibly violating.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., also later revealed in 2018 that a late June 2016 draft of Comey’s early July 2016 speech referenced Clinton and Obama emailing each other when Clinton was in Russia. “We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent,” Comey’s draft said. “She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including from the territory of sophisticated adversaries. That use included an email exchange with the President [Obama] while Secretary Clinton was on the territory of such an adversary.”
The draft soon changed the Comey language from “the president” to “another senior government official” — and Comey’s final statement made no reference to Obama nor even to another senior government official at all.
Obama was well aware of the “Clinton Plan Intelligence”
Special counsel John Durham said then-CIA Director John Brennan's handwritten notes — declassified by Ratcliffe when he was the Director of National Intelligence in October 2020 — reflect that Brennan briefed Obama, Comey, Biden, and others in the summer of 2016 regarding the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services."
Brennan briefed Obama and others on the intelligence, and Durham noted that “it was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral memorandum” in early September 2016 to since-fired FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI special agent Peter Strzok.
Durham’s report pointed to a double standard in how the FBI accepted baseless allegations of Trump-Russia collusion as compared to the way the FBI shrugged off information suggesting that at least some of the collusion claims were tainted as originating from the Clinton campaign.
Durham’s public report revealed that “in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee.” This purported scheme by Clinton was allegedly approved on July 26, 2016 — smack-dab in the middle of the 2016 Democratic convention nominating Clinton for president.
Durham's report noted that the approval of the Clinton Plan occurred the exact same day that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer provided the U.S. government a months-old tip about Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos — with Downer’s tip being cited as the predication to launch Crossfire Hurricane at the end of July 2016.
The CIA referral memo sent to the FBI — which Durham said was completed on September 7, 2016 — was addressed to Comey and later-disgraced FBI special agent Peter Strzok, according to Durham, and stated in part: “Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date [Source revealing information redacted]: … An exchange ... discussing U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The FBI did not investigate further.
The evidence is clear that the Clinton campaign did in fact engage in a lengthy and coordinated effort to tie Trump to Russia during the 2016 election — a strategy Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri would later detail at length in a post-election opinion piece which failed to mention Clinton’s role with the false Steele Dossier and Alfa Bank claims.
Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director under Obama, injected into the American political bloodstream the idea that Trump was an “agent” of Putin and Russia, a refrain that would be repeated over and over again by the Clinton campaign in 2016. Morell went on to be the main author and organizer of the infamous October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop letter.
Obama ordered skewed ICA on Russian meddling after Trump win
Following Trump’s electoral victory over Clinton, Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence community to put together a new ICA on Russian meddling — and this intelligence assessment would specifically claim that Putin had worked to defeat Clinton and to secure victory for Trump.
The recently-declassified House report said that “Obama orders a rewrite of 10 assessments on Russian activities during the election” on December 6, 2016. “The President directed the IC to review their work to date on the Russian influence campaign, and quickly produce the new ICA for release in early January, before President-elect Trump took office,” the report said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2020 report said that Obama instructed Clapper “to have the Intelligence Community prepare a comprehensive report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election” during the December 6, 2016 meeting of the National Security Council. “The President directed that the report include everything the IC knew about Russian interference in the 2016 elections,” the Senate report said. “The instruction was to have a version available to brief Congress, and also a declassified version releasable to the public.”
The Senate report also said that Obama “requested this product be completed by the end of his Administration” — January 20, 2017. Mysteriously, for such an important task, “there was no document memorializing this presidential direction,” according to the Senate report.
A press release from Gabbard’s ODNI said that three days later — on December 9, 2016 — “President Obama’s White House gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting … to discuss Russia.” Declassified documents about the meeting in the White House Situation Room labeled it the “PC [Principals Committee] Meeting on a Sensitive Topic” — Russia and the 2016 election.
The meeting was chaired by Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice and included Brennan, then-DNI Clapper, and disgraced FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. The meeting was also attended by Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, future Biden DNI Avril Haines, future Biden Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary McCord, Secretary of State John Kerry and State Department official Victoria Nuland, then-Obama and future-Biden Pentagon official Brian McKeon, and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.
Clapper’s executive assistant said that “the IC is prepared to produce an assessment per the President’s request, that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election.”
The Obama-era national intelligence officer for cyber issues sent an email with the heading “RE: POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling.” The intelligence officer said that “our plan is to put this into an ICA with Annexes. We will also decide on how to integrate the DHS recommendation section later. We will use some part of our summer’s ICA on cyber threats to presidential election as a starting point.”
The declassified House report said that, the same day, “DCIA Brennan Orders Publication of Substandard Reporting on Russian Activities During the Election.”
“Acting on President Obama's orders, DCIA Brennan directed a ‘full review’ and publication of raw HUMINT [human intelligence] information that had been collected before the election,” the House report said. “CIA officers said that some of this information had been held on the orders of DCIA, while other reporting had been judged by experienced CIA officers to have not met longstanding publication standards. Some of the latter was unclear or from unknown subsources, but would nonetheless be published after the election — over the objections of veteran officers — on orders of DCIA and cited in the ICA to support claims that Putin aspired to help Trump win.”
Clapper later told the Senate Intelligence Committee in July 2017 that "I don't think we would have mounted the effort [creating the ICA] we did, probably, to be honest, in the absence of presidential direction, because that kind of cleared the way on sharing all the accesses."
September 2016 ICA stated that “we assess that the Russian services probably orchestrated at least some of the disclosures of DNC and DCCC documents from June to August” and that “the Kremlin probably expects that publicity surrounding the leaked party data will raise questions about the integrity of the U.S. political process, as Putin hinted in a recent interview.”
At no point did the September 2016 ICA hint that Putin was acting to hurt Clinton’s election chances nor to help Trump win the presidency.
A former deputy national intelligence officer at the National Intelligence Council, whom Gabbard’s office has dubbed a whistleblower, stated that “through my role in leading production of the prior 2016 ICA, I also knew that as recently as September of 2016, other elements of the IC had pushed back during analytic coordination on warnings of Russian intent to influence the 2016 presidential election, stating that such a judgement would be misleading.”
The whistleblower added that “as for the 2017 ICA’s judgement of a decisive Russian preference for then-candidate Donald Trump, I could not concur in good conscience based on information available, and my professional analytic judgement.”
As the election drew closer, Johnson at DHS and Clapper at ODNI released an early October 2016 joint public statement arguing that “the U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations."
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the joint statement concluded.
The statement by DHS and ODNI similarly did not claim the efforts were aimed at helping Trump win and making Clinton lose, but following Trump’s electoral victory over Clinton, Obama ordered the U.S. intelligence community to put together a new ICA on Russian meddling — and this intelligence assessment would specifically claim that Putin had worked to defeat Clinton and to secure victory for Trump.
Gabbard’s office said that on December 8, 2016, documents showed that “IC officials [would] discuss the draft PDB” which found that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.” Gabbard’s office said that the group “also decides the PDB will be published the following day” due to “high administration interest.”
“A few hours later, after initially coauthoring the PDB, the FBI (led by FBI Director James Comey) inexplicably withdraws from coordinating on the product and notifies other IC officials that the FBI will be drafting a dissent,” Gabbard’s office said. “Later in the afternoon, a senior PDB official kills the PDB ‘based on some new guidance.’ The postelection PDB, which once again assessed that Russia did not hack the election, was never published.”
Memo of Putin's alleged preference was injected into the anti-Trump media landscape.
The New York Times had reported on Halloween 2016 that “law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government” and that “even the hacking into Democratic emails, FBI and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.”
The leaks would soon shift in tone, and Putin's alleged preference for Trump was injected into the anti-Trump media landscape.
The Washington Post reported on December 9, 2016, that “the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” The outlet cited a “senior U.S. official” who contended that “it is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected” and that “that’s the consensus view.”
The outlet hedged its bets by backtracking and then reported the next day that “the FBI is not sold on the idea that Russia had a particular aim in its meddling” and quoted a U.S. official who said that “there’s no question that [the Russian] efforts went one way, but it’s not clear that they have a specific goal or mix of related goals.”
Despite the seemingly conflicting leaks, the CIA’s alleged anonymous claims in early December 2016 set off a political firestorm, and were embraced by Obama.
Gabbard released a report last July criticizing the leaks from December 2016. “Deep State officials in the IC begin leaking blatantly false intelligence to the Washington Post, as proven by the unpublished PDB and previous IC products, claiming that Russia used ‘cyber means’ to influence ‘the outcome of the election.’ … Later that evening, another leak to the Washington Post falsely alleges that the CIA ‘concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened’ in the election to help President Trump,” the ODNI report from last summer said. “At this point, there is no official IC assessment that contains that conclusion.”
Obama spoke with NPR on December 19, 2016, where he clearly endorsed the anonymously leaked position of the CIA that Russia had meddled in the election to hurt Clinton’s election chances and to help Trump win, despite the fact that the ICA which he had ordered was not complete at that point. After the interview ended, Obama left the room but then walked back in to try to clean up the mess he made.
NPR's Steve Inskeep asked Obama about his prior critiques of Trump’s stance toward Russia and questioned to what extent Obama was suggesting that there had been cooperation between Trump and the Russians. Obama denied he was hinting at collusion, but then endorsed the CIA’s leaks about Putin’s motivations.
“Well, I'm, I'm not suggesting cooperation at all. Keep in mind that those statements were in the context of everyone now acting surprised by the CIA assessment that this was done purposely to improve Trump's chances. And my only point was that shouldn't be treated as a blockbuster because that was the worst-kept secret in this town. Everybody understood that. It was reported on,” Obama said.
Obama added: “That doesn't mean that the Trump campaign was coordinating. It just means that they understood what everybody else understood, which was that this was not good for Hillary Clinton's campaign. And when you combine that with the fact that the president-elect has been very honest about his admiration for Putin and that he hopes to forge a more cooperative relationship with him and focus on the threat of Islamic terrorism, then my only point was we shouldn't now suddenly act as if this is a huge revelation.”
Both the NPR transcript and the NPR video of the interview then stated that “after the conversation, Obama returned to the room to say one more thing about the CIA.” Obama then sought to unwind his endorsement of CIA leaks even as the ICA was still being drafted.
“You had something you wanted to add,” Inskeep said.
“When we're discussing the issue of the Russia hack, I think it is worth noting that when it comes to the motivations of the Russians, that there are still a whole range of assessments taking place among the agencies,” Obama said. “And so when I receive a final report, you know, we'll be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations. But that does not in any way, I think, detract from the basic point that everyone during the election perceived accurately that, in fact, what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton administra[tion] — the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign.”
Inskeep said that “I think you're stopping short of endorsing the CIA conclusion that the hack was designed to help Donald Trump as opposed to some other objective.”
“Well, I think the point I'm making is that right now what you've had are CIA leaks, not of an official document. And I think it's important for the process of various agencies comparing notes and thinking about these assessments,” Obama said. “Because it's not as if in any of these circumstances, you know, you just have a signed letter regarding Russian intentions that's floating around. These are all assessments made based on a wide range of evidence and different agencies are still looking at all that stuff, gathering it together and hopefully putting into a single package. That's precisely why I've asked that report to be issued before the 20th so that those aspects of — at least that are not classified — can be presented in some form to the public.”
The CIA's lessons-learned review released last summer revealed that, the same day of Obama's NPR interview, the ICA draft team had held its only in-person coordination meeting, and that the formal review process would not even begin until the next day.
"CIA’s primary authors had less than a week to draft the
assessment and less than two days to formally coordinate it with IC
peers before it entered the formal review process at CIA on 20 December
[2016]," the CIA memo from last month said.
"Multiple IC stakeholders said they felt 'jammed' by the compressed
timeline. Most got their first look at the hardcopy draft and underlying
sensitive reporting just before or at the only in-person coordination
meeting that was held on 19 December [2016] to conduct a line-by-line
review."
Then-NSA Director Rogers wrote to then-CIA Director Brennan to say that his analysts were not “fully comfortable” with the time they had been given to “review all of the intelligence” and “be absolutely confident in their assessments.”
Yet Obama had already publicly endorsed the CIA's view.
The NPR interview was not the only time that Obama provided public statements in December 2016 suggesting the outcome of the ICA was predetermined and that he was preemptively endorsing the CIA’s view that Putin had ordered the hack of the DNC and that Russia had meddled to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
Obama had discussed alleged Russian meddling during a mid-November 2016 press conference — but at that time gave no hint that Russia’s actions were designed to hurt Clinton and help Trump.
“I indicated, there has been very clear proof that they have engaged in cyberattacks. This isn’t new. It’s not unique to Russia. There are a number of states where we’ve seen low-level cyberattacks and industrial espionage and other behavior that we think should be out of bounds,” Obama said on November 17, 2016.
“And I delivered a clear and forceful message [to Putin] that, though we recognize Russia’s intelligence-gathering will sometimes take place even if we don’t like it, there’s a difference between that and them either meddling with elections or going after private organizations or commercial entities, and that we’re monitoring it carefully and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening.” Obama never issued any executive order responding to the allegations.
This all changed in December 2016, when Obama’s directive to create an ICA was issued, and the CIA’s alleged position that Putin had sought to defeat Clinton and elect Trump was leaked.
Obama appeared on The Daily Show on December 12, 2016, where Trevor Noah said that “we heard that the CIA assessed with high confidence that the Russians were involved in the hacking of the DNC and the RNC with the specific intent of swaying the election in favor of Donald Trump” and that Obama had “ordered a review of this from all intelligence agencies.”
“Right,” Obama replied. Obama pointed to the early October 2016 assessment and claimed that “it was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies and law enforcement that organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked.”
Obama then held a White House press conference on December 16, 2016, where he again seemed to preempt the completion of the ICA by again suggesting that Russia had favored Trump over Clinton. The then-president repeated that “based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC” as he again referenced the early October 2016 assessment by the ODNI and DHS.
Obama then strongly suggested that Russia had meddled to help Trump — something the ICA had not assessed yet.
“Some of the people who historically have been very critical of me for engaging with the Russians and having conversations with them also endorsed the President-elect, even as he was saying that we should stop sanctioning Russia and being tough on them, and work together with them against our common enemies. He [Trump] was very complimentary of Mr. Putin personally,” Obama said. “That wasn’t news. The President-elect during the campaign said so. And some folks who had made a career out of being anti-Russian didn’t say anything about it. And then after the election, suddenly they’re asking, ‘well, why didn’t you tell us that maybe the Russians were trying to help our candidate?’ Well, come on.”
Gabbard last summer issued a press release stating that her office had “revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”
The impact that Obama seemingly putting his thumb on the scale had on the work conducted by the drafters of the ICA may never been fully understood.
Granting legitimacy to the bogus dossier, then denying it
The recently-declassified House analysis provided further detail on how Brennan ensured the Steele Dossier — bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign — would be included in the ICA, despite objections from others at the CIA. The report stated that “the DCIA rejected requests from CIA professionals that the dossier be kept out of the ICA.”
The declassified House report also noted that “even though the dossier information was unclassified, the dossier summary was only included in the highest classified version of the ICA that was briefed to President Obama and President-elect Trump, and was seen by various national security officials and senior political appointees.” The report noted that “by relegating the dossier text to only the highest classified version of the ICA, the authors were better able to shield the assessment from scrutiny, since access to that ICA version was so limited.”
“By the Book” meeting in the Obama Oval Office
Obama also held a “by the book” meeting in the Oval Office on January 5, 2017 — it was then that Obama was likely briefed on the ICA, but the meeting also involved discussion by Obama about the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the claims of Trump-Russia collusion.
Then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told Robert Mueller’s team that she first learned the FBI possessed and was investigating recordings of Mike Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak following the early January 2017 national security meeting at the White House, and that it was Obama — not Comey — who told her about it.
Obama “started by saying that he had ‘learned of the information about Flynn’ and his conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak,” Yates said, according to FBI notes. “Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently.”
Yates told investigators that “at that point,” she “had no idea what the President was talking about.” She “recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act” but could not remember if Comey specifically said there was an “investigation.”
Susan Rice wrote the email to herself on Obama’s final day in office — January 20, 2017 — detailing the meeting between Obama, Biden, and spy officials on January 5, 2017. “On January 5, following a briefing by IC [intelligence community] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present,” Rice wrote in an email for her files. The email from Rice about the meeting also showed Obama and Comey considered not sharing information on Russia with Flynn.
“Director Comey affirmed that he is processing ‘by the book’ as it relates to law enforcement. From a national security perspective, Comey said he does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian ambassador Kislyak. Comey said that could be an issue as it relates to sharing sensitive information,” Rice wrote. “President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn.”
Rice said that Comey replied “potentially” and added that although he had no indication that Flynn had passed classified information to Kislyak, Comey believed that “the level of communication is unusual.”
Rice’s spokeswoman, Erin Pelton, previously released a statement defending Rice’s actions.
Both Comey and McCabe played key roles in the FBI’s Flynn investigation. Comey admitted in 2018 that he took advantage of the chaos in the early days of Trump’s administration when he sent Strzok and FBI agent Joseph Pientka to talk to Flynn on January 24, 2017.
“I sent them,” Comey said to MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, prompting laughter in the audience. “Something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in […] a more organized administration. In the George W. Bush administration, for example, or the Obama administration.”
“In both of those administrations, there was process, and so, if the FBI wanted to send agents into the White House itself to interview a senior official, you would work through the White House counsel, and there’d be discussions and approvals and who would be there, and I thought, it’s early enough — let’s just send a couple guys over,” he added.
Among the Flynn records eventually unveiled to the public were handwritten notes from former FBI Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap on the day the FBI interviewed Flynn. “I believe we should rethink this,” Priestap wrote. “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
Stefan Halper, a key FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case, was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades, was motivated in part by "monetary compensation," and continued snitching to the bureau even after agents concluded he told them an inaccurate story about Flynn, declassified documents show.
John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/obamas-pravda-moment-colbert-collides-his-record-russia-collusion-complicity
No comments:
Post a Comment