Gabbard's claims of an anti-Trump conspiracy are not supported by
declassified documents
[July 24, 2025]
By BYRON TAU and ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this
month declassified material that she claimed proved a “treasonous
conspiracy” by the Obama administration in 2016 to politicize U.S.
intelligence in service of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Donald
Trump’s election victory.
As evidence, Gabbard cited newly declassified emails from Obama
officials and a five-year-old classified House report in hopes of
undermining the intelligence community's conclusion that Russian
President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Trump and denigrate his
Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Russia’s activities during the 2016 election remain some of the most
examined events in recent history. The Kremlin's campaign and the
subsequent U.S. government response were the subject of at least five
major investigations by the Republican-led House and Senate intelligence
committee; two Justice Department special counsels; and the department's
inspector general.
Those investigations either concluded — or accepted the conclusion —
that Russia embarked on a campaign to interfere in the election through
the use of social media and hacked material.
The House-led probe, conducted by Trump allies, also concurred that
Russia ran an election interference campaign but said the purpose was to
sow chaos in the U.S. rather than boost Trump. Several of the reports
criticize the actions of Obama administration officials, particularly at
the FBI, but do not dispute the fundamental findings that Moscow sought
to interfere in the election.
The Associated Press has reviewed those reports to evaluate how
Gabbard’s claims stack up:
Russian election interference
CLAIM: “The intelligence community had one assessment: that Russia did
not have the intent and capability to try to impact the outcome of the
U.S. election leading up to Election Day. The same assessment was made
after the election.” — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday.
The documents Gabbard released do not support her claim. She cites a
handful of emails from 2016 in which officials conclude that Russia had
no intention of manipulating the U.S. vote count through cyberattacks on
voting systems.
President Barack Obama's administration never alleged that voting
infrastructure was tampered with. Rather, the administration said Russia
ran a covert influence campaign using hacked and stolen material from
prominent Democrats. Russian operatives then used that information as
part of state-funded media and social media operations to inflame U.S.
public opinion. More than two dozen Russians were indicted in 2018 in
connection with those efforts.
Republican-led investigations in Congress have affirmed that conclusion,
and the emails that Gabbard released do not contradict that finding.
Shift in assessment?
CLAIM: “There was a shift, a 180-degree shift, from the intelligence
community's assessment leading up to the election to the one that
President Obama directed be produced after Donald Trump won the election
that completely contradicted those assessments that had come
previously.” — Gabbard to Fox News on Tuesday.
There was no shift.
The emails Gabbard released show that a Department of Homeland Security
official in August 2016 told then-Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper there was “no indication of a Russian threat to directly
manipulate the actual vote count.”
The public assessment the Obama administration made public in January
2017 reached the same conclusion: “DHS assesses that the types of
systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote
tallying."
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Director of
National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, speak with reporters in the
James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Wednesday, July
23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Putin's intent
CLAIM: The Obama administration "manufactured the January 2017
Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false promoting
the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped
President Trump win the 2016 election.” — Gabbard on Truth Social
Wednesday.
The material declassified this week reveals some dissent within the
intelligence community about whether Putin wanted to help Trump or
simply inflame the U.S. public. That same question led to a partisan
divide on the House Intelligence panel when it examined the matter
several years later.
Gabbard’s memo released last week cites a “whistleblower” who she
says served in the intelligence community at the time and who is
quoted as saying that he could not “concur in good conscience” with
the intelligence community's judgment that Russia had a “decisive
preference” for Trump.
Such dissent and debate are not unusual in the drafting of
intelligence reports. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence
Committee examined whether there was any political interference in
the Obama administration’s conclusions and reported that “all
analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content,
and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper.”
In 2018, Putin directly addressed the question of whether he
preferred Trump at a press conference in Helsinki even as he
sidestepped a question about whether he directed any of his
subordinates to help Trump.
“Yes, I did,” Putin said. “Because he talked about bringing the
U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”
Steele dossier
CLAIM: “They used already discredited information like the Steele
dossier — they knew it was discredited at the time.” — Gabbard to
Fox News on Tuesday.
The dossier refers to a collection of opposition research files
compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, whose work was
funded by Democrats during the 2016 election.
Those files included uncorroborated tips and salacious gossip about
Trump’s ties to Russia, but the importance to the Russia
investigation has sometimes been overstated.
It was not the basis for the FBI’s decision to open an investigation
in July 2016 into potential coordination between the Trump campaign
and Russia, the Justice Department's inspector general found. Some
of the records released by Gabbard this week also reveal that it was
a Central Intelligence Agency human source close to the Kremlin that
the agency primarily relied on for its conclusion that Putin wanted
to help Trump and hurt Clinton, not the Steele dossier.
FBI agents on the case didn't even come to possess the dossier until
weeks into their inquiry. Even so, Trump supporters have seized on
the unverified innuendo in the document to undercut the broader
Russia investigation. Many of Steele’s claims have since been
discredited or denied.
It is true, however, that the FBI and Justice Department relied in
part on the Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants to
eavesdrop on the communications of a former Trump campaign adviser,
the inspector general found. FBI agents continued to pursue those
warrants even after questions arose about the credibility of
Steele's reporting.
The dossier was also summarized — over the objections of then-CIA
Director John Brennan, he has said — in a two-page annex to the
classified version of the intelligence community assessment.
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