Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s stupendous evidence that former President Barack Obama masterminded the Trump-Russia investigation boils down to a single word choice.
Gabbard was pressed to explain her theory—which has been roundly condemned as a thinly veiled distraction from the Trump administration’s Epstein files scandal—during an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Tuesday.
“You said there was irrefutable evidence that Obama was the mastermind of this intelligence manipulation and the perpetuation of the Russia hoax. What is that irrefutable evidence for our viewers tonight?” asked Ingraham.
Gabbard, in turn, directed Fox’s audience to her office’s website, which hosts heavily redacted versions of her report.
“And those who go in and read this will see how President Obama directed that a National Security Council meeting be called to talk about Russia, that the report that came out of that meeting was filled with tasks that were delivered by James Clapper’s assistant to [FBI Director] John Brennan and to other elements of the intelligence community,” Gabbard said.
“And very specifically, they were tasked to create an intelligence assessment that detailed how Moscow tried to influence the election—not if, but how,” she said.
INGRAHAM: You said there was irrefutable evidence that Obama was the mastermind of this intelligence manipulation and the perpetuation of the Russia hoax. What is that irrefutable evidence?TULSI GABBARD: *makes clear she’s got nothing* pic.twitter.com/0OXgvHmLX5
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2025
But that differentiation doesn’t mean very much within the larger context of the Russia investigation, which established—via a Republican-led House investigation as well as a bipartisan Senate investigation fronted by now–Secretary of State Marco Rubio—that Russia had worked to intervene in the 2016 election. So having a president inquire “how” that occurred, rather than “if” it occurred, makes sense.
In MAGA world, however, the difference is apparently treasonous. Several of Donald Trump’s allies have called for investigations as to whether the forty-fourth president committed “treason” by looking into Russian influence in the 2016 election.
Other efforts to reframe what Trump has deemed a “hoax” have also proven to be duds. Last week, a declassified report intended to add fuel to a debunked theory that Hillary Clinton cooked up the Trump-Russia connection actually revealed that a critical document to the plot was the likely invention of Russian spies, undermining the administration’s revisionary campaign.
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