Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has accused former president Barack Obama of being part of a “treasonous conspiracy” during the transition to Donald Trump’s first presidency. He and his top national security officials rushed through an intelligence assessment on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, Gabbard says, that falsely claimed that Russia intended to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump in an effort to discredit the president-elect before his presidency even started.
That explosive claim is the heart of Gabbard’s new allegations that she says are supported by more than a hundred pages of documents her office declassified on Friday that reveal how America’s spies assessed Russian election interference in the final months of the 2016 election. “The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government,” she said.
Gabbard has recommended the Justice Department investigate and prosecute this alleged conspiracy. On Sunday, the president posted an AI video that depicted Obama himself being arrested by the FBI in the Oval Office. If Gabbard’s charges were true, Obama’s intervention would be the biggest scandal in American political history.
But how credible are these very serious allegations?
