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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released more documents targeting President Barack Obama and his administration amid "treason" allegations related to the 2016 election.
On Wednesday (July 23), Gabbard declassified a 2020 report from the House Intelligence Committee in an attempt to cast doubt on Russia's aim to influence the presidential election, per The Hill.
The new documents come after Gabbard released a report last week, alleging that Obama administration officials “conspired to subvert the will of the American people, working with their partners in the media to promote the lie, in order to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him.”
Several intelligence reviews have concluded that Russia aimed to influence the election and President Vladimir Putin favored Trump in the contest.
The 2020 House intelligence report released on Wednesday, which was authored when Republicans controlled the chamber, said the CIA “did not adhere to the tenets” of analytical standards and stated that the conclusion Putin took actions to benefit Trump was based on “one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports.” The report, however, does not undercut the determination that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
Gabbard attempted to paint the declassification as a bombshell, saying it exposed “the most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history.”
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, slammed Gabbard for Wednesday's release, citing a bipartisan Senate report that backed the CIA's conclusions about Russian interference.
“It seems as though the Trump administration is willing to declassify anything and everything except the Epstein files,” Warner said in a statement.
“Let’s be clear: the bipartisan, unanimous finding of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after years of painstaking investigation, more than 200 witness interviews, and millions of documents, was that Russia launched a large-scale influence campaign in the 2016 election in order to help then-candidate Donald Trump,” he added.
“Nothing in this partisan, previously scuttled document changes that. Releasing this so-called report is just another reckless act by a Director of National Intelligence so desperate to please Donald Trump that she is willing to risk classified sources, betray our allies, and politicize the very intelligence she has been entrusted to protect.”
On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced that it was launching a Strike Force to assess the reports released by Gabbard and investigate potential next legal steps.
This Department noted that it takes the "alleged weaponization of the intelligence community with the utmost seriousness."
“The Department of Justice is proud to work with my friend Director Gabbard and we are grateful for her partnership in delivering accountability for the American people. We will investigate these troubling disclosures fully and leave no stone unturned to deliver justice," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
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