Declassified documents are shaking up the political landscape with claims of a conspiracy involving former President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs to tie President Donald Trump to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The Daily Caller reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has unveiled explosive files challenging the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), while Obama’s allies reportedly scramble to keep these revelations from reaching the American public, per an NBC report.
Let’s rewind to 2016, when Obama, alongside top intelligence officials like CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and DNI James Clapper, oversaw the ICA that concluded Russia interfered in the election to boost Trump.
That assessment fueled years of media frenzy over “Russiagate,” often leaning on the Clinton-funded Steele dossier, a document now widely questioned for its credibility.
On December 9, 2016, Obama gathered his national security team in the White House Situation Room, directing them to dig up evidence of Russian interference—a move that now raises eyebrows given what’s come to light.
Interestingly, a planned Presidential Daily Brief the day before, which would have noted Russia’s inability to tamper with voting machines, was scrapped after Comey’s FBI pulled its support—curious timing, wouldn’t you say?
Fast forward to recent days, and Gabbard’s declassified documents reveal that raw intelligence behind the ICA was ambiguous, unverified, and sometimes didn’t even mention Trump, per a House Intelligence Committee report.
Even more troubling, contradictory evidence showing Russia could not disrupt voting machines was buried, and Trump, despite receiving briefings since November 2020, was never told about it.
Gabbard, who’s been leading a working group since April to curb spy abuses, didn’t stop at declassification—she made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, calling this a “years-long coup” against the public.
Obama’s camp, predictably, isn’t thrilled, with allies questioning the timing of these releases and hoping, according to NBC sources, that the broader public stays in the dark about the details.
A former Obama official told NBC, “The battle now is to play this even.” Well, isn’t that a convenient way to dodge accountability while pretending it’s about fairness?
Obama’s spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush, dismissed the allegations as “ridiculous” and a “weak attempt at distraction” in a statement on July 22, 2025, insisting Russia’s role in 2016 remains widely accepted—yet the declassified files beg to differ.
Curiously, major outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, which shared a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for their Russiagate coverage based on anonymous sources, didn’t splash these new documents on their front pages on July 24, 2025.
That Pulitzer, by the way, is now the subject of a libel lawsuit from Trump, challenging the validity of awards tied to a narrative these documents seem to unravel—hardly a coincidence, if you ask me.