Jul 23, 2025 minute read

Speaking to White House reporters from the briefing room on Wednesday, DNI Tulsi Gabbard revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not seeking to help Donald Trump win the presidency, but instead held back on releasing information that was damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton until after the election. 

“The intel community did not have any direct information that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help elect President Trump in 2016 and in fact,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt before bringing Gabbard out, “Russia was actively preparing for a Hillary Clinton victory, but at the unusual direction of Barack Obama at the time, the intel community published implausible intelligence suggesting otherwise. Why? To sabotage the incoming president.”

“There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false,” Gabbard said. “They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.

“The report that we released today shows in great detail how they carried this out. They manufactured findings from shoddy sources, they suppressed evidence and credible intelligence that disproved their false claims. They disobeyed traditional trade craft intelligence community standards and withheld the truth from the American people. In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump in that election in November of 2016. They worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump and launching what would be a year-long coup against him and his administration.”

The records released by ODNI on Friday and this week were from what is known as the “Clinton Annex.” She delved into a House intelligence report, “which investigated the claims that were made by an intelligence community assessment ordered by President Obama, and published in January of 2017. First, Putin’s principal interests relating to the 2016 election were to undermine faith in the US democratic process, not show any preference of a certain candidate,” she said.

“In fact,” Gabbard continued, “this report shows Putin held back from leaking compromising material on Hillary Clinton prior to the election, instead planning to release it after the election to weaken what Moscow viewed as an inevitable Clinton presidency.

“In the January 2017 intelligence community assessment that President Obama ordered, John Brennan, who was CIA director at the time, and the intelligence community intentionally suppressed intelligence that showed Putin was saving the most damaging material that he had in his possession about Hillary Clinton until after her potential and likely victory.

“The report goes into great detail about the information that Russia and Putin had on Hillary Clinton, which included possible criminal acts like secret meetings with multiple named US religious organizations, in which State Department officials offered, in exchange for supporting Secretary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, significant increases in financing from the State Department.

“They also had documents that showed the patronage of the State Department to State Department employees who would go and support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. There were high-level DNC emails that detailed evidence of Hillary’s quote, psycho emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression and cheerfulness, and that then Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.”

To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our Privacy Policy