Obama Knew the Russiagate Intelligence Was Manufactured

David Harsanyi on Jul 25, 2025

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard contends that new declassified documents show that former President Barack Obama engaged in the plot to create the lie that President Donald Trump had conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.

Of course he did.

We have known for years that in July 2016, CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama on how Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign had sought to "vilify" Trump by accusing him of collaborating with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We already know that despite having this information in hand, Obama withheld intelligence about Russia from the Trump transition team and ordered agencies to compile an assessment of the situation.

Now, typically, such an assessment, which brings together intelligence at the highest levels, takes months to gather and analyze. This report, however, was cobbled together in just a few weeks so that the Obama administration could control not only the content but the messaging before the new administration began.

To understand how shoddy the assessment was, consider that it included the Steele dossier in the annex, an opposition-research document paid for by Democrats, but not the views of two senior CIA officers from the Russia mission center who argued that there was no evidence that Putin's ham-fisted meddling was intended to boost Trump's fortunes. Indeed, it turns out that numerous career officials expressed skepticism about the claim.

It is utterly implausible that Obama did not know that potentially exculpatory evidence regarding Clinton's role in spreading the Russia collusion hoax was omitted. It is certainly worth asking him.

In any event, a responsible report even intimating that a president-elect's campaign may have been involved in a seditious plot would be undertaken with extra special care. Instead, it was weaponized.

In her very last hour in office, Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, wrote a transparently self-preserving email to protect the president, claiming that she'd attended a meeting in which he stressed to then-FBI Director James Comey that everything in the Trump-Russia investigation should proceed "by the book."

Why? Why mention this on her last day? Did high-ranking Obama administration officials such as Comey not always conduct their investigations "by the book"?

Of course, they didn't. It was the dirtiest political trick played on the public in U.S. history. As intended, the Russia hysteria paralyzed the incoming presidency. It probably worked even better than those who hatched it could have imagined, as the legacy media took the bait on virtually every anonymously sourced story, no matter how far-fetched.

"Mr. President," Adam Schiff, then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in 2017, "the Russians hacked our election and interfered. No one disputes this now but you." Anyone who disputed this characterization was smeared as a shill for a foreign power. Polls found that over 60% of Democrats claimed to believe that the Russians had altered vote tallies. Not one investigation, of course, not even special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry, which was run by Trump-hating partisans, found any evidence that collusion had taken place.

Few events have done more to undermine our trust in elections and in our officials.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched a "strike force" to investigate the declassified findings regarding Obama's role. But Gabbard already accused the former president of "treason." As has Trump. One suspects that Gabbard's piecemeal release of declassified documents was intended to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein mess that was partly created by the administration.

This, too, is overpromising.

Sorry, those imagining Obama being cuffed and marched to the jailhouse in orange overalls are fooling themselves. It would be a miracle if anyone involved was indicted, much less convicted.

For one thing, the statute of limitations has expired on most of this event. And Obama, thanks to Trump v. United States, would enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts even if Bondi could prove criminality, which is doubtful.

This brand of corruption can't be explicitly found in any documents. Plotters don't have to have conversations. Everyone understood what was happening. And the system empowers intelligence heads with tremendous latitude and power. It has long been clear that everyone involved in the Russia hoax abused their position, but indicting a CIA director for, say, excluding certain information from an assessment report would be difficult, if it were illegal at all, which seems doubtful.

None of that is to contend that the president and his underlings weren't in on the plot. Or that we shouldn't find out the truth. But it will have to be the historical record. That's important, too.

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David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "The Rise of Blue Anon," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.