I don't doubt that a few of you were able to listen to the White House daily press briefing yesterday (23 July) and heard the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, elaborating on recently declassified documentation that provides a seriously upsetting view into actions by former President Obama.
Realizing that the readers of this column are found worldwide in large numbers, and may not have heard the briefing, and may be getting their information from biased, filtered sources, I wanted to clarify some things.
As I was listening to Miss Gabbard speaking, I was thinking of those readers. I though that perhaps a translation of what she shared, a simple-language summary, might be in order and helpful. So here goes.
You know what happened in 2016. Throughout the 2016 campaign, the Hillary Clinton people pushed the narrative that Trump was somehow a "Russian asset", and perpetually tried to connect him to Russia, partly to try to paint him in an unfavorable light to tip the election, and thereafter, when they lost, to compromise his Administration by claiming that the Russians had influenced the outcome and helped Trump win.
There are several overlapping areas we now know, and I want to help you by explaining each one separately.
1. What Russia Actually Did in 2016.
The Democrats claim that the Russians "influenced" or "meddled in" the election. What we now know is that their goal was not to change the outcome; they assumed that Hillary was going to win, presumably because the US media assumed and kept reporting that. Their goal was, however, to sow chaos by fomenting distrust in the integrity of the election, so Americans would see their cherished election process as suspect.
They did not care who won, so nothing they did was aimed at affecting the outcome. As the actual, reliable Intelligence Community assessments stated, the Russians were utterly incapable of influencing the election itself. Not only is that hard to do, but with 50 states having separate election processes, nothing the Russians could do had any hope of accomplishing anything.
They could have done something, though, had they chosen. They had information that Hillary had been having manic episodes, was on medications, that sort of thing. If they'd wanted to help Trump win, they could have dumped that on the public -- but they didn't. Remember, their goal was subverting public confidence. Knowing they couldn't change the outcome, they thought a more effective use of it was after the election to make it harder for Hillary, the assumed winner, to govern. Ironic, eh?
Summary: Russia's goal was to cause chaos. It was not to change the outcome of the 2016 election, which they couldn't have done anyway. And the CIA knew and reported all that to Obama, so he knew that they had no influence.
2. What the Obama Team Did in December 2016
Here is the big news, and where potential criminal conduct comes in. I'll try to make this simple. After the election, Obama received an intelligence briefing telling him all the above, meaning that Russia didn't try to swing the election, that they only tried to subvert Americans' faith in the process, and that they had dirt on Hillary that they held back to use when she got elected, as they assumed.
Importantly, that briefing was factual, was based on sound and standard intelligence-gathering practice, and reflected the inputs from multiple intelligence organizations. In other words, it was extremely reliable. In the normal course of events, it would have been also shared with President-elect Trump.
What it wasn't, though, was good for Democrats who had been trying to paint Trump as a Russian asset.
So Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and the CIA Director, John Brennan, not to publish that briefing (because then President-elect Trump would be given the briefing) and, instead, to go back and create a replacement briefing that had the content that Obama wanted in there. The analysts who created the factual briefing were told opaquely not to publish because of some "new guidance."
The replacement briefing was, of course, garbage, for a host of reasons. It had a predetermined outcome. It did not reflect inputs from across the various intelligence agencies. It was prepared by a small team of hand-picked analysts and a chief writer (who still objected to having their names on a report with no factual basis). Finally, it included already-discredited sources (such as the Steele dossier that the whole intelligence apparatus knew was just opposition research for Hillary's campaign and was full of made-up content).
We know that senior intelligence officials objected mightily to putting out a briefing that was so far below minimum community standards for sourcing and breadth of input. They were shut down. Not only were their opinions squelched, but the new, garbage briefing, was immediately leaked to the media to be splashed all over the news.
We also know that when the writers of the phony report went to back to Brennan, the CIA director, saying there was no factual basis for what they were asked to write, Brennan told them to put it there anyway because "... doesn't it ring true?" The American people rely on their intelligence agencies to provide accurate information for the President to make decisions. "Ringing true" is not what we want our presidents to use to act on. Yuk.
Summary: Obama knew that there was no real Russian impact on the election; he knew that Trump was in no way connected to Russia, so when the sound briefing telling him that was developed, he squashed it before Trump could see it, and (the potential criminal act) ordered the creation of an essentially phony briefing that pretended to state as fact all the equally phony assertions that the Hillary campaign had been making.
Because this was all done after the election, it can be readily construed as not a political act but a criminal one specifically intended both to give false information to the incoming president and, by leaking it to the media, to diminish the ability of the incoming president to govern.
We were all there. "Russia Russia Russia" tied up the first Trump Administration. We were lucky they were able to get anything done at all.
3. The Media and the Government
Media outlets won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on that story, even though it now turns out that their reporting was abysmal journalism, the result of their being manipulated by political sources on the left. "Russia Russia Russia" sounded so good as a story, and line up so nicely with their political leanings, that they tossed away journalistic standards, forgot about doing simple research, and got rewarded for it by their industry.
On the government side, you had the Schiffs and Swalwells of the world puffing out their chests and lying through their fake indignation. Adam Schiff, as we know, insisted that he had secret information, "factual evidence" that Trump was a Russian asset. The media gave them plenty of air time, but failed to practice even basic journalism by asking follow-up questions and insisting on answers.
Summary: the Democrats did what Democrats do, but the media tossed aside all sense of objectivity, particularly as relates to the sainted Obama.
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There are a few ancillary notes here from the last week. You're hearing Secretary Rubio's name as having been part of a Senate committee back a number of years that appeared not to have dug into the matter deep enough to discover the original, factual intelligence briefing. I believe that was a red herring; the committee can only deal with what they were allowed to see, and as diligently as Obama squashed that sound briefing and hurriedly had a replacement made up with his predetermined content, you can be that the committee was never allowed to know the original even existed.
We also know that there are whistleblowers -- senior personnel who were in the intelligence community back then and who are still there, who were professional enough not to want what happened to stain the honor of their agencies. Their testimony before the House and Senate committees that are sure to take this matter up will be riveting.
Finally, there is the matter of justice. Director Gabbard has referred the whole matter to the Justice Department for investigation. They will determine if there are criminal charges to be filed, and FBI Director Kash Patel and his team will look into it carefully and speak at length with the whistleblowers and others.
Obama is somewhat protected from charges, either where there is a statute of limitations issue, or in some cases by Supreme Court rulings that a president cannot be charged with offenses during his term if they are related to the scope of his official duties as president. Regardless, he can be forced to testify under penalty of perjury, and sitting there pleading the 5th will not be helpful to his precious legacy.
Personally, I am more interested in the truth coming out and being in some way certified as truthful than I am in seeing Brennan or Clapper or James Comey behind bars, fun though that would be. But let there be no doubt -- I would very much like to see enough criminal trials and convictions to prevent anyone from trying to pull this type of stunt in the future.
Perhaps the best answer to the Russian subversion of public confidence is to see some jail time for some of the perpetrators. It would sure make me feel a bit more confident.
Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton. Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.