Mddow Blog-DNI Gabbard concocts odd 'treasonous conspiracy' theory, eyes Russia probe prosecutions

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Tulsi Gabbard's new findings on the Trump-Russia scandal have been panned as “ludicrous.” The DNI is seeking criminal prosecutions anyway.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s report on the Trump-Russia scandal is demonstrably ridiculous.

The fact that she wants her absurd findings to serve as the basis for prosecutions makes it worse. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-07-21T15:49:27.448Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/dni-gabbard-concocts-odd-treasonous-conspiracy-theory-eyes-russia-prob-rcna219985

In the White House, it’s worse. In recent months, there’s been reporting from major outlets about the intelligence chief being sidelined, being left out of important meetings, and falling out of favor in the Oval Office. Indeed, in the run-up to the president launching a pre-emptive military strike in Iran, Donald Trump twice told reporters — out loud and on camera — that he didn’t care what Gabbard thought.

If the DNI were looking for a way to return to the president’s good graces, she apparently found one. The New York Times reported:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday issued the latest in a series of reports from the Trump administration attempting to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said the information she was releasing showed a ‘treasonous conspiracy in 2016’ by top Obama administration officials to harm Mr. Trump.

......It was over-the-top nonsense that Gabbard was quick to bring to Fox News during multiple on-air appearances, including an interview in which she raised the prospect of an anti-Trump “coup.”
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lufqzuaohc2p

Link to tweet

The president appeared delighted. I lost count of how many items he published to his social media platform about Gabbard’s claims, but The Daily Beast tallied “at least 17 times,” which sounds about right......

Gabbard focused heavily on the fact that the Obama White House sought a revised assessment the month after Trump’s electoral victory, and the changes that were made at this point. But as The Bulwark explained, “this supposed scandal rests on a crude bait-and-switch.”

A quick look at the media reports Gabbard cites shows that they weren’t talking about altering the election outcome through ‘cyberattacks on election infrastructure’ — that is, actual tampering with the vote count. Rather, the claims of election interference via cyber warfare concerned, as the Washington Post put it, ‘individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.’ ... Was this a new, post-election assessment, as Gabbard seems to claim? Hardly: The same conclusion was announced at the start of the October 7, 2016, joint statement issued by the DNI and the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of seventeen intelligence agencies.

All of this dovetails with the second problem with Gabbard’s findings: THe DNI leaned heavily into the fact that there was no evidence of Russia targeting U.S. vote-counting machines and election infrastructure. That’s true, but it’s also irrelevant: Democratic officials never claimed that Russia targeted U.S. vote-counting machines and election infrastructure.....

In other words, the release of a misguided report on Trump’s Russia scandal wasn’t just a desperate ploy to make the president happy; it was also an apparent first step toward pushing the Justice Department to act on a silly partisan stunt.

Gabbard is an idiot and is trying to get back in good graces with trump

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Maddow Blog-Trump escalates anti-Obama campaign, says he's 'guilty' in treasonous scheme

Just because the Republican’s ridiculous anti-Obama crusade is a distraction doesn’t mean nothing will happen.

Is Trump’s hysterical nonsense about Obama designed to be a distraction from Epstein? Almost certainly, yes.

But the brazen stupidity and unsubtle gaslighting might very well prove to be dangerous and consequential anyway. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-07-22T16:18:52.030Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ai-video-trumps-radical-campaign-obama-takes-deranged-turn-rcna220231

But as the Republican nears his 200-day mark, he’s starting to focus far less on his immediate Democratic predecessor and much more on his other Democratic predecessor.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lukunpczmw2o

Link to tweet

......All of this was stark raving mad — there is no such "proof" — though Trump has been working his way to this point for a while. Ten days ago, for example, he published an odd missive in which he said Obama was at least partially responsible for “creating” the Jeffrey Epstein files, which was bonkers for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that former Democratic president had already been out of office for years when the Trump administration investigated, arrested and charged the late millionaire pedophile.....

Between the two absurdities, Trump also amplified a fake video that appears to have been created with AI that depicts Obama being arrested in the Oval Office. The New York Times reported:

The fake video purports to show F.B.I. agents bursting into the meeting, pushing Mr. Obama into a kneeling position and putting him in handcuffs as Mr. Trump looks on smiling, while the song ‘Y.M.C.A.’ by the Village People plays. Later, the fake video shows Mr. Obama in an orange jumpsuit pacing in a cell. The start of the video shows a compilation of actual footage of Democratic leaders, including Mr. Obama and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., saying, ‘no one is above the law.’

This coincided with Trump also promoting fake mugshots of Obama and his team wearing prison jumpsuits.......

It’s worth emphasizing that there’s literally zero evidence of Obama having done anything wrong in connection with Trump’s Epstein and Russia scandals, and the suggestion that the Democratic president would be arrested because of Trump’s controversies is insane, even by 2025 standards.

What’s more, it’s very easy to believe that the incumbent Republican president is peddling this garbage in the hope of creating distractions and shifting blame away from himself.

But if that’s the case, why not just ignore Trump’s obvious absurdities? Because of an unfortunate truth: Just because his anti-Obama crusade is a distraction doesn’t mean nothing will happen. On the contrary, it’s very easy to believe that Trump — who’s already directed the Justice Department to investigate Biden — is moving toward the same step with Obama.