A new release of previously classified files by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims to expose “the most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history,” but Democrats rejected the alleged bombshell as a political distraction.
The files are part of Gabbard’s ongoing efforts to prove that investigations into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to influence the 2016 election are false and come from the “treasonous” actions of former President Barack Obama.
The House files, a product of the 2020 Republican-led House Intelligence Committee report, said the CIA’s conclusion that Putin meddled for Trump’s benefit was based on “one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports.”
Gabbard also said that Obama’s action against Trump amount to “a years-long coup” in a post on X.
Democratic lawmakers responded to Gabbard claims and the files release calling them “laughable” and “reckless.”
Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, defended to bipartisan 2020 report, saying it found “that Russia launched a large-scale influence campaign in the 2016 election in order to help then-candidate Donald Trump.”
“Nothing in this partisan, previously scuttled document changes that,” Warner said in a statement on Wednesday. Warner called Gabbard’s actions “just another reckless act…to please Donald Trump.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., at a press conference on Wednesday morning, blamed Republicans for using the Obama allegations as a political distraction in the midst of the Epstein files controversy.
“They (Republicans) can’t even get their act together together as it relates to releasing the Epstein files…When you have nothing to present that’s affirmative to the American people,” Jeffries said, “Republicans blame Barack Obama. It’s laughable.”
Warner also brought up Epstein. “It seems as though the Trump administration is willing to declassify anything and everything except the Epstein files,” Warner said.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Trump was informed by Pam Bondi in May that his name is listed in the Epstein files.
