In a striking challenge to years of entrenched political narratives, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has now authorized the release of a once-buried congressional report that calls into question the very foundation of the intelligence community’s claim that Russia sought to elect Donald Trump in 2016.
The 46-page report, long stifled by intelligence agencies over alleged concerns about protecting “sources and methods,” has finally been made public over the objections of the CIA and other officials.
However, according to a new report from the Washington Post, bureaucrats within the CIA resisted the declassification, even as the report had already cleared congressional review in 2020. It took the intervention of then-CIA Director John Ratcliffe and President Trump himself to secure its release.
Gabbard, who was appointed DNI in Trump’s second term, has not minced words. She has directly accused former President Barack Obama and his top intelligence chiefs — CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey — of orchestrating a coordinated effort to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and subvert the will of the American electorate.
The investigation, led by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), is based on over 2,300 hours of investigative work and more than 20 interviews conducted within a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at CIA headquarters.
The findings, long suppressed, paint a disturbing portrait of intelligence being manipulated to reach a predetermined political conclusion.
At the heart of the controversy is the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which concluded with “high confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin favored Trump and sought to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
But according to the newly declassified HPSCI report, that conclusion was based on a mere fragment of a sentence that five analysts interpreted in five different ways.
Intelligence that supported the narrative was often based on raw, unverified reporting, while contradictory data was downplayed or ignored entirely.
The report singles out Brennan for allegedly bypassing normal analytic procedures and handpicking authors of the ICA to ensure the desired outcome.
It also cites his delivery of unpublished intelligence in oral briefings, raising serious questions about political interference at the highest levels of the intelligence community.
In an apparent attempt to get ahead of the fallout, the CIA quietly released a self-assessment of its “tradecraft” just three weeks before the HPSCI report became public.
Though the review acknowledged “procedural anomalies” and Brennan’s excessive influence, it attempted to defend the integrity of the ICA, calling its analysis more rigorous than most. Critics are unlikely to be reassured.
Two former CIA officials involved in crafting the 2017 assessment told the Post they still stand by their conclusions. The CIA itself declined to comment.
The release of this report — with minimal redactions — marks a watershed moment in the ongoing reckoning with the intelligence community’s role in shaping partisan narratives.
For conservatives who long questioned the Russia-Trump narrative, Gabbard’s decision to let the truth come to light is more than just vindication — it’s accountability long overdue.
[READ MORE: Trump Proposes Mid-Decade Census Excluding Noncitizens, Defying Constitutional Norms]
