President Donald Trump one month ago dismissed Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program, bluntly declaring, “I don’t care what she thinks.”
Her words are carrying a lot more weight with him now.
The director of national intelligence appeared at the White House press briefing Wednesday afternoon to tout newly declassified intelligence that she alleged shows that former President Barack Obama manipulated information and “knowingly lied” about Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election.
Gabbard claimed the new documents offered “irrefutable evidence” that “Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.”
While Gabbard acknowledged that Russia wanted to sow discord in the election, she said it did not collude with Trump or prefer him to win. As proof, Gabbard said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to release damaging information about Hillary Clinton — whose 2016 campaign was targeted by a barrage of Wikileaks revelations — showed that the Kremlin did not have a preferred candidate.
But the new information does not dispute the intelligence community’s 2016 conclusion that Russia and its president meddled in the election in hopes of damaging Clinton, who, as Gabbard noted, Moscow thought would win. It largely questions how the intelligence community arrived at its high-confidence assessment that Putin “aspired” to see Trump win.
Gabbard’s appearance at the briefing came the day after Trump effusively praised her in front of lawmakers in the East Room as she posed for selfies in the standing-room only crowd.
“She’s the hottest person in the room right now,” Trump said, joking to Speaker Mike Johnson that Gabbard’s “hotter than you right now.”
Gabbard’s rapid rehabilitation with the president stems almost entirely, according to one White House official, from her move last week to declassify the 2016 documents.
Asked about the president’s current view of the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, the official said that Trump’s comments “speak for themselves.”
It’s a marked transformation for Gabbard whose status inside the West Wing appeared to plummet last month when Trump publicly and repeatedly rebuked her testimony to Congress asserting that Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon.
And it speaks to how Trump views his staff. Just as he sees the Justice Department as his lawyers, the DNI is best served when its assessments align with those of the man in the Oval Office.
Her release of the Obama administration documents — and her allegations about them — comes at the perfect time for a president desperate to change the subject from the fight over unsealing more information about disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail by suicide six years ago.
“People talk about the ‘audience of one’ with Trump, and it continues to be true,” said a Trump ally outside the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “She knew this would be catnip for him and the timing with the Epstein stuff makes it all the more useful for the president.”
Criticizing the press corps for its coverage of Russia's 2016 interference, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt scoffed at a question about Gabbard's standing in the West Wing.
"The only people who are suggesting that the director of national intelligence would release evidence to try to boost her standing with the president are the people in this room, who constantly try to sow distrust and chaos amongst the president’s cabinet," she said.
Trump, Leavitt added, “has the utmost confidence in Director Gabbard. He always has.”
Asked about Gabbard’s rising status in the Trump White House, a senior U.S. intelligence official said she was simply “doing her job.” The official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly on her standing in the administration, also called media speculation about her recent hot streak “incredibly stupid.”
Trump, on Tuesday, seized on Gabbard’s latest disclosures and accused Obama of treason. Thanking her in front of the GOP lawmakers, the president said “she found out that Barack Hussein Obama led a group of people, and they cheated in the elections, and they cheated without question.”
Trump’s accusations drew a response from Obama’s office. A spokesperson for the former president dismissed Trump’s claims as “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.” And several Democrats have responded similarly.
“It seems as though the Trump administration is willing to declassify anything and everything except the Epstein files,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement on Wednesday. “The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe. And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.”
Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also pointed to the “bipartisan, unanimous finding” of the committee in its 2020 report concluding that Russia did in fact attempt to influence the U.S. election four years earlier to help then-candidate Trump.
“Nothing in this partisan, previously scuttled document changes that. Releasing this so-called report is just another reckless act by a Director of National Intelligence so desperate to please Donald Trump that she is willing to risk classified sources, betray our allies, and politicize the very intelligence she has been entrusted to protect.”
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