Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated that Russia sought to sow chaos during the 2016 election and had anticipated a Hillary Clinton victory, according to an interview published Sunday by the New York Post.
Gabbard shared her assessment during a conversation with the Post’s Miranda Devine on the “Pod Force One” podcast, set to be released Wednesday.
“As we’ve learned in later documents that we’ve reviewed throughout that campaign, Russia believed that Hillary Clinton would win the election,” Gabbard said. “They felt it was inevitable.”
Russia was accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) emails in 2016, and an ODNI memo released in July stated, “supporting evidence [indicates] the Russian government directed hacking of the DNC and the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee].”
In the interview, Gabbard questioned why the Kremlin would have waited until after the election to release damaging information about Hillary Clinton if their primary goal was to see Donald Trump elected.
She referred to a recently published 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, which revealed Russia potentially had intelligence demonstrating Clinton was using “heavy tranquilizers” to address “intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.”
Gabbard then openly questioned why that report wasn’t publicly released.
“If Russia aspired to help Trump get elected, which is what the manufactured January 2017 intelligence community assessment says with high confidence, according to Brennan and Clapper, then Putin would have released the most damaging information and emails to help President Trump,” Gabbard told Devine.
Regarding the House report, Gabbard said the information “was intentionally withheld and not released because they assumed that Hillary Clinton would win that election, and their plan [was to] wait until maybe days or weeks before her inauguration to release these documents.”
Gabbard also addressed additional details uncovered through documents released by her office in July. “It surprised me that all of these documents still existed, quite frankly,” Gabbard told the New York Post.
Gabbard announced during a White House press briefing in July that she had submitted referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ) based on findings from the Office of the ODNI.
“What we now know came from President Obama was a covert mission, essentially, to subvert the will of the American people, create this lie that would challenge the legitimacy of President Trump’s election and the four years of his administration, resulting and affecting in what was truly a yearslong coup,” Gabbard told The Post.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered a grand jury to look into allegations of a criminal conspiracy surrounding the ‘Russiagate’ investigation following Gabbard’s referrals.
Fox News was the first to report on Bondi’s move.
“Fox News can confirm that Attorney General Pam Bondi today signed an order directing an unnamed U.S. federal prosecutor to take evidence to a grand jury relating to an alleged conspiracy to tie then 2016 candidate Donald Trump to the country of Russia,” network correspondent David Spunt told host Will Cain on Monday.
“Now, Fox News reviewed the one-page order just hours ago, signed by the Attorney General. A source familiar with the probe confirms this as well. While a DoJ spokesperson declined to comment on this report of an investigation, Fox is told Attorney General Bondi is taking the referrals from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard ‘very seriously,’” Spunt said.
“The spokesperson says that Bondi believes there is ‘clear cause for deep concern’ and a need for the next steps. Now, this move, Will, comes just a couple of weeks after the Director of National Intelligence — you see her right there — Tulsi Gabbard sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding what she says proves there was a conspiracy to undermine Trump’s candidacy and later his first term in office,” the correspondent continued.