The Department of Justice will convene a federal grand jury to investigate whether Obama-era officials conspired to fuel the false Russia-collusion tale against Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the DOJ on Monday to act on a referral issued two weeks ago by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which accused Obama administration officials of leading a “treasonous” campaign to promote the lie that Trump conspired with Russian officials to rig the 2016 election.
Obama’s connection to the Russiagate conspiracy — that Obama was aware of, and promoted, Hillary Clinton’s campaign’s strategy based largely on the Steele dosser to vilify Trump by connecting him to Russia — has been known. But Gabbard declassified new information in July — including the House Intelligence Committee Report originally drafted in 2017 but never released to the public; this report “exposed how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment [ICA] that they knew was false, promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election,” Gabbard said in a statement on X.
The House report, Gabbard added, found that the 2017 ICA “contrived [the] narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.”
Gabbard’s recent referral was released just days after a Trump CIA report found that the ICA was correct in confirming with “high confidence” that Putin had meddled in the 2016 election to undermine Clinton. The CIA report, however, also took issue with the ICA’s judgement that Putin had “a clear preference” for candidate Trump and “aspired to help his chances of victory.”
No defendants have faced charges yet, but the grand jury would seek potential indictments for then-senior officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former FBI Director James Comey.
“There must be indictments,” Gabbard has said. “Those responsible, no matter how powerful they are and were at that time, no matter who was involved in creating this treasonous conspiracy against the American people, they all must be held accountable.”
Fox News first reported Bondi’s order to install a grand jury.
“Following the compelling case outlined by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, which exposed clear and blatant weaponization by corrupt intelligence officials acting at the behest of the Democrat Party and likely former President Obama, the Administration remains committed to conducting a thorough investigation,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement when asked about the grand jury probe.
“This effort aims to provide the American people with the truth about the extent to which former government officials worked to sabotage the Trump administration and undermine the will of the American people in a clear attempt to subvert our Constitutional Republic,” he added.
Brennan and Clapper have denied that senior Obama officials “manufactured politicized intelligence, silenced intelligence professionals and engaged in a broad ‘treasonous conspiracy’ to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump.” In a rare statement, Obama himself called the allegations “bizarre” and said they were a “ridiculous and weak attempt at distraction.”
“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,” a statement from Obama’s office read. “These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
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