Obama Now ‘Squarely in Russiagate Crosshairs,’ Says Journalist Matt Taibbi
Journalist Matt Taibbi reported that former President Barack Obama is now at the ‘center square’ of the Russiagate investigation following the release of Trump-Russia documents. The documents, published by DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s office, detail the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, with Taibbi suggesting that Obama and his team are being targeted for decisions made in early 2016. The release of the documents has shifted the focus of the investigation from former President Trump to Obama and his national security team.
Taibbi quoted an unnamed source in describing Obama as no longer being a ‘tertiary’ character in the ‘scam’ that followed President Trump’s 2016 election win over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He elaborated on the remark Monday on ‘America’s Newsroom,’ stating that the last major revelation was that John Brennan and James Comey were the focus of criminal investigations that had been opened by the Justice Department. However, the new documents released by Tulsi Gabbard make it clear that the investigation is now aimed at the Obama White House and, in particular, at Barack Obama, due to decisions made in early December 2016 to suppress the presidential daily briefing and order a new intelligence community assessment that could have more aggressive conclusions about Trump and Russia.
Last Friday, Gabbard declassified documents which she says implicate the former president and members of his national security team who ‘manufactured and politicized intelligence’ to create the narrative that Russia was attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, despite information from the intelligence community stating otherwise. A declassified copy of the Dec. 8, 2016 presidential daily brief for President Obama obtained by Fox News Digital reads, in part, ‘We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.’ It continues: ‘Russian government-affiliated actors most likely compromised an Illinois voter registration database and unsuccessfully attempted the same in other states.’
A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation later found that, while Trump may not have accepted Russian help, Russia did meddle in some fashion. The chairman of the Intel Committee at the time — then-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who now serves as the top diplomat to the United States under Trump — put out a statement that said, ‘The committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election. What the committee did find, however, is very troubling. We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.’
Taibbi said he has heard frequent complaints that the information released by Gabbard had not come out sooner. A former high-ranking Trump official said to him, ‘So much corruption in the last Trump presidency that this shouldn’t have been overlooked, that these documents should have come out,’ but the overall sense is that everyone’s happy that they finally are coming out, and they’re looking forward to what is likely to come out this week.
Though Obama and his representatives did not respond to Fox News Digital’s previous requests for comment, Democratic lawmakers have reacted to the development with their own series of statements. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, criticized Gabbard’s claims as ‘baseless.’ ‘Few episodes in our nation’s history have been investigated as thoroughly as the Intelligence Community’s warning in 2016 that Russia was interfering in the election,’ Himes said in a statement posted to X. ‘Every legitimate investigation, including the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, found no evidence of politicization and endorsed the findings of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment.’
Virginia Senator Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused Gabbard of ‘weaponizing her position to amplify the president’s election conspiracy theories.’ The release of the documents has sparked a range of reactions, with some viewing them as a significant development in the ongoing investigation, while others have criticized the timing and implications of the release.