A fresh report from Tulsi Gabbard — former congresswoman, ex-Democrat and current Director of National Intelligence — puts Barack Obama’s legacy on the line.

Gabbard’s findings implicate Obama and top brass like Hillary Clinton, James Comey and John Brennan of masterminding the “Russiagate” campaign to kneecap Trump before he even took office.

“Gabbard’s documents place [Obama] at the center of an unprecedented act of political sabotage, committed in his last Oval Office days as a humiliated lame-duck in the winter of 2016-2017,” says journalist Matt Taibbi at Substack.

Namely, Gabbard’s report alleges that, after the 2016 election, senior officials in the Obama administration disregarded intelligence which found Russia was most likely not trying to influence the election by using cyberattacks on U.S. election infrastructure.

Regardless, a December 9, 2016 meeting convened by Obama’s White House gathered top officials — including James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice and John Kerry — to ensure the intelligence community crafted a revised narrative, effectively fast-tracking a new report blaming Russia for assisting Trump’s election. 

And the fallout was fast and furious — headline leaks, “bombshell” assessments and the notorious Steele dossier blasted across newswires.

Your Rundown for Wednesday, July 23, 2025...

Accountability or Political Theater? What’s Next for Russiagate

Intelligence officials concede the creation of the new assessment in January 2017 involved emphasis shifts but maintain it was rooted in broader evidence of Russian influence campaigns, including disinformation and hacking of Democratic Party data.

Gabbard, however, says these weren’t idle tweaks or routine analysis. Instead, she calls it a politically-motivated “treasonous conspiracy… committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”

The now-infamous January 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment crystalized it: “[Vladimir] Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

• Gabbard’s charge: Obama’s White House orchestrated a last-minute push, tasking intelligence chiefs to weave a story about Russian interference, setting the stage for years of investigations and headlines casting Trump as a Kremlin puppet.

Gabbard’s team says this was a calculated attempt to “usurp” the incoming president, a slow-moving coup designed to paralyze Trump’s White House from day one.

The pushback this week? Democrats and mainstream media have gone on the attack, calling Gabbard’s evidence “baseless” and warning it’s all political theater.

They point to prior Senate and House findings, which agreed that Russia did try to meddle in the 2016 election. Obama’s office, meanwhile, dismisses new documents as “ridiculous,” doubling down that the intelligence community’s warnings were real, not manufactured.

Tulsi Gabbard isn’t backing down. She’s passed all her findings and documents to the Department of Justice. And her team promises more explosive disclosures soon — evidence they say exposes the so-called collusion scandal as a manufactured political hoax designed to ruin Donald Trump.

As Taibbi writes, Obama isn’t just a footnote; he’s now “center square” in the Russiagate scheme. The question isn’t just what happened in 2016 — but whether a reckoning will deliver real consequences, or end in frustration.

Market Rundown for Wednesday, July 23, 2025

S&P 500 futures are up 0.35% to 6,370.

Oil is down 0.45% to $65 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s down 0.25% to $3,435.40 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is down 0.90% to $118,370.