Tulsi Gabbard impresses her audience of one with another indefensible abuse
Last summer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard unveiled a report with a title that read, “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency.” In an accompanying press release, the hapless DNI added, “The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”
In reality, the report showed no such thing, and independent analyses characterized Gabbard’s report as “ludicrous.” An analysis from The Bulwark explained, “[E]ven a cursory look at the actual substance of Gabbard’s dramatic claims shows … a nothingburger. There is no actual substance.” Officials from Democratic and Republican administrations urged the public to recognize Gabbard’s conspiracy theories for what they were: obvious nonsense.
The DNI sent her findings to Donald Trump’s Justice Department nevertheless, and wouldn’t you know it, the hyper-politicized DOJ took Gabbard’s vacuous findings quite seriously.
Eight months later, a suspiciously similar process is unfolding. MS NOW reported:
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to a former intelligence community inspector general and a whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger the first impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The whistleblower complaint, deemed credible at the time by then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson, set off a chain of events that culminated in Trump’s impeachment in 2019 for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his then-political rival Joe Biden. The Senate later acquitted Trump in a largely party-line vote.
The criminal referral was first reported by Fox News. A spokesperson for Gabbard’s office confirmed to MS NOW that she had sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department but