Barack Obama Now Squarely in Russiagate Crosshairs

Barack #Obama entered national politics with a smile that looked like Hope and Change. Amid rumors of family discord and disarray within the political party he once led, his face has hardened. He lately looks bitter, resentful, exhausted by the act.

In the wake of reports released by fellow Hawaiian and former Democrat Tulsi #Gabbard, he also has a new problem. It once seemed a lock that Obama would be remembered as the winsome hero of Shepard Fairey’s portrait, but Gabbard’s documents place him 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. The new Director of National Intelligence is targeting Obama’s legacy and maybe even his freedom, detailing a “treasonous #conspiracy committed by officials at the highest level of our government,” announcing that everyone involved “must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Ten days ago, news broke that Donald #Trump’s Justice Department opened criminal investigations into two of Obama’s top deputies, former #FBI chief James #Comey and former #CIA head John #Brennan. Last Sunday, Gabbard’s ODNI hosted an “urgent” meeting to discuss “new information on Russiagate” with members of the Justice Department and the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

All week, Washington buzzed with rumors about imminent document releases, but what came out wasn’t what many expected. Gabbard’s documents show the Obama White House overruling months of reports downplaying Russian interference and ordering subordinates to set a time bomb of manipulated intelligence, with the aim of trying to, as Gabbard described it, “usurp” an incoming president. No longer a tertiary character, Obama is now “center square” in the #Russiagate scam, as one source put it.

Mainstream press outlets like the New York Times and Politico have already run pieces quoting Democratic Party mouthpieces shrugging off Gabbard’s reports as “baseless” and an attempt to “change the subject,” but coverage may not matter, as the investigation into the Trump-Russia hoax is no longer about trying to change hearts and minds. Multiple sources say Gabbard’s team is focused on “accountability” by gathering evidence for court-ready cases. The matter may soon need a special prosecutor, putting Obama in the same position Trump occupied in the first two years of his presidency, on the run from a high-profile fox hunt.

The information from Gabbard’s office was not the only news on the Russiagate front. This investigation is not just about “ten-year-old news,” as has been a common talking point, but may also involve never-reported Biden-era issues. A source close to the investigation said yesterday that the DOJ is focusing on conspiracy charges and looking at conduct “from 2016 to 2024.” Another with ties to the administration said “President Trump’s national security team is looking at evidence that members of his 2024 campaign were spied on as well.”

All of that is yet to be determined. Until then, here’s a detailed review of what yesterday’s releases say, and why they signal a shift toward former president Obama:

Gabbard’s office put out two files. One is a 114-page document titled, “Declassified evidence of Obama administration’s conspiracy to subvert Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.” The other is an 11-page press release that highlights the same documents, in a timeline with commentary. Gabbard compressed the releases further in an email chain replete with flow charts:

The documents focus on emails to and from the office of then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, whose name was conspicuously absent when news about criminal investigations into other Obama-era intelligence chiefs broke. Clapper throughout the Trump-Russia affair has been more publicly reserved than Comey or especially Brennan, who in 2019 excitedly suggested Special Counsel Robert Mueller might deliver indictments on the “Ides of March.” In contrast, Clapper told Chuck Todd on Meet The Press at the outset of Russiagate mania that “we had no evidence of collusion” when he left office in January 2017:

Clapper even before Trump’s election argued against making broad claims about Russian interference, let alone interference on behalf of Donald Trump specifically. The first email in the release is from Clapper, and describes a meeting chaired by former Obama National Security Council chief Denis McDonough:

Yes; at the WH session today chaired by Denis, I brought up that I had asked my team to produce an NIE on cyber threats to our electoral infrastructure… this generated quite a bit of discussion.

That Clapper called for an NIE or National Intelligence Assessment on cyber threats — a large, formal report comprising input from the entire intelligence community — is significant because other chiefs like Brennan urged a smaller ICA or Intelligence Community Assessment, a more informal document involving as few as three or four agencies. There is little chance unsubstantiated information from ex-spy Christopher Steele could have made it into an NIE. An ICA was a different matter.

The next documents in the chain show that not only Clapper’s office but others, including the FBI, were relatively unconcerned about Russian interference. Figures like Virginia Senator and key Russiagate figure Mark Warner are already dismissing Gabbard’s report as an attempt to “cook the books” by comparing “apples and oranges,” the apples being Russian efforts to attack “election infrastructure,” the oranges being “influence” operations. But emails dating back to September 2016 show a dismissive attitude toward both concepts, as well as a lack of conviction about Russia’s ability to impact or “disrupt” the election outcome in any way.

On September 5th, for instance, an FBI official asked for a change in the draft of a potential ICA on cyber threats, writing:

The way it currently reads, it would indicate that we have definitive information that Russia does intend to disrupt our elections and we are uncomfortable making that assessment at this point.

An official from an unnamed agency added:

I sort of understood the emphasis to be on Russia probably not having the capability to influence the election.

A DHS official wrote, “Russia probably is not (and will not) trying to influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure,” which might fall under Warner’s “apples” heading. That same official however added:

We assess that foreign adversaries, notably Russia, are more likely to focus their cyber operations on undermining credibility/public confidence… That assessment feeds directly into the influence operations, some cyber-enabled, that we’ve seen related to current and historic election cycles.

An official from Clapper’s ODNI hit the same note, suggesting that any influence operations would fit a normal historical pattern of “less sophisticated” propaganda:

Russia probably is not trying to going to be able to? influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure. Russia probably is using cyber means primarily to influence the election by stealing campaign party data and leaking select items, and it is also using public propaganda. This fits an historical pattern of Russia using less sophisticated propaganda and information operations to influence US elections.

By December 7th, 2016, Clapper’s office prepared text for a Presidential Daily Briefing headed ACTIVITY ON AND SINCE ELECTION DAY and reading:

By the next day, December 8th, officials had text prepared that read, “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.”

This wording was scheduled to be entered into the PDB — not a public report, but a confidential briefing to President Obama — the next day, December 9th. However, Comey’s FBI on the afternoon of the 8th unexpectedly withdrew from the PDB.

“FBI will be drafting a dissent this afternoon,” a Bureau official wrote at 3:48 p.m. “Please remove our seal and annotations of co-authorship.” About an hour later, at 4:53 p.m., an official from Clapper’s office axed the PDB for the time being. “Based on some new guidance, we are going to push back publication of the PDB,” the official wrote. “It will not run tomorrow and is not likely to run until next week.”

At that point, a meeting of Obama’s National Security Principals Committee was held. The list of attendees reads like an all-star collection of MSNBC green room visitors: John #Kerry, Victoria #Nuland, John #Brennan, Avril #Haines, Ben #Rhodes, and Andrew "McCabe, among others. One source told me to note the name Richard #Ledgett from the National Security Agency, who “played a role in this”:

This is the group that the next day received a group email from Clapper’s office headed “POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling,” asking them to “produce an assessment per the President’s request,” with a target release date of January 9th, 2017:

The IC is prepared to produce an assessment per the President’s request, that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities, and how Moscow’s approach has changed over time, going back to 2008 and 2012 as reference points.

In sum, just before Obama was to receive a briefing that contained no reference to significant Russian interference, the briefing was called off and a high-level meeting of White House security officials was convened, after which Obama himself tasked them with a new assessment that would lean toward a more aggressive conclusion. Although this new effort was to be directed by Clapper’s office, the critical job of divining #Russia’s motives would be given to the CIA and Brennan:

ii. Why did Moscow direct these activities? What have the Russians hoped to accomplish? (CIA lead)

It’s suspicious that a Presidential Daily Briefing was postponed to make way for ICA ordered at Obama’s request, fishier yet that the evidence that Putin intended to help Trump came from a classified annex containing Steele dossier material, but the smoking gun is that these eventual conclusions leaked instantly — not one or two weeks after Obama ordered the ICA, but the same day, before any group work could possibly have been done.

On December 9th, 2016, the New York Times ran “Russian Hackers Acted to Aid Trump in Election, U.S. Says.” This piece not only led with the full-blown Steele Dossier saw about Putin having acted to help Trump at Hillary Clinton’s expense, it followed with aggressive conclusions about Russian hacks of both Democratic and Republican party infrastructure. Also that day, the Washington Post ran a piece describing a “secret assessment” that Russia had worked to help Trump, even though the group assessment had only just been assigned.

It's hard to square all of these instantaneous leaks with Obama’s alleged insistence that the ICA investigation be conducted “by the book,” as Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice eventually documented in a letter to herself. Former CBS reporter Catherine Herridge, who reported on the letter, noted that Rice’s letter to herself takes on “new significance” in light of Gabbard’s documents.

On December 10, 2016, the Post ran another piece quoting senior intelligence officials claiming to be worried about their futures, noting the coming report could potentially pit “the entire U.S. intelligence community against a newly sworn-in president who has repeatedly denigrated their work.” Added another: “After Jan. 20… we’re in uncharted territory.” Remember at this point there’d been no evidence whatsoever linking Trump to Russia or even suggesting Russia sought to help Trump, apart from the bogus Steele material.

After that, leaks followed in rapid succession, on almost a daily basis. On Dec. 11, 2016, the Times ran “C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence,” claiming the “stunning new judgment” they’d just reported came from the CIA, but “does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election.” Instead, “it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence — evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments — that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.” The “stunning judgement” wasn’t based on new information, but a change in the political weather at the top of the administration allowing more aggressive “analysis.”

From there, officials built the Trump-Russia narrative brick by brick. On December 15th, the NSA’s Admiral Michael Rogers, who in private refused to upgrade his agency’s confidence level from “moderate” to “high,” told the Times there “shouldn’t be any doubt… This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.” News that the FBI agreed ran the next day.

This is the process that led to the release of the much-discussed January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded “[Vladimir] Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.” When the report came out, via a pre-conceived format that involved a public document and private classified annexes, news of what was in the classified part leaked quickly.

The first outlet to break the big news was CNN, which reported on January 10th, 2017 that President-elect Trump had been presented “a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election” that included claims from a “former British intelligence operative” that allegations that Russians “claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” The Times quickly followed, noting the “author of the memos is Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with MI-6, who once served in Moscow,” and “Former C.I.A. officials described him as an expert on Russia who is well respected in the spy world.”

Some of this timeline was known, but the sudden ditching of a tepid PDB and ordering of a new report “per the President’s request,” with emails conspicuously invoking “POTUS tasking,” never surfaced before. There is a reason many of the news reports about Gabbard’s releases have Obama’s name in the headline, along with the term “treasonous conspiracy.” The former president’s role in directing the reworked ICA is clearly a focus of Gabbard’s team.

Also new is testimony from a whistleblower in Clapper’s office, who was asked to sign off on the claims about Russian intent without being shown the alleged intelligence supporting the claims. “As for the 2017 ICA’s judgement of a decisive Russian preference for then-candidate Donald Trump,” he told Gabbard’s group, “I could not concur in good conscience based on information available, and my professional analytic judgement.” That whistleblower’s 2019 efforts to obtain documents relevant to the Steele material by Freedom of Information Request are also in the new package.

Not everyone in Trumpworld is thrilled with the new developments. The failure of senior intelligence officials who served in Trump’s last term to find and/or release these documents has a number of high profile figures upset. “So much corruption,” said one disgusted former Trump official. Another expressed skepticism that anything of significance would come of these investigations, and pointed to Special Counsel John Durham’s ill-fated probe: “It’s always something.” Thanks to the investigation kicked off by this ICA and the subsequent probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, there are people who went to jail, fell ill, went through family crises, and dealt with other serious problems. As a result, there are a lot of eyes on this investigation, and high expectations. Failure for Gabbard’s team to deliver real consequences would bring heavy criticism from both sides.

Gabbard’s team seems to understand they will be judged on the “accountability” question, and remain determined to continue. More releases are expected.

--M. #Taibbi