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This past Friday, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, dropped a batch of documents claiming that some folks from the Obama administration acted treasonously during the 2016 elections.
These allegations mix up the idea that Russia interfered in the elections with the notion that they actively tried to sway the vote by hacking into voting systems. Jeremy Herb and Katie Bo Lillis from CNN expressed that this situation is definitely confusing, especially after chatting with people who looked into these allegations during a bipartisan Senate investigation of the 2016 elections.
As commented by one source in their report, the information was described as “wildly misleading.” Yet, President Donald Trump did not hold back on his response, directly accusing former President Barack Obama of treason—an accusation that carries severe consequences in the U.S. law—during an Oval Office event while discussing trade with the leader of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Trump’s lengthy and somewhat jumbled reply reveals a lot about his thought process, continually circling back to immigration and dissecting his loss in the 2020 elections.
In a rather uncommon move, Obama’s office put out a statement addressing these claims:
“Normally, we wouldn’t dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation coming from this White House with a response, but these particular accusations are outrageous enough to warrant one,” stated spokesman Patrick Rodenbush. “These claims are absurd and are merely an attempt to distract. The documents released last week do not alter the well-established agreement that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 presidential elections, but failed to manipulate any voting results. This was reiterated in a bipartisan investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, which was overseen by Marco Rubio.”
Here’s a deeper dive into what Trump had to say, with insights from CNN’s own reporting.
(Trump made these comments in the Oval Office, decorated with gold filigree, portraits from the White House archives, and hidden behind a curtain, a copy of the Declaration of Independence.)
(According to CNN, Gabbard’s new allegations largely lean on pre-election evaluations and statements from intelligence officials from the Obama era, affirming that Russia did not modify the election outcome through cyber-attacks. The intelligence community’s report from January 2017 never claimed that Russian hacks affected the election results or tampered with electoral infrastructure at all—although some state systems were probed. Instead, that report highlighted Russia’s extensive influence campaign ordered by President Vladimir Putin and various cyber operations against American officials and the Democratic Party, including the emails that WikiLeaks published.)
(The charge of treason, seen as trying to overthrow the government, could carry a death sentence in the U.S. Interestingly enough, when the Department of Justice accused Trump of attempting to interfere with the 2020 election during Biden’s administration, they did not label him as a traitor.)
(While the release of new documents remains anticipated, previous promises regarding document distributions have often fallen short of expectations.)
(Although the Steele dossier has been largely discredited, the U.S. intelligence community still maintains that Russia attempted to interfere with the elections, a conclusion reinforced by the Mueller report, which indicated that while there were contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russians, it did not establish conspiracy nor label Trump as a criminal—though he wasn’t exonerated either.)
(At that time, many outlets chose not to publish the full Steele dossier, given the lack of corroboration with Russia’s interference, which was extensively documented by U.S. intelligence.)
(For further insights, check out CNN’s 2021 report titled The Steele Dossier: A Reckoning.)
(Importantly, evidence for these conspiracy claims remains non-existent.)
(Moreover, no substantial proof indicates the 2020 election was rigged—plenty of evidence, however, suggests that Trump actively sought to disrupt the election results. The inflation saga is still ongoing, especially with the looming threat of Trump’s tariffs coming into play.)
(Trump has often tried to assert that many undocumented immigrants commit violent crimes. However, there has been a lack of evidence supporting this claim. For detailed clarifications, see CNN’s Fact Checks on Trump’s assertions about undocumented immigrants.)
(Trump managed to win in 2024, but the outcome was far from a landslide.)
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