Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over the intelligence assessment of Russia’s 2016 election interference, in the latest example of officials going after perceived enemies of President Donald Trump.
Gabbard declassified documents Friday that she claimed were evidence the Obama administration’s intelligence officials “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork” for the FBI’s Russia investigation into Trump.
In a post, Gabbard said she was “turning over all documents to the DOJ for criminal referral,” though she didn’t specify whether she was referring any specific officials. A criminal referral does not necessarily mean the Justice Department will investigate or prosecute.
Earlier this month, however, CNN reported that the FBI is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for possible false statements to Congress following a referral from the current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, which was also related to the intelligence assessment on Russia’s election interference.
Both Gabbard and Ratcliffe declassified documents this month as part of an effort to undermine the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election and tried to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton – a conclusion that contributed to Trump’s longstanding distrust of the intelligence community.
Other reviews did not discover such issues, however, including a bipartisan 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report that supported the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Democrats criticized Gabbard’s release Friday as an attempt to “rewrite history.”
“The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan investigation reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewing witnesses over several years. The unanimous, bipartisan conclusion was that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. “This is just another example of the DNI trying to cook the books, rewrite history, and erode trust in the intelligence agencies she’s supposed to be leading.”
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, “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.”
The FBI’s criminal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia began in 2016 and stretched into the first Trump administration. It then became the subject of investigations by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to also examine the handling of intelligence that led to the Trump-Russia probe.
The Durham probe ended with no finding of wrongdoing in the handling of the intelligence, but it did end with the indictment of three people, including a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying information in a surveillance warrant request targeting a Trump campaign aide.
CNN’s Shania Shelton contributed to this report.
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