NBC News tried to convince their viewers on Monday that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation into former Obama-era officials’ alleged involvement in the Russiagate scandal is a political distraction.
The DOJ opened a grand jury investigation on Monday into former President Barack Obama’s administration’s alleged role in fueling the now-debunked claims that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. NBC News White House correspondent Monica Alba claimed that President Donald Trump’s administration raised these so-called “unsubstantiated claims” to distract from the DOJ’s handling of the files surrounding sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The headlines were dominated by the Jeffrey Epstein controversy and then the president was sort of trying to change the topic, very obviously, in very different venues, was trying to bring up these unsubstantiated claims about the role, he argues, that former President Obama had in the 2016 election and trying to suppress some information that he says would have been damaging if it had come to light,” Alba said. “Then you have the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard come to the White House briefing room and try to share some of this alleged new evidence. Well now you have the Attorney General saying that they’re gonna try to take that information, which remember, they had announced a Strike Force to look into what they call new evidence and try to evaluate it, to see if there any potential criminal indictments they can follow.” (RELATED: ‘This Was Treason’: Trump Says He Wants DOJ To Target Obama Over Alleged 2016 Election Plot)
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Alba asserted that there is “no evidence” for any of the Trump administration’s claims and that the investigation is a “politically motivated” attempt to go after a political foe.
“It is worth repeating that there is no evidence to back it up and it’s really, it seems, a politically motivated move to keep the focus on one of the president’s clear political foes and talk about basically anything else,” Alba continued.
During the investigation into Russian collusion during Trump’s first term, the corporate media repeatedly tried to persuade the American public that the Russian collusion allegations were fully valid. CNN published a headline in August 2018 titled, “The glaring problems with Trump’s ‘no collusion’ argument,” which attempted to lay out that the allegations were credible. NBC News claimed the allegations were “very real” in August 2020 despite them already having been debunked.
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard released documents in July detailing “overwhelming evidence” that Obama administration officials “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to push the now-debunked allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. The declassified file and the memo released by Gabbard accused the DNI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of withholding information that the FBI and NSA had only “low confidence” in blaming Russia for data leaks in September 2016.
The memo also asserted that “Deep State officials in the [intelligence community began] leaking blatantly false intelligence to the Washington Post” in December 2016. These officials told the Post that Russia had used “cyber means” to manipulate the election results and that the CIA had “concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened” to boost Trump.
Gabbard said during a July 23 briefing that she referred Obama to the DOJ for investigation.
Obama allies told NBC News that they questioned the timing of the declassifications after the DOJ concluded that there were no new disclosures relating to the investigation into Epstein. They also called on “mainstream Republicans” to listen to editorial boards and congressional members who called the allegations “beyond the pale.”
Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush denied all allegations of wrongdoing in a July 22 statement.
“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Rodenbush stated. “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.”
NBC News did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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