•Barack Obama and Donald Trump and
Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a sensitive congressional report that she claims supports allegations that former President Barack Obama helped “manufacture” evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.
The move comes just one day after Trump publicly accused Obama of treason over the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference, reports CNN.
The redacted report, originally written by House Republicans during Trump’s first term, is the latest effort by Trump allies to discredit the FBI investigation and the broader findings of the U.S. intelligence community.
Attorney General, Pam Bondi said Wednesday that the Justice Department would set up a strike force to evaluate the evidence.
She said it would “investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard’s disclosures.”
While Gabbard didn’t directly accuse Obama of treason, she made pointed remarks at the White House press briefing:
“The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.
“They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true,” Gabbard said.
Gabbard argued that Russia’s true intent was to sow distrust in American democracy—not to back Trump—challenging one of the key conclusions of the 2017 intelligence report.
Neither the newly declassified House report nor a recent review by CIA Director John Ratcliffe supports Gabbard’s assertion that the intelligence was “manufactured.”
Ratcliffe’s review, released earlier this month, raised concerns about the level of confidence in the assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin preferred Trump.
Still, it concluded: “The overall assessment was deemed defensible.”
The House report also questioned the analytic methods behind the 2017 judgment, saying it relied on thin sourcing and failed to consider conflicting evidence.
However, it did not claim the findings were fabricated.
The document, led by then-Rep. Devin Nunes and current FBI Director Kash Patel—who was his top aide at the time—contradicts the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2020 review.
That bipartisan Senate report found: “The intelligence supported the conclusions,”
and that there were no “significant tradecraft issues” in preparing the assessment.
Gabbard’s decision to declassify the report comes as her standing within the Trump administration appears shaky.
Last month, Trump contradicted her publicly over Iran’s nuclear program, and she missed a key national security meeting about Israel and Iran.
Her latest move drew sharp criticism from Democrats and intelligence professionals.
Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said:
“The desperate and irresponsible release of the partisan House intelligence report puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe.”
“And in doing so, Director Gabbard is sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.”
A Democratic congressional source said agencies were still reviewing redactions when Gabbard released the report early.
An official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the decision was made by Trump:
“He has constitutional authority to declassify and is not under the same consultation obligations” as agency heads.
A former senior intelligence official warned that the unredacted content could reveal how intelligence is collected and endanger sources:
“If I were them, I’d be going dark about now.”
The House report had been kept under heavy security—at one point stored in a “turducken,” a safe within a safe, at CIA headquarters.
The CIA limited congressional access so tightly that staff had to work on-site, and their notes were locked away at Langley during the Biden administration.
It remains unclear whether the full extent of the original classified report was released yesterday.
Some of the declassified details include how the US knew about Putin’s orders, what he was told, and how that intelligence was gathered.
The newly released document gives a rare glimpse into the intelligence used to produce the 2017 assessment.
The GOP report argues that key conclusions — such as Putin aspiring to help Trump— were based on vague or unverified intelligence.
It notes the CIA and FBI had high confidence in that judgment, while the NSA had only medium confidence.
The committee pointed to one source in particular:
“One scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win.”
Ratcliffe’s review called the judgment “plausible and sensible,” but said it was based on inference, not fact.
The GOP report also criticized the inclusion of the Steele dossier—paid for by the Clinton campaign—as an annex to the 2017 assessment.
Though the dossier did not factor into the intelligence analysis, Republicans argue its inclusion fueled public distrust.
Special Counsel John Durham investigated intelligence community actions for four years but never charged any US officials in connection to the assessment.
In March 2025, Trump declassified several Russia-related documents.
One unredacted version of that material later went missing and has never been recovered.
Officials at the time scrambled to assess the damage. Some of that content was reportedly so sensitive that its release could jeopardize foreign sources.
Yesterday’s release includes references to signals intelligence, Putin’s briefings, and what Russian officials were telling him—raising fresh concerns about compromised sources and methods.
