The Trump administration’s intelligence chief says Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton that it suppressed in the final stretch of the 2016 election—including claims she was on a daily diet of heavy tranquilizers and suffering “intensified psycho-emotional problems.”
The wild and entirely unproven details were outlined by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard during a White House briefing on Wednesday—without a shred of evidence being presented. Gabbard cited the findings of a newly declassified report that she says showed Obama officials engaged in a conspiracy to subvert Donald Trump’s first election victory.
“There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false,” Gabbard said.
“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; it wasn’t.”
The document released by Gabbard on Wednesday was based on an intelligence community assessment into Russia’s influence campaign on the 2016 election.
It suggests that Russian intelligence obtained damaging information about Clinton, a former secretary of state who was campaigning to win the White House against Trump in 2016, but chose not to release it.
The plan was to instead release the material after the election “to weaken what Moscow viewed as an inevitable Clinton presidency.”
Among the Russian intelligence was what Gabbard described as “high-level Democratic National Committee emails that detailed evidence of Hillary’s, quote: ‘psycho emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression and cheerfulness” and that then Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.
“Then CIA Director (John) Brennan and the intelligence community mischaracterized intelligence and relied on dubious, substandard sources to create a contrived false narrative that Putin developed a quote, unquote ‘clear preference for Trump’,” Gabbard added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Clinton’s office for a response. But former president Barack Obama has strongly rebuked the claims of a conspiracy more broadly, branding the allegations a weak attempt to distract from the Epstein files.
Other critics have also accused Gabbard of conflating Russian “hacking” with Russian “influence” campaigns, in a bid to get in Trump’s good graces.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” Obama said in a rare statement issued through his office on Tuesday.
“The bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. 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.
“These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio,” they added.
Trump, who has claimed for years that the investigation into Russian interference was a “hoax”, has embraced the documents Gabbard put out, and even posted a social media video of Obama in a jumpsuit.
Asked on Wednesday if the president believes Obama should be jailed, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt replied: “The president believes that this matter needs to be thoroughly investigated, and anyone convicted of crimes should be held accountable in this country.”
Trump himself was convicted of crimes last year, after a unanimous jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to silence a sex scandal with a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
However, the president was able to avoid punishment after the judge gave him an “unconditional discharge”, a sentence that affirms that he is a convicted felon, but one where he will face no further penalties, fines, or any time in jail.
The decision came after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled that presidents should have substantial immunity for acts committed in office. This ruling could now be used by Obama, should the administration seek to prosecute him.
Asked about this on Wednesday, Leavitt said the president wanted the documents released in the interest of “transparency” and “he wants those who perpetuated these lies and this scandal to be held accountable.”
“As for what accountability looks like,” she said, “it’s in the Department of Justice’s hands and we trust them to be successful.”
