Dems Threaten Tulsi Gabbard Over ‘Russiagate’ Revelations
Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, reacted strongly, urging Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to halt the release of documents revealing alleged collusion and abuse of power by Obama-era intelligence officials.
Gabbard’s disclosures follow the declassification of documents that purportedly detail how figures within the Obama administration, including Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan, used the Steele dossier to target President Trump and orchestrate what some describe as an attempted political coup.
In an unhinged appearance Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Himes lashed out at Gabbard, claiming her release of the information implicating Brennan was putting his life in danger from “MAGA mouth breathers.”
“A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation found that the US intelligence community assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election was correct,” anchor Margaret Brennan said to begin a segment.
“They deemed it to be so on a bipartisan basis. I’m saying that because today and yesterday, the director of the intelligence community, Tulsi Gabbard, has said that she is referring for prosecution former American officials she accused of treasonous conspiracy, a years-long coup against President Trump, because they assessed Russia had tried to influence the election. This is weeks after the CIA Director issued a report critiquing the tradecraft that went into that 2016 assessment. Is there any legal basis for any kind of prosecution here?” Brennan asked.
“None, absolutely none. Margaret, what you saw from the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was not just a lie, but a very dangerous lie, because when you start throwing around language like sedition and treason, somebody is going to get hurt,” Himes began.
“Now, you pointed out that the Senate committee, then led by Marco Rubio, a Republican and now Secretary of State, found unanimously that Russia meddled in the election to try to assist Donald Trump,” he went on. “John Durham, special counsel appointed by Donald Trump, investigated this, found that the Senate report was correct.”
Notably, Durham’s probe also did not turn up any evidence that Trump ‘colluded’ with the Russians to ‘steal’ the 2016 election, noting the so-called “Steele Dossier” that was used as the catalyst for the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s campaign was bogus.
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“Now, what Tulsi is doing it’s a little sleight of hand, but it’s worth focusing on. She is saying that the Intelligence Committee, early on, said that the Russians could not use cyber tools to mess with the voting infrastructure, the machines that tally our votes,” Himes added.
“And that was true then, and it is true now, though the Russians tried to break into a couple of states, you know, election technical infrastructure. They didn’t do it, but it is well known and well established that the Russians hacked into the DNC and undertook any number of other influence operations, including buying reams of Facebook ads to discredit Hillary Clinton,” he said.
“And right now, you know, the mouth-breathers on MAGA online are just going out of their minds based on a lie. And number two, the intelligence community is full of very, good people who do their jobs every single day, and now they’re watching their leader do something that each and every one of them knows is dishonest and it is a really, really bad thing for the safety and security of the American people when that dynamic is- is out there,” he said.
