New Evidence Suggests Trump-Russia Collusion Was an Obama Setup

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s news about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s release of documents, alleging that then-President Barack Obama and our top intelligence head had conspired to create a false narrative that Donald Trump was, essentially, a Russian asset. And that that effort not only had damaged his 2016 campaign, it had damaged his transition to the presidency and his presidency itself in the first 22 months of the Mueller investigation.

And there’s new information coming out all the time. Essentially, the new narrative says that despite all the references to “17 intelligence authorities” that had confirmed a Trump-Putin collusion, there was no such consensus.

Now, we have had the Devin Nunes House Intelligence Committee majority report. We’ve had Michael Horowitz’s inspector general’s report. We have had various congressional, Senate and House committees report. And we’ve had the long John Durham special investigation.

And while there’s some disagreement that the Russians tried to do this or tried to interfere—and let’s be candid, the Chinese and the Russians always try to interfere—there was never any evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump colluded to throw the election to Donald Trump.

And what’s new, as I said earlier, is that foreign intelligence tapped into the Russians. And they were baffled that they were being falsely accused. That might’ve had ramifications for our strategic relationship with Russia. Not that they’re not adversaries, but they’re kind of confused that we were using the same type of skullduggery that they do. And that undermined the high moral ground vis-a-vis Ukraine and other flashpoints with the Russians.

But it all boils down to this Dec. 9 meeting of 2016. Remember, Donald Trump had won the election. Barack Obama was going out. His intelligence heads and others at this meeting—John Brennan, CIA director; James Clapper, director of national intelligence; and James Comey, FBI director; surrounded by Susan Rice, national security adviser; Loretta Lynch, attorney general, etc.—they reported to Barack Obama, who would be out of office in six weeks.

And they said to him, “Here is the intelligence update.” And the intelligence update was, contrary to media reports and contrary to Hillary Clinton, these 17 subordinate intelligence authorities had not found evidence, either in the campaign or during the transition, that Donald Trump was colluding. And so, that’s what they reported.

They said that Barack Obama—or they have leaked that, or the documents, handwritten notes suggest that Barack Obama did not accept that, but said, “No, we don’t want that assessment. We want an assessment that he did collude.” In other words, in Soviet Beria fashion: “Find me the crime and I have the criminal to insert into that false narrative.”

And they also were reporting, at various times, that, as I said, foreign intelligence sources thought that the Russians had no reason to lie, internally, in their internal communications. And they were baffled.

So, what’s new about it? What’s new is Barack Obama was confronted with this. And he’s basically said, “This is beneath the dignity of the president. This is nonsense. This is crazy. I don’t have to reply to any of this.”

Why didn’t he just say the following?

I, Barack Obama, when I was president, in the last few weeks of my term, I had a regularly scheduled intelligence committee meeting. People came in, of various branches, and they gave me an assessment. And it said that there was no evidence—as the media had alleged and as the Steele dossier had alleged and as James Comey, who was in the room, had earlier alleged when he contacted Christopher Steele—that there was any Russian collusion. And when I heard that, I was dumbfounded. So, I just simply disagreed with them. And I said, ‘Well, this is important. Go back and find other things.’

Instead, he just completely denies it.

But the problem is that, as I’m speaking, there’s going to be new information. And these other subordinate intelligence directors that work variously for Clapper or Brennan are going to come forward in saying, “We found nothing. Clapper knew it. Brennan knew it.” And what will Clapper and Brennan say? That “we knew it, but we lied,” or, “We knew it and they told us to—Obama told us to lie,” or, “He lied. We lied.”

It’s not going to be pretty.

Will they ever go to court? No. I don’t think that they will be indicted because the so-called administrative state takes care of its own.

But this had a lot of ramifications. It undermined confidence in our elections. It tried to disrupt the campaign of Donald Trump. It tried to erode his transition. And it tried to sabotage his presidency.

And when we were dealing with Russia, our nuclear adversary, on Ukraine, we didn’t get anywhere, in part because Donald Trump could not be a force in opposition to Putin because he was under constant allegations from Clapper and Brennan—now as MSNBC and CNN contributors—that he was a Russian asset, that he was a Russian puppet.

So, they kept advancing this false narrative, even after they left office, and it undermined the credibility of an American president to conduct foreign policy with Putin. And I think Putin’s concluded: “These guys are just as bad as we are. They lie. They lie. I am not going to negotiate with them.” And the rest is history, as is amplified by the Ukraine war.

Very sorted incident—worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-Contra, worse than Monica Lewinsky. A scandal whose dimensions we can’t even imagine. But we’re going to learn a lot more. But don’t expect any of these people to face the justice that they deserve.

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