Obama Faked Trump-Russia Narrative and Almost Got Away With It

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. This week in the news, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, made a discovery that she has documents, under her purview, that are pertinent to the so-called Russian collusion hoax of 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.

Remember what that was? During the campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016, there were allegations that Donald Trump was enlisting Russian President Vladimir Putin to disparage or hurt Hillary Clinton for his benefit.

That charge was never substantiated. Special counsel Robert Mueller—after Donald Trump was elected—spent 22 months and $40 million and found no evidence that Donald Trump was directly involved in any Russian escapade to throw the election.

But here’s the two new sources of discovery. The first is that, apparently, the Dutch intelligence had tapped into Russian intelligence, unknowingly to the Russians. And they were concerned that they were being accused of colluding with Donald Trump by the Hillary Clinton campaign. And yet, they had intelligence that Hillary Clinton had actually hired—and we know now that that was true—through the paywalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, the Fusion GPS political operation, to give money to Christopher Steele for this so-called Steele dossier that was proven to be fraudulent and the source of this entire hoax.

So, here’s the point. That had been completely proven false, both by the Mueller investigation—saw that no credible—but the intelligence agencies, one of these 18 or all of them or some of them, knew from information from the Dutch that there was no validity.

But here’s the second thing. Apparently, John Brennan and James Clapper, maybe or not James Comey, the head of the FBI, also knew from their own intelligence teams, when they were trying to act on this information and prepare it for digestion by Barack Obama, the lame-duck president, who was on his way out, they said:

Wow. All of the people who are investigating this Russian collusion, it’s pretty clear there was no Russian collusion. They may have wanted to tamper in or troll or get on the, you know, websites, like the Chinese have done. But there was no evidence, according to our subordinates, our intelligence chiefs of these subdivisions, and Tulsi Gabbard, remember, oversees some of these well beyond the FBI or the CIA, there’s no evidence that our team can find any evidence.

Now, what’s Tulsi Gabbard upset about? That was known to John Brennan. That was known to James Clapper. That was probably known to the FBI. But they have notes, they have information that when they prepared this digest daily, weekly digest of intelligence updates to lame-duck Barack Obama in 2016 and into 2017, he ignored it. He did not want to hear that. He wanted more information pertaining to Donald Trump and the Russians colluding. It was almost like, you find me the crime and I’ll give you the criminal.

And so, what did Brennan and Clapper allegedly do? They reversed the opinion of their own intelligence subordinates. And they crafted or fabricated after the election, remember that? After the November 2016 election. And then, according to the wishes of Barack Obama, they created an intelligence falsehood, a false narrative, a fake narrative, that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, soon to elect office, had been colluding with the Russians.

And we know what happened after that. They destroyed the career of Michael Flynn. We got these false charges that Trump was Putin’s asset or puppet. Jeff Sessions foolishly, but tragically, appointed Robert Mueller, who was an intimate of James Comey and many of the intelligence chiefs. His team, the “All-Stars,” as they were called, they were pretty partisan. Remember Andrew Weissmann and all that mess? That went on for 22 months, $40 million. I think it’s fair to say it nearly wrecked the first two years of the Trump administration. And I think Tulsi Gabbard is making the allegation that was by design.

We couldn’t stop him with a Steele fake dossier. Hillary couldn’t stop him. Nobody could stop him during the campaign. But Barack Obama, allegedly, by Tulsi Gabbard’s conjectures, said, “We can stop his presidency. So, you guys go back, ignore what your subordinates are saying, when they found no evidence, and ignore foreign intelligence that found no evidence. Just get me a narrative that Donald Trump is colluding with the Russians and we’ll spread it.”

And spread it they did. And it nearly destroyed Donald Trump.

Is it serious? If it’s credible, then you have a conspiracy of the top people in the United States intelligence and investigative communities conspiring with a sitting president of the United States to destroy the administration of his opponent, successor, Donald J. Trump.

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