Tulsi Gabbard’s Desperate Russia Hail Mary Knocked Down By GOP’s Own Findings

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As the news cycle enters its third week of “Epstein Files” frenzy, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence pick, Tulsi Gabbard, is throwing a Hail Mary—an obvious and cynical distraction. But a GOP-led Senate Intelligence report from five years ago is more than enough to swat it down.

Since switching parties, Gabbard has worked diligently to cultivate a brand as a conservative “truth-teller” willing to buck the grain of Washington orthodoxy. But her latest remarks, alleging that former President Barack Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former FBI Director James Comey, among others, orchestrated a conspiracy to falsely claim Russian interference in the 2016 election, reveal a troubling detachment from reality — particularly in the face of exhaustive and bipartisan evidence to the contrary.

This isn’t merely a matter of differing political opinions. Gabbard recently appeared on Fox News to make politically charged claims that directly contradict the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s landmark Volume 5 report from August 2020—a nearly 1,000-page document that laid bare the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

That report wasn’t a product of MSNBC or the so-called “Deep State.” Republican Senator Richard Burr first led the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, but after Burr stepped down under a cloud of an FBI investigation, the stunning report received final approval from Acting Chair Marco Rubio, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State. If there’s a Deep State at work here, it apparently includes some of the GOP’s most prominent figures.

Let’s separate the signal from the noise.

In a recent appearance on Fox & Friends Weekend, Gabbard accused the Obama administration—specifically Brennan, Comey, and Obama himself—of “knowingly launching a false narrative” that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in order to damage Trump. She framed the intelligence community’s findings as a politically motivated smear campaign, asserting that the idea of Russian interference was cooked up to justify surveillance on the Trump campaign and delegitimize his presidency.

Gabbard alleged that during the 2016 presidential election, officials painted a different picture publicly than privately when it came to allegations of Russian interference in the election.

She implicated then-President Obama and other intelligence officials in what she described as a “treasonous conspiracy” meant to paint Trump in a negative light. Gabbard claimed the probe into connections between Trump and Russia was based on manufactured evidence.

“One day later President Obama calls a meeting of his National Security Council, his top officials, to be held on what they call a sensitive topic and the results of that meeting, which we released yesterday in these over a hundred documents that talk in detail how President Obama and his team — he directed a manufactured piece of intelligence that detail not if but how Russia tried to influence the outcome of the United States election that Trump won in November of 2016,” Gabbard said.

To anyone only casually following this may iterations of this story — the Mueller investigation, the Durham Report — or feels like they are impossibly caught in the infotainment whirlpool of cable news, that storyline might have some resonance. After all, the Mueller probe did end without charging Trump or his campaign with criminal conspiracy.

But what’s been lost in the political trench warfare over “Russiagate” is a wealth of damning, meticulously documented findings that prove Russian interference wasn’t a hoax—it was a hostile operation. And one that had eager and knowing partners in key Trump associates.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s Volume 5 report stands as arguably the most comprehensive account of Russian election interference to date. And unlike other investigations, it was bipartisan, thorough, and most notably, Republican-led. This matters, because it effectively shatters the narrative—espoused by Trump loyalists and echoed now by Gabbard—that the entire Russia probe was a partisan witch hunt.

The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a sweeping campaign to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. The report explicitly states that Russian intelligence services, especially the GRU, engaged in cyber operations to hack and disseminate emails from the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and amplified pro-Trump narratives via state-sponsored media and social media operations.

But perhaps the most damning portion focused on Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. According to the committee, Manafort maintained a “close relationship” with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national with ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort shared internal campaign polling data and strategy with Kilimnik, including information targeting key battleground states. Kilimnik, in turn, was linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has long been suspected of working in concert with Kremlin interests.

Here’s the kicker: The report flat-out says that Kilimnik was likely a Russian intelligence officer and that his interactions with Manafort represented a “grave counterintelligence threat.”

Let’s repeat that: A Republican-led Senate committee concluded that the chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign worked closely with a known Russian intelligence asset during a foreign attack on American democracy. That is not Deep State propaganda. That is a verified, documented, footnoted finding by Republican senators.

So what do we make of Gabbard’s claims?

At best, she is playing fast and loose with the truth to curry favor with a media ecosystem that thrives on contrarian hot takes and Deep State paranoia. At worst, she is knowingly promoting a revisionist history that erodes public trust in institutions precisely when such trust is needed most. Most likely, she is following some sort whispered directive to create a distraction from the so-called “Epstein Hoax” that appears to be splintering Trump’s MAGA base and is currently on week three of a terrible news cycle for the White House.

Gabbard’s accusations don’t just rewrite the facts—they gaslight an entire nation. They imply that the Russian attack on our electoral system was either fabricated or exaggerated, despite overwhelming bipartisan agreement that it was real, sustained, and effective.

And like clockwork, Fox & Friends took the bait and dutifully amplified her claims Monday morning because — well, that’s what they do in the service of their most powerful viewers wishes. (Remember the “Worse than Watergate” reporting that mysteriously disappeared? I do.) According to SnapStream transcripts, over the past 48 hours Fox News has mentioned “Obama” 156 times on air. They’ve mentioned “Epstein” 59 times.

Ironically, Gabbard herself was once the subject of Russian state media praise, a fact that was noted in intelligence community reports. That doesn’t mean she’s a Russian asset, as Hillary Clinton once ham-fistedly implied, but it should raise a flag when she echoes narratives favored by the Kremlin—namely, that U.S. intelligence can’t be trusted, that election interference is a hoax, and that the real enemy is within.

The truth matters. It may be inconvenient, politically costly, or even boring, but it matters. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s Volume 5 report should be required reading for anyone still peddling conspiracy theories about 2016. Especially if that person is a former U.S. congresswoman with a platform and a following.

If Gabbard wants to be seen as a truth-teller, she should start by telling the truth. Because in this case, the record is clear: Russia interfered. Trump’s campaign welcomed it. And no amount of Fox News conspiratorial pontificating will change that.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.