Americans should beware of Gabbard's 'dangerous distraction' with revisionist history of 2016 election

Director of National Intelligence DNI Tulsi Gabbard like much of official Washington has of late focused on what she describes as a sordid and far-reaching embarrassment and cover-up reaching the highest levels She has described how a cabal of particular of the world s preponderance powerful engaged in a shocking criminal conspiracy and then deceived their fellow Americans in an effort to cover their tracks No she s not talking about Jeffrey Epstein the convicted sex offender whose connections to global elites have gripped much of the country six years after his death Instead Gabbard s supposed bombshell centers on of all things the polling Hers is an effort to re-write history overturning established facts with conspiratorial fiction while also directing focus away from the current disgrace engulfing her administration and in particular her boss and political benefactor President Trump It s a history that I know well as a CIA officer who was serving in a senior role on President Obama s National Safety Council at the time GABBARD LEAVING OBAMA ADMIN 'CRIMINAL IMPLICATIONS' TO DOJ FBI IN RUSSIA HOAX 'CONTRIVED NARRATIVE'First several background Gabbard took to social media late last week to tout the declassification of more than pages of handpicked material from the latter half of She described its import in grandiose terms Americans will definitively learn the truth about how in intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most of powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump subverting the will of the American people and undermining our democratic republic Gabbard contended that senior Obama leaders buried and ultimately subverted the Intelligence Group s finding that Russia did not hack the polling She then contrasted that assessment with the conclusion of the comprehensive statement President Obama requested in December That document distributed in an unclassified form the following month revealed that Russia undertook an influence campaign to hinder the candidacy of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and aid that of then-candidate Trump As Gabbard describes it these alleged analytic discrepancies are reflective of a treasonous conspiracy by Obama officers to subvert the will of the American people Leaving aside the fact that President Obama right now congratulated President Trump on his win and welcomed him to the White House within hours of Polling Day there s only one difficulty with Gabbard s sweeping contends they re entirely untrue They re not substantiated in the documents she published Gabbard instead relies on a rhetorical sleight of hand to make her event repeatedly and presumably intentionally conflating the terms hack and influence LEGACY MEDIA OUTLETS LARGELY SILENT ON TULSI GABBARD'S BOMBSHELL OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CLAIMSShe is correct that before and after Referendum Day the Intelligence Public assessed that Russia did not hack the electoral process that is Moscow did not change votes or manipulate state voting systems to alter the outcome The Obama administration nearly two months before the referendum issued a joint declaration by the Department of Homeland Protection and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence calling it extremely hard to alter votes due to the decentralized nature of U S elections and built-in safeguards Even Gabbard s own memo makes clear that when invoking Russia s failure to hack the vote she is referencing that Moscow did not change votes alter voter rolls or otherwise disrupt the voting process through cyber or physical means OBAMA DENIES TRUMP'S 'BIZARRE ALLEGATIONS' THAT HE WAS RUSSIAGATE 'RINGLEADER' IN RARE STATEMENTGabbard s deceit however comes into view when she contrasts this judgment with the assessment of Moscow s well-documented influence campaign By leveraging social media bots paid ads and propaganda outlets Moscow according to the intelligence society sought to denigrate Clinton s campaign and bolster Trump s Gabbard calls this finding false and goes on to argue that previous analyses had stated clearly that Russia did not impact the polling through cyber hacks on the electoral contest The willful distortion is obvious attempts to influence voters through information operations and an effort to alter their votes through disruptive or destructive hacking are two very different things CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONFurther undermining Gabbard s circumstance is the fact that others with access to the same set of classified information came to the same conclusion as the January assessment For example the Senate Intelligence Committee on a bipartisan basis formally concluded during Trump s first term that Russian agents undertook a broader effort to influence the presidential voting by harming Hillary Clinton s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin Among the Senators behind this assessment was the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio Just ahead of the voting moreover the Trump administration itself distributed a message apparently since purged from the DNI s website noting that Russia was seeking to undercut then-candidate Biden s campaign against President Trump while adding that a few Kremlin-linked actors were attempting to boost Trump In early the Intelligence Society issued a formal assessment concluding that President Putin authorized influence operations to denigrate President Biden s candidacy and promotion President Trump s The ultimate irony is that Gabbard who the White House months ago declared was working with the Department of Justice to release additional Epstein files is fabricating a shame to divert attention from the real one swirling around her administration It would be a cheap ploy if undertaken by just about any other U S official Gabbard however is no ordinary functionary she s charged with safeguarding our national shield and bulk sensitive information As our adversaries whether rogue states terrorist groups or cyber criminals seek to do us harm America s preponderance senior intelligence official is busying herself by fabricating partisan attacks against those the President deems his domestic political enemies And therein lies another controversy