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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard made a surprise appearance at the White House press briefing on Wednesday to outline to reporters details of key findings from a House Intelligence Committee report published in 2020 that was newly made public.

Gabbard said her office has referred documents it has released to the Justice Department, suggesting it could implicate former President Obama.

The revelations come as President Trump and the White House continue to fend off controversy surrounding disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and the administration’s handling of releasing files on his case.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    14·
    6 days ago

    Goddamn these fuckers are dead-eyed clowns

    Tulsi Gabbard’s views on Russia shaped in part by Kremlin propaganda outlet, ex-aides say

    . . . Three former aides said Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, regularly read and shared articles from the Russian news site RT – formerly known as Russia Today – which the U.S. intelligence community characterized in 2017 as “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.”

    While it was not clear to those former staffers whether or when she stopped frequenting the site, one former aide said Gabbard continued to circulate articles from RT “long after” she was advised that the outlet was not a credible source of information.

    Doug London, a retired 34-year veteran intelligence officer, said Gabbard’s alleged penchant to rely at least in part on outlets like RT to shape her view of the world reflects poorly on her suitability to fulfill the responsibilities of a director of national intelligence.

    “That Gabbard’s views mirror Russia’s narrative and disinformation themes can but suggest naïveté, collusion, or politically opportunistic sycophancy to echo whatever she believes Trump wants to hear,” London said, adding, “none of which bodes well for the president’s principal intelligence adviser responsible for enabling the [U.S. intelligence community] to inform decision-making by telling it like it is.”

    Well that ship sailed, blew up, sunk, and blew up again, didn’t it.

    By 2017, however, her tune had changed. In a lengthy memo to campaign staff laying out her views on foreign policy, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News, Gabbard blamed the U.S. and NATO for provoking Russian aggression and bemoaned the United States’ “hostility toward Putin.”

    “There certainly isn’t any guarantee to Putin that we won’t try to overthrow Russia’s government,” she wrote in the memo from May 2017, titled “fodder for fundraising emails / social media.”

    “In fact, I’m pretty sure there are American politicians who would love to do that,” she wrote.

    She also condemned the very sanctions she had previously supported, writing that, “historically, the U.S. has always wanted Russia to be a poor country.”

    “It’s a matter of respect,” she wrote. “The Russian people are a proud people and they don’t want the U.S. and our allies trying to control them and their government.”

    Gabbard’s sentiment in the 2017 memo is “basically the Russian playbook,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration.