Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated that Russia sought to sow chaos during the 2016 election and had anticipated a Hillary Clinton victory, according to an interview published Sunday by the New York Post.
Gabbard shared her assessment during a conversation with the Post’s Miranda Devine on the “Pod Force One” podcast, set to be released Wednesday.
“As we’ve learned in later documents that we’ve reviewed throughout that campaign, Russia believed that Hillary Clinton would win the election,” Gabbard said. “They felt it was inevitable.”
Russia was accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) emails in 2016, and an ODNI memo released in July stated, “supporting evidence [indicates] the Russian government directed hacking of the DNC and the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee].”
In the interview, Gabbard questioned why the Kremlin would have waited until after the election to release damaging information about Hillary Clinton if their primary goal was to see Donald Trump elected.
She referred to a recently published 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, which revealed Russia potentially had intelligence demonstrating Clinton was using “heavy tranquilizers” to address “intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.”
Gabbard then openly questioned why that report wasn’t publicly released.
“If Russia aspired to help Trump get elected, which is what the manufactured January 2017 intelligence community assessment says with high confidence, according to Brennan and Clapper, then Putin would have released the most damaging information and emails to help President Trump,” Gabbard told Devine.
Regarding the House report, Gabbard said the information “was intentionally withheld and not released because they assumed that Hillary Clinton would win that election, and their plan [was to] wait until maybe days or weeks before her inauguration to release these documents.”
Gabbard also addressed additional details uncovered through documents released by her office in July. “It surprised me that all of these documents still existed, quite frankly,” Gabbard told the New York Post.
Gabbard announced during a White House press briefing in July that she had submitted referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ) based on findings from the Office of the ODNI.