The first thing you should notice is that Tulsi tweeted this from her official government account, not her personal account. Thus, she is speaking as DNI. No previous DNI has ever made an announcement like that one; not even close.
We live in a time of unique historical moments. Everything from Trump’s re-election and the assassination attempts to the southern aurorae and Hunga Tonga. It is easy to become hardened to claims of historicity when everything feels record-shattering. But this story still stands out.
Tulsi Gabbard’s public disclosure as Director of National Intelligence is unprecedented and historic in nearly every dimension of American governance.
Never before has a sitting DNI directly accused former top intelligence officials—including her predecessors—of orchestrating a domestic disinformation campaign to subvert an incoming president.
She did not leak anonymously, defer to internal channels, or await a closed-door investigation; instead, she unveiled evidence from a pending investigation in a tightly structured public thread, complete with official documents, internal communications, and a direct handoff to the Department of Justice— all under her own name and title.
It defied every norm of intelligence conduct. The DNI normally never speaks publicly about ongoing investigations, it has never accused former administrations of treason (or any crime), and certainly does not weaponize the credibility of the office to ignite a public reckoning. This marks the first time in modern history that the intelligence community’s internal coup (if proven) has been openly exposed by its own leadership, transforming the IC from a shield into a spotlight, and potentially rewriting the entire post-9/11 national security order.
In a series of polished, made-for-publication tweets (in other words, she didn’t do this by herself), Tulsi laid out a damning timeline, including screen grabs from relevant documents. Before the 2106 elections, multiple classified teams investigated Russian election interference and found there wasn’t any. “We agree: Russia probably is not (and will not) trying to influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure,” one analyst concluded.
Right after the elections, then-DNI James Clapper authored a report that concluded, “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.” On December 8th, 2016, IC analysts prepared a brief for then-President Obama that would have reported that Russia “did not impact recent U.S. election results.
But before it was published, that report was pulled. The next day, December 9th, Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, and CIA Director John Brennan met with President Obama at the White House. “Obama directed the IC to create a new intelligence assessment that detailed Russian election meddling,” Tulsi said, “even though it would contradict multiple intelligence assessments released over the previous several months.”
A series of high-profile leaks to the Washington Post, NBC, and others, immediately followed, all sourced to “anonymous” intelligence officials. The WaPo reported, “This presidential campaign marks the first time Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election, the officials said.” Similarly, NBC ran with, “U.S. intelligence officials now believe with a high level of confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.”
Then, on January 6th, 2017 —two weeks before Trump took the oath— “DNI Clapper unveiled the new, Obama-directed politicized assessment, a gross weaponization of intelligence that laid the groundwork for a years-long coup intended to subvert President Trump’s entire presidency.”
You know the rest. Resistance! RussiaGate! Election interference! Impeachment! Impeachment again! And so on, ad nauseum.
As an aside, two years later, on July 24, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Trump a soccer ball and told him, “the ball is in your court, Mr. President.” Trump took the ball, then took the podium and blasted the American intelligence community for the first time.
My belief is that, in Helsinki, Putin told Trump about the intelligence community’s plot to overthrow the American presidency. I can’t prove it; however, I can make a compelling circumstantial case.
But I digress.
Tulsi ended her thread with this even more remarkable tweet, advising that she was now “providing all documents to the DOJ”:
Let’s start here, at the end, and work backwards.
Despite Democrat wailing this was all just to distract people from the Epstein scandal, there is zero chance that Tulsi Gabbard would have made these public claims without being completely ready. Putting a solid criminal case together takes time. Crooks get off on loopholes when prosecutors cut corners. She did not make this historic announcement before she was sure it was solid.
As more evidence, she immediately announced turning it over to DOJ. For what? The only reason she’d hand it off to DOJ is for prosecution. On cue, understandably fatigued MAGA people sighed, and complained that nothing ever happens. But this is different.
It’s different because there is also zero chance that Tulsi would have invoked DOJ in her announcement without clearing it with DOJ ahead of time.
There’s no evidence DOJ was surprised, which is exactly what we should expect. In other words, DOJ was already waiting for the official handoff. And DOJ wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t plan to do something.
The last thing Pam Bondi needs right now is another disappointing non-investigation.
But— what documents did Tulsi give DOJ? She gave us some of them. On top of her Twitter thread, Tulsi also took the unprecedented step of declassifying a stack of related evidence unearthed from inside the IC’s secretive, hallowed halls. Here’s the link, now available on the DNI’s website, marked “Approved for release by the DNI on 17 July 2025.” I.e., Thursday.
The lightly redacted documents are a deeply sourced, legally framed, historically explosive disclosure of what appears to be coordinated manipulation of intelligence leading up to and following the 2016 election.
They include the pulled December 8th presidential daily briefing (PDB), which originally concluded, “We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities.”
But later that same day, an internal email from a senior official put the kibosh on the PDB: “Based on some new guidance, we are going to push back publication of the PDB. It will not run tomorrow…” Perhaps worse, the documents show the successful push for the replacement intelligence community assessment (ICA) to incorporate Hillary Clinton’s anti-Trump “Russia dossier,” even though it was nearly completely fabricated. For context, that’s the one with the urinating hookers.
The way Tulsi pre-empted this disclosure cut the legs out from under corporate media’s usual knee-jerk response: “… but she provided no evidence.” Oh, she provided the evidence, all right. If they bother to look.
In other words, Tulsi’s historic tweet neutralized the media’s usual gaslighting, which takes full advantage of customary prosecutorial prurience. How many times have you heard, “we don’t comment during an investigation,” or “we can’t comment on national security matters?” Tulsi just turned that classic trick on its head, ripping the media’s playbook right out of its hands.
Now, reporters can’t lead with “DNI Gabbard claimed without providing evidence…”
Beyond criminal investigations, intelligence community research is never published while an investigation is still live. I couldn’t find a single other example. That’s what makes Tulsi’s move nearly unprecedented in modern American history. That should also tell you how unprecedented all this is, and ripping up the playbook is probably perfectly appropriate given the context of the alleged crimes.
It might even be necessary. Now that it’s gone viral, the investigation cannot be buried. That would have been trick number two.
Next, let’s look at some of the most remarkable words included in her Twitter thread.
Right from the top, Tulsi called the alleged conduct “subverting the will of the American people and undermining our democratic republic.” Later, she would describe it as “treasonous.”
Those are extremely strong words, and would have been laughed off social media in a pre-January 6th world. They can’t wring their hands about “dangerous rhetoric” after calling the Capitol protest an “insurrection” for four years.
But what about the name? On top of Clapper, Comey, and Brennan, Tulsi named one more: Barack Hussein Obama. Two years ago, we could have skimmed over Obama’s name. Former presidents are never prosecuted. That was the rule. But six Trump prosecutions and one Supreme Court case later, and we now have both precedent, guidelines, and a handy-dandy SCOTUS framework.
Maybe not so happy now
The Supreme Court said presidents have no immunity for “unofficial acts,” and presidents can be prosecuted once out of office, under the right circumstances. The Obama-era IC operation Tulsi alleged wasn’t part of a war plan or a diplomatic initiative. It was a domestic political counterinsurgency— engineered after the election to discredit the incoming administration.
That’s not a core Article II power.
Look, I’m not bold enough to predict Obama’s indictment. But I will —confidently— predict he’s going to be talking to some attorneys about this (if he hasn’t already). He was just named as a co-conspirator in a DNI referral to the DOJ.
The Cold War phase is over. Phase II has begun— the public war between the Trump Administration and the Deep State. It’s now weapons hot.
Here’s a list of all the records Tulsi just shattered, in a single Twitter thread and 124 pages of declassified documents. And this list is only what I could think of as of this morning:
1. First sitting Director of National Intelligence to publicly accuse former intelligence leaders of a treasonous conspiracy (or any crime).
2. First time a DNI declassified internal IC assessments, memos, and emails during an active DOJ referral.
3. First full publication of an aborted Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) draft that contradicted an official narrative.
4. First evidence-based accusation that the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was politicized by presidential directive.
5. First direct public attribution of intelligence manipulation to a sitting president —Barack Obama— by name, not just implication.
6. First official public confirmation that the Steele Dossier was used in the 2017 ICA, despite internal dissent and known credibility issues.
7. First use of a Twitter thread as an official vehicle for declassifying national intelligence—turning social media into a disclosure mechanism.
8. First coordinated public release of IC whistleblower complaints, dissenting analyst emails, and interagency meeting notes in a single drop.
9. First breach of the classified means credible doctrine— by showing how classification was weaponized to create false public certainty. This one has many legs.
10. First dismantling of the we can’t comment on ongoing investigations playbook by someone inside the intel chain of command.
11. First time the post-Trump impeachment “insurrection” narrative has been turned against the intelligence agencies that constructed it.
12. First voluntary public declassification of internal IC meeting notes confirming political coordination of IC messaging— without subpoenas and before the usual years of Congressional hearings and wrangling.
Once again, we find ourselves off the map. It is truly terra incognita. There’s no predicting how this plays out; it’s historically unique. There are potential roles for the intelligence agencies, for the DOJ, and for Congress, and we can expect the Deep State to lash out wildly.
But what we know for sure is that Tulsi just tore the lid off the simmering bouillabaisse, and it is going to boil over.
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