David Corn writes:

The Trump administration has launched a war on former Obama administration officials, and to do so, it has engaged in one of the most egregious and obvious acts of politicizing intelligence in decades.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released formerly classified US intelligence reports about the 2016 election that she said were evidence of an Obama administration “conspiracy to subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.” In a hysterical press release, she accused former President Barack Obama and his national security aides of having “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the ground for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” Describing this as a “treasonous” plot, she said she was forwarding documents to the Justice Department, presumably to initiate a criminal investigation. Naturally, she went on Fox News to amplify her allegations against Obama and his advisers.

It’s all a fabrication. What’s worse, her skullduggery appears to have been the catalyst for one of President Donald Trump’s most disturbing and dangerous social media posts: An AI-generated video of Obama in the Oval Office visiting a smiling Trump, being manhandled and arrested by FBI agents, and then tossed into a prison cell.

Gabbard claims that the Obama administration and its top national security officials schemed to create and promote a phony intelligence finding to undermine Trump. On January 6, 2017, two weeks before Trump was to begin his first term as president, the intelligence community released an assessment (called an ICA) that stated Russia had attacked the 2016 election with a covert hack-and-leak operation and a secret social media campaign designed to sow political discord in the United States, harm Hillary Clinton’s chances, and help Trump win. Ever since, Trump has called the Russia story a “hoax” and each of the subsequent investigations a “witch hunt.”

Gabbard, acting much like a Soviet commissar, is trying to disappear that assessment and the taint it applies to Trump’s 2016 victory. So on Friday, she released over 100 pages of documents that she insists show that the ICA was concocted to purposefully present the false finding to the public. But she is engaging in a sleazy sleight of hand. [Continue reading…]