President Donald Trump’s post last Thursday began with two siren emojis.
“BREAKING,” it said. “Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has just released HUNDREDS OF BOMBSHELL RUSSIAGATE DOCUMENTS proving that Barack Obama personally ordered CIA agents to manufacture false intelligence on President Trump.”
“This was a coup attempt by Barack Hussein Obama and his cronies,” Trump’s post stated, concluding with, “ARREST OBAMA NOW!” An attached video excerpted a report from Fox News’ Jesse Watters delineating comments Gabbard made at the White House.
This made a splash on the right. The conspiracy-centered site Gateway Pundit ran a story about the documents released by Gabbard the prior day, which the article claimed proved “Obama doctored the information to make it look like Putin and his buddy Donald Trump stole the election.”
Given the sources — Watters, Gateway Pundit — you will not be surprised to learn that this accusation isn’t true. In fact, it wasn’t even new. Trump’s post was an image, not actual text, because he’d lifted it from a December X post. But even in December, this wasn’t “BREAKING.” As you can see on the White House website itself, Gabbard’s announcement had taken place in July. Watters’ report was from that same month. Trump was just … sharing it again, in someone else’s words.
This incident is important not only because the president of the United States is sharing six-month-old claims as though they are new. It is important because the allegation Gabbard made in July shows her willingness to elevate dubious evidence in order to make a loaded political claim — something to bear in mind given her new role “investigating” the “election fraud” that Trump insists occurred in the 2020 election.
What Gabbard presented last July was cherry-picked information from emails sent around the 2016 election. One quote from an email that was included in her press release about this sweeping conspiracy, for example, suggested that analysts knew Russia was “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.” But that quote continued: “to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure.” In other words, the analysis was that Russia wasn’t hacking voting machines but — in the next sentence! — warned that “Russia probably is using cyber means primarily to influence the election by stealing campaign party data and leaking select items, and it is also using public propaganda.”
But Trump wanted to hear that the Russia investigation was a hoax, so much so that he’d amplify months-old news last week. So Gabbard told Trump what he wanted to hear.
Gabbard said that she was in Fulton County because her “presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”
The day before Trump revisited Gabbard’s July claim, the director of national intelligence was in Georgia, joining FBI agents as they seized material from an elections office in Fulton County. The county that’s home to the majority of Atlanta’s population has been a target of Trumpworld conspiracy theorizing since immediately after the election five-plus years ago. There’s no reason to think that any fraud occurred there — two recounts and analysis of voting patterns make clear that its 2020 results were unremarkable — but here, too, there’s a story Trump wants to hear and Gabbard seems willing to tell it.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Gabbard’s new remit last week.
“Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president,” according to White House officials who spoke with the paper. As part of that effort, she has “consulted with others in the intelligence community about claims of foreign interference in the 2020 election.”
Now we get into even weirder territory. In November, The Guardian, citing four sources, reported that the Justice Department, working with the U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico, was trying to figure out if Venezuela somehow contributed to illegal voting in the 2020 contest. On Wednesday, Reuters cited three sources who said Gabbard had investigated voting machines in Puerto Rico as well (Gabbard’s office confirmed the report).
In a statement to Reuters, Gabbard’s office claimed that their only target was possible vulnerabilities in the territory’s election results. But a baseless allegation that Venezuela had been involved in stealing the election emerged shortly after the 2020 contest. Promoted by Trump’s attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, it held that the company Smartmatic had been created to help Venezuelan leaders steal elections — and was now being deployed in the U.S. It was almost immediately debunked.
When Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was seized by American forces in January, right-wing observers immediately resurrected the idea, suggesting that his arrest was linked to 2020 election investigations. But, again, there’s no demonstrable line from Venezuela to U.S. election results through voting machines or software, and any assertion to the contrary should be viewed with deep skepticism — particularly when coming from Gabbard, given her track record.
Soon after taking office, she made clear that digging up evidence to backstop right-wing conspiracy theories (about Covid, about Russia, about “weaponization” of government) would be a focus. She’s starting from conclusions and seeking evidence to support them, which is the inverse of how intelligence work is meant to go.
She and the president aren’t even being honest about why she was in Georgia. In a letter she sent to the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees, Gabbard said she was in Fulton County because her “presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”
When Trump was asked by NBC News why Gabbard was there, he said, “I don’t know.” But, he added, “you know — a lot of the cheating comes from — it’s — it’s international cheating.” There are two obvious reasons that Trump and Gabbard are focused on generating claims about the 2020 election. First, there’s Trump’s vanity. That he bristles at having lost the popular vote in 2016 and the presidency in 2020 has long been obvious, but he made it explicit during comments at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. “They rigged the second election. I had to win it. Had to win it. I needed it for my own ego,” he said. “I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego.” More importantly, though, Trump and his allies are already using these tired, debunked, baseless claims of election fraud and interference to advocate for tighter federal control of the voting process. Speaking to former FBI deputy director turned podcaster Dan Bongino earlier this week, Trump suggested that Republicans nationalize elections — that is, have the government he controls assume control over the intentionally decentralized process for voting that currently exists. NBC’s Tom Llamas asked about that, too, prompting Trump to complain that “there are some areas that are unbelievably corrupt.” He pointed to cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta where he actually improved in 2024 relative to 2020. “Will you trust the results of the midterms if Republicans lose control of Congress?” Llamas asked. “I will if the elections are honest,” Trump replied. Meanwhile, he and Gabbard are actively looking for ways to suggest that they won’t be. Be prepared for more pronouncements from Gabbard like the one last July, assertions about election fraud or Venezuelan wrongdoing or who-knows-what, claims that crumble on the slightest scrutiny but which become staples of Trumpworld rhetoric. And then look for Trump to repeat those claims on a random Thursday six months later.
Philip Bump is a data journalist and MS NOW contributor. 
