Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is escalating her effort to confront what she calls entrenched Deep State tactics, formally referring alleged misconduct tied to the first Trump impeachment to the Department of Justice and publicly vowing to expose those responsible.
Appearing on Katie Pavlich Tonight shortly after the criminal referrals became public, Gabbard detailed why she is now seeking accountability for alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella and former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. According to RedState, the referrals stem from Gabbards review of newly released documents and transcripts that, in her view, reveal a coordinated effort within the intelligence bureaucracy and among House Democrats to manufacture grounds for impeaching President Donald Trump in 2019.
It is always the right time to expose the truth to the American people about the Deep State tactics that have been used time and time again fundamentally to undermine the foundational principles of our Republic and, in so many cases, to undermine the decisions that the American people make when they cast their votes in our elections to decide who they want to lead our country. Reiterating that theme, she added, It is always the right time to expose the truth to the American people, underscoring her belief that unelected officials have repeatedly interfered with the democratic choices of voters.
Gabbard argued that the first impeachment was not an organic response to wrongdoing but the product of partisan manipulation by senior Democrats and sympathetic intelligence officials. She singled out Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, accusing him of weaponizing the whistleblower process and abusing his authority to drive a preordained political outcome.
The documents that we released really pointed to the fact that the 2019 impeachment occurred because there were members of the intelligence community working directly with House Democrats, specifically Adam Schiff, who was chair of the House Intelligence Committee at the time, concocting this narrative, weaponizing the whistleblower process, lying and abusing their power, all to create this manufactured basis that Nancy Pelosi then used to drive this impeachment against Donald Trump in 2019. In Gabbards telling, the impeachment was less about safeguarding the Constitution and more about overturning the results of the 2016 election and crippling Trumps presidency through bureaucratic and legislative collusion.
She then walked through what she described as the high points of the hundreds of pages of material released in conjunction with the House Intelligence Committees work. Central to her case is the assertion that the supposed whistleblower lacked both direct knowledge and credible evidence, yet was elevated by Schiff and his allies as the linchpin of an impeachment narrative.
The so-called whistleblower who came forward presented no evidence and no firsthand knowledge. This is a person who had heard about a conversation that President Trump had with Zelenskyy then went straight to Adam Schiff...and this is where they came up with this false narrative. And this so-called whistleblower then went and filed a complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General.
By Gabbards account, the process was inverted: instead of facts driving the investigation, a preexisting political objective sought out a compliant vehicle in the form of a secondhand complaint.
She further highlighted that another key figure cited as a witness similarly lacked firsthand information and had a history tied to earlier efforts to undermine Trump. The other so-called witness to this is somebody who also had zero firsthand knowledge and presented zero evidence, someone who was also a co-author of the 2017 Russia hoax intelligence community assessment that President Obama had ordered be created in conjunction with John Brennan and James Clapper...and someone who said that even after reading the transcript he didn't really see the issue there until the whistleblower had explained it to him.
For conservatives long skeptical of the Russia investigation and the broader intelligence apparatus, Gabbards description reinforces the perception of a recurring pattern: the same network of officials repeatedly surfacing to justify extraordinary measures against a Republican president. Her remarks suggest that what was sold to the public as neutral, fact-based oversight was in reality a partisan operation dressed in the language of national security.
Atkinson, the former Inspector General, bears a significant share of the blame in Gabbards view. She contends that he failed to perform even basic due diligence before propelling the complaint into the political arena and effectively greenlighting an impeachment drive.
Lastly, the Inspector General himself...he didn't conduct a full investigation. He didn't even ask to see the transcript of the phone call between President Trump and Zelenskyy, and he admitted to Congress that he did not have any evidence that he was relying on. He had made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice based on this so-called whistleblower's complaint. The Department of Justice came back and said, there's nothing here. This Inspector General then went to Congress anyway and presented it to them.
Gabbard, now charged with purging political weaponization from the intelligence community, framed her actions as part of a broader effort to restore constitutional balance and public trust.
We know that the Deep State rot within the intelligence community has existed for a very long time, and it is very deep, she warned, before pledging ongoing vigilance: As we continue to discover new examples of these tried-and-true tactics that have been deployed, unfortunately, time and time again, we're going to continue to expose that truth. If they try to use these tactics again, we are all watching, and we are all standing on guard.
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