Tulsi Gabbard Issues Statement After Shocking Whistleblower Story

"So, who is really guilty of 'Russian collusion'? And who are the real traitors?"

In July 2025, a declassified whistleblower testimony quietly entered the public record. It comes from a former Deputy National Intelligence Officer who served from 2015 to 2020 at the National Intelligence Council.

His account, buried in bureaucratic language but blistering in substance, details what he describes as deliberate political manipulation within the U.S. Intelligence Community during the transition from the Obama administration to the Trump presidency.

The testimony, released today, alleges that senior intelligence officials—including figures close to then-President Obama—pressured analysts to shape findings around Russian election interference in 2016 in ways that favored a political narrative.

More gravely, it suggests that attempts to raise concerns internally were met with dismissal, negligence, and retaliation. The implications are profound: not only for how intelligence is used to warp public perception, but also how these government agencies are deeply corrupt to their very core.

According to the testimony, the whistleblower was central to the development of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on cyber threats to the presidential election. That assessment stopped short of attributing intent to Russia, instead focusing on technical evidence of intrusion attempts. But following the election, he was pushed aside as a new ICA—the more widely publicized 2017 version—was drafted. That document concluded with high confidence that Russia had a clear preference for Donald Trump and had acted to assist his election.

Of course, that assessment was completely false and contrived for political purposes.

A Whistleblower Tried to Stop the 'Russia Hoax' from Happening — What Happened to Him is Chilling

The whistleblower, however, did not concur. He objected to the language suggesting Russian intent to influence the outcome in Trump’s favor, arguing that the data was inconclusive. He also raised concerns about the exclusion of analysis on other foreign actors attempting to influence the election, including some U.S. allies. His input was ignored. When he pushed back, he was pressured to reverse his position—specifically, he says, so that his agreement could be used to persuade the Defense Intelligence Agency to join the consensus view.

One of the most startling elements of the testimony is the claim that the Steele Dossier—an unverified opposition research document that became central to media and legal narratives around Trump—was in fact a factor in the 2017 ICA. This contradicts earlier public statements by intelligence leaders, including former DNI James Clapper, who had downplayed the dossier’s influence, and former CIA Director John Brennan, who appears to have lied under oath in Congressional testimony.

In 2019, after receiving internal emails that confirmed the dossier’s relevance to the ICA, the whistleblower raised concerns. The response from leadership was dismissive: it was routine, he was told, not to share all materials with analysts—even senior ones.

Shortly afterward, he was removed from key internal communications without explanation.

The testimony outlines a pattern of exclusion, minimization, and silence. When he approached the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) with his concerns, he was given polite meetings but no results. When he tried to reach Special Counsel John Durham, he encountered a wall. Letters were sent. A few emails were exchanged. Nothing came of it.

The whistleblower identifies specific examples of intelligence suppression, the dismissal of cyber activity analysis potentially linked to U.S. persons under investigation, and the IC’s refusal to apply consistent tradecraft standards to foreign influence campaigns.

The testimony points to a culture of protecting consensus over challenging it, even when that consensus may be driven by political rather than analytical forces.

There are also institutional implications. If a senior DNIO could be cut out of processes, pressured into alignment, and ignored by oversight mechanisms, it raises the question of whether internal dissent is structurally impossible to sustain inside the intelligence apparatus. When even the Inspector General’s office claims it has no process to relay whistleblower concerns to the Department of Justice’s special counsel, it’s hard not to see the mechanism of accountability as broken.

The document is long and dense, but its message is blunt: the intelligence system, as constructed, can be used to shape political narratives from the inside. And when someone inside that system tries to challenge it, the result isn’t reform—he is silenced.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard praised the whistleblower’s testimony:

Whistleblower reveals how they were threatened by a supervisor to go along with the Obama-directed Russia hoax “intelligence” assessment, even though they knew it was not credible or accurate. The Whistleblower refused.

Yesterday we released the Whistleblower's firsthand account of what happened in the crafting of the January 2017 ICA, their yearslong efforts to expose the egregious manipulation and manufacturing of intelligence carried out at the highest levels of government and the IC (detailed in our previous releases) and how they were repeatedly ignored.

Thank you to this courageous whistleblower, and others who are coming forward now, putting their own well-being on the line to defend our democratic republic, ensure the American people know the truth, and hold those responsible accountable.

The Obama administration weaponized the intelligence community and the justice system in order to attack the regime’s political enemies, rather than protect the American people from foreign enemies. The whistleblower rightly tried to do his duty to serve this country honorably, and the Obama administration rejected it.

It is one of the greatest ironies of Russiagate that while the perpetrators of this scandal accused Donald Trump of treason, it is a documented fact that the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign colluded in treasonous fashion to spread Russian disinformation for the purpose of interfering in the presidential election.

The Obama administration thus aided and abetted Russian President Putin’s actual foreign policy objectives for interfering in the 2016 election: Sow division, corrupt our institutions, and undermine trust in our elections.

So, who is really guilty of “Russian collusion”? And who are the real traitors?