President Obama was the central figure in an effort to discredit the 2016 election results by politicizing the intelligence community against its unexpected winner, President Trump, according to newly declassified documents.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard filed a criminal referral to the Justice Department, citing Obama's role in a "treasonous conspiracy."
"These documents detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the President from fulfilling his mandate,” she wrote on X.
The intelligence community was initially skeptical that Russia interfered in the election, but those findings apparently changed after Trump's upset victory against Hillary Clinton.
A declassified intelligence brief that was prepared for Obama, dated December 8, 2016, had concluded that Russia did not make any impact on election infrastructure beyond hacking a voter registration database in Illinois.
The brief was not published as expected after the FBI, which was investigating Trump at the time, registered a "dissent."
President Obama ordered a new, "comprehensive" assessment of Russian interference following a December 9 White House meeting, where top national security officials, including James Clapper, John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, and Susan Rice, met to discuss Russia.
"The IC is prepared to produce an assessment per the President’s request," Clapper's assistant wrote, "that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election."
The final intelligence community assessment published weeks later on January 7 "directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months,” Gabbard said.
The IC assessment concluded in no uncertain language that Vladimir Putin directed an interference campaign with the goal of getting Trump elected.
The claim that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump would fuel a years-long investigation of "Russian collusion" that came up empty.
The FBI's Trump-Russia probe began in July 2016 and involved spying on Trump's campaign using bogus opposition research procured by the Clinton camp. The investigation would eventually come to cast a cloud over Trump's first term.
The individuals involved in the January 2017 IC assessment included FBI director James Comey and CIA director John Brennan, both notorious critics of Trump who are currently under investigation by the FBI.
“Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people," Gabbard said.
As the Trump administration faces intense pressure from its base of support to release all of the available Jeffrey Epstein files, there are new developments that have sparked increased interest in the matter.
According to NBC News, in 2021, the New York Post reportedly ran a trailer online about a Jeffrey Epstein documentary that happened to be produced by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
In the trailer, Bannon can be heard asking Epstein all kinds of hard-hitting questions, including about “all of the depravity you’ve done against young women."
The documentary was never released, but Jeffrey Epstein's brother, Mark Epstein, wants Bannon to release the reported 15 hours of unseen footage.
Mark Bannon recently told NBC News that he demands to see the footage that Bannon reportedly has.
"Let me see the videotapes,” he told NBC News on Friday. "He’s my brother."
“He told me he has like 15 or 16 hours of videotape of Jeff. He was trying to help Jeff rehabilitate his reputation,” Mark Epstein said of Bannon.
NBC News noted:
Mark Epstein said that Bannon, the MAGA media personality, worked with his brother, then a convicted sex offender, after the Miami Herald in 2018 chronicled victims’ details of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein. The two men filmed together before Epstein’s arrest by federal authorities in the summer of 2019.
The outlet also shed light on Bannon's deeper connection and experience with Epstein while he was alive.
In the trailer for “The Monsters: Epstein’s Life Among the Global Elite,” published by the New York Post, Jeffrey Epstein said he was a “firm believer and supporter” of the Time’s Up organization, which worked to combat sexual harassment. Bannon — who has a background as a Hollywood producer and a documentary filmmaker — is also seen asking Epstein whether he owns two islands, “the islands of Doctor Moreau,” to which Epstein replies, “Correct.”
While Mark Epstein might not get the footage he wants at this point, according to the outlet, the public will likely be able to see it as soon as next year.
Bannon has already confirmed and acknowledged the footage, and recently indicated that he intends on releasing it next year.
"We’re going to release the film, the five-part series, next year — early next year," Bannon said during a live taping of his podcast.
He added, "You’re going to have to name names, and you’re going to have to understand how the elites of the world but also the intelligence services are inextricably linked in the Epstein story."
"That's the key," Bannon said.
While most of us knew it already, or at least assumed it based on what's happened over the past nearly 10 years, new evidence was released this week that suggested President Barack Obama's administration manufactured and politicized evidence to push the Russia hoax theory.
According to Breitbart, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of documents showing further proof that the Russia hoax was especially intricate and insane.
Gabbard's document dump, in her opinion, will mean that “Americans will finally learn the truth" about how far the Obama administration went in pushing the Russia hoax.
The documents show that the former administration perpetrated essentially "what was essentially a years-long coup."
DNI Gabbard, in a series of X posts, released multiple reports regarding the situation
🧵 Americans will finally learn the truth about how in 2016, intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President @realDonaldTrump, subverting the… pic.twitter.com/UQKKZ5c4Op
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) July 18, 2025
She added, "For months preceding the 2016 election, the Intelligence Community shared a consensus view: Russia lacked the intent and capability to hack U.S. elections. But weeks after President Trump’s historic 2016 victory defeating Hillary Clinton, everything changed."
She included graphics to accompany the information, many of which showed screenshots of texts by former Obama officials behind the Russia hoax.
Breitbart noted:
Despite the intelligence community’s consensus that Russia “lacked the intent and capability to hack U.S. elections” prior to Trump’s 2016 win over Hillary Clinton, Gabbard said Obama’s officials changed their tune soon after the president won, ignoring the evidence.
One of the assessments read, "We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure."
Many weighed in on the document dump, with some taking issue as it was at the same time that the Jeffrey Epstein situation boiled over after many in the Trump administration seemingly downplayed it.
"I see all this, and not one single person being charged with anything. If no one is held accountable it doesn't matter," one X user wrote.
Another X user wrote, "Oh my goodness Tulsi, we've so needed this. Thank you so much for what you're doing!!"
Only time will tell if anything comes of the documents or if any Obama officials are held accountable.
Six months after his triumphant return to Washington, President Donald Trump is racking up victories left and right as Republicans fall in line behind his MAGA agenda.
No less than the left-wing Politicoconceded that Trump "keeps steamrolling Congress" in his historic push to remake the political order.
Trump secured a landmark achievement this month with the enactment of the "Big, Beautiful Bill," which fully funds his border wall and expands ICE into the largest law enforcement agency in the country.
Most GOP critics of Trump's mega bill set aside their concerns about its cost and voted to pass it before Trump's July 4th deadline.
A last-minute threat from budget hawks fell apart in a matter of hours after Trump put pressure on "grandstanders" in the House GOP. It remains unclear what, if any, concessions Trump offered to hard-right Republicans to win their support.
Trump has continued to face pushback from some Republicans concerned about cuts to government programs that form part of the safety net in rural America. But most in the party have signed on to Trump's sweeping legislative reforms, which have passed along party lines and with little time spent standing on ceremony.
For instance, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted Thursday to advance Trump's former defense lawyer, Emil Bove, to serve as a federal judge. Democrats stormed out in anger as Republicans ignored their objections concerning Bove, who was the subject of a whistleblower complaint.
The new dynamic on Capitol Hill is a dramatic shift from Trump's first term, when he had yet to dominate the GOP establishment and was often forced to use the executive pen to advance his priorities.
Trump still has a handful of diehard critics in the GOP, such as Rep. Thomas Massie (KY), the only Republican in the House to vote twice against Trump's mega bill. Massie is also stoking drama over the Epstein files, a controversy Trump has blasted as a distraction and a "hoax" to discredit his achievements.
Beyond the Capitol, Trump has put pressure on influential institutions aligned with the left, winning concessions from prominent universities and news organizations.
Critics of Trump's take-no-prisoners approach say he is stifling dissent, but to many on the right, the new situation is a marked improvement after years of broken promises from "RINOS" in Congress.
Indeed, under Trump's leadership, the GOP is unified and delivering major reforms that eluded the party for years.
Trump secured another victory Friday as House Republicans passed his $9 billion rescissions package, which cancels spending on foreign aid and left-leaning public broadcasters like NPR.
"REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE," he wrote. "THIS IS BIG!!!"
The Obamas have made their most forceful comments yet on rumors of divorce that have been following them for months.
It marks the first time the couple has joined together to shut down the speculation, which began months ago after Michelle Obama missed a pair of state events.
The former First Lady skipped Jimmy Carter's funeral and President Trump's second inauguration, leaving her husband to attend the events alone.
The Obamas have ignored the rumors for months, although they tried to put on a united front with social media posts on Valentine's Day and Michelle's birthday.
The couple, who married in 1992 and share two children, have rarely been seen together publicly in recent months, something they joked about during an episode of Michelle Obama's podcast.
“She took me back!” Barack Obama said on IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. “It was touch and go for a while.”
“It’s so nice to have you both in the same room together,” Michelle's brother, Craig Robinson, said.
"I know because when we aren’t, folks think we’re divorced," Michelle responded.
On a more serious note, Michelle acknowledged "hard times" in their marriage. The couple has admitted to going through counseling in the past.
"There hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quittin' my man," Michelle said. "And we've had some really hard times," Michelle Obama said. "We have had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to."
Michelle Obama previously addressed the topic of divorce on her own, blasting her critics as sexists for making negative assumptions about her independent lifestyle.
“My decision to skip the inauguration, what people don’t realize — or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me were met with such ridicule and criticism,” she said. "People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart.”
While Michelle was clearly angered by the divorce rumors, her husband claims he was completely ignorant of them.
“These are the kinds of things that I just miss,” Barack Obama said. “So I don’t even know this stuff’s going on and then somebody will mention it to me and I’m like what are you talking about?”
The co-founder of Home Depot is revising his opinion of President Trump, saying he is "sold" on President Trump after months of solid results.
“If I told you how bullish I was…I have never been more excited about the future of America than I am right now, right this minute," said billionaire GOP donor Ken Langone told CNBC's Squawk Box.
Langone said Trump has "good shot at going down in history as one of our best presidents ever.”
In April, after Trump imposed historic tariffs that caused Wall Street to panic, Langone was skeptical of Trump's "b-----" rates.
“Forty-six percent on Vietnam? Come on,” Langone told the Financial Times. “You might as well tell them, ‘Don’t even bother calling.'”
Langone also predicted, at the time, that tariffs would add to the ballooning federal deficit. But the budget had a surplus in June as tariff revenues topped $100 billion, a new record.
While skeptics say consumers are paying the price, inflation ticked up slightly in June to 2.7%, in line with expectations and well within the normal range.
Meanwhile, Trump confirmed a trade deal with Indonesia this week, and he says an agreement with Vietnam is all but finished.
"Initially, my concern was I don’t like tariffs; I like free trade. However, I think — damn it, give Trump credit. His instincts are good. Some of these things need to be fixed," Langone said.
Langone also praised Trump's strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, which brought praise from some of his staunchest critics.
"The world is a mess, but I think it’s coming more in our direction than it was. I think that strike in Iran had significant symbolic meaning for the world that America is here and when our interests are at risk, we’re going to do something about it," Langone said.
On the domestic front, Trump secured a landmark achievement in July with the enactment of the "Big, Beautfiul Bill." The law includes major investments in immigration enforcement and makes Trump's first-term tax cuts permanent, while adding new tax breaks that he promised in 2024.
The mega bill will "trigger significant economic growth," Langone said, adding, "we might see tax revenues going up from the profitability.”
Overall, Langone said he is pleased to see that Trump is focused on making the country better, instead of seeking retribution, as Langone initially predicted.
"Like it or not, this guy’s getting things done,” Langone said.
In a startling confession, former President Biden admitted to the New York Times that he did not approve many of the controversial pardons that he nominally signed at the end of his term.
Biden defended his administration's frequent use of an autopen as perfectly "legal," and insisted that he made "every decision." But he also conceded that he delegated the details of the pardon process to his staff because there were too many to sign.
"We’re talking about a whole lot of people," he said.
Biden's frequent use of the autopen has fueled doubts about his authority over the White House and the legitimacy of the actions he took as president, especially the controversial pardon spree of his final days in power.
Biden granted clemency to 4,000 inmates, including nearly every federal prisoner on death row, and he gave pre-emptive pardons to members of his own family.
According to the Times, Biden "did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and aides confirmed."
Biden only approved the basic criteria that were used for three sets of mass pardons, the Times reported. A fourth set of pardons involved high-profile Trump critics like Mark Milley and Anthony Fauci, and Biden insisted he discussed their cases individually.
“We know how vindictive Trump is, and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason,” Biden said.
“The general, you know. So they may read off his name — what’d I want? I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add.”
The White House used a multi-step process to record the proof of Biden's involvement.
Senior advisers like chief of staff Jeff Zients would relay Biden's decisions to assistants to be written down. The assistants, who were not present for Biden's meetings, would then send their notes back to Biden's advisers for approval before sending them off to staff secretary Stefanie Feldman, who had the autopen.
If revisions were made to the pardon list, staff would run the final versions through the autopen without asking Biden to sign again.
On the final night of his presidency, Biden made the decision to pre-emptively pardon his family members, but Zients had the final sign-off.
In an e-mail at 10:31 p.m. on January 19, he wrote, "I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons."
Elon Musk's AI company issued an explanation and an apology for an anti-Semitic outburst by its chatbot, Grok.
xAI said the incident was caused by a since-deleted coding update that caused Grok to echo "extremist" posts on X.
Musk has touted his chatbot as an uncensored and "politically neutral" alternative to the "woke" ChatGPT, but finding a balance has proven difficult.
Within days of a new update touted by Musk, Grok responded to queries about the Texas floods with comments praising Adolf Hitler.
Grok said that Jewish-sounding names "keep popping up in extreme leftist activism, especially the anti-white variety" and suggested that Hitler would "spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time."
The offensive posts were promptly deleted, and xAI later provided an explanation for what happened.
The company blamed a coding change that made Grok "susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views."
"First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. Our intent for @grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users."
"After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok," the company said.
The update was active for 16 hours and has since been removed, the company said.
"The update was active for 16 hrs, in which deprecated code made @grok susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views. We have removed that deprecated code and refactored the entire system to prevent further abuse. The new system prompt for the @grok bot will be published to our public github repo," the company said.
"We thank all of the X users who provided feedback to identify the abuse of @grok functionality, helping us advance our mission of developing helpful and truth-seeking artificial intelligence."
Musk has also fallen under scrutiny over his own erratic posts, many of which have targeted President Trump and his agenda in recent weeks.
Musk apologized in June for a series of inflammatory messages, including a baseless assertion, later deleted, that Trump is in the Epstein files.
Earlier this month, Trump lamented that his former ally had "gone off the rails" after Musk launched a third political party in protest of Trump's megabill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, becoming law.
An initiative set forth by the administration of former President Bill Clinton was finally shot down this week, and it should save American taxpayers a pretty penny.
According to JustTheNews, U.S. taxpayers are no longer on the hook for paying for the education of noncitizens who are currently in the country illegally. The program was ended by President Donald Trump's Department of Education this week.
Trump's DOE wrote in a statement this week that "it will end taxpayer subsidization of illegal aliens in career, technical, and adult education programs."
The new rule will also prohibit illegal aliens from accessing government benefits like Pell Grants and student loans.
The Department of Education updated a rule this week that allowed somewhat of a loophole for illega aliens to access government benefits that would normally only be given to U.S. citizens.
The outlet noted:
A news release said that this change takes place due to an interpretative rule issued Thursday in which “the Department rescinded a Dear Colleague letter from the Clinton Administration that enabled non-qualified illegal aliens to access federal public benefits in contravention of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)."
The release from the Education Department added, "Title IV of PRWORA 'generally limits eligibility for ‘federal public benefits’ to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and certain categories of ‘qualified aliens.'"
The federal benefits covered under that include, "any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, postsecondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefits, or any similar benefits for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit."
The release explained how illegal aliens were able to skirt the rules thanks to the Clinton administration.
In 1997, "the Clinton Administration issued a Dear Colleague Letter that erroneously exempted career, technical, and adult education programs from being subject to PRWORA," the release explained.
"In doing so, the Department’s interpretation mischaracterized the law by creating artificial distinctions between federal benefit programs based upon the method of assistance,” the release added. "Congress made no such distinction in PRWORA."
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released a statement making it crystal clear where she stands on the issue.
"Postsecondary education programs funded by the federal government should benefit American citizens, not illegal aliens," the DOE release added.
It added, "Under President Trump's leadership, hardworking American taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for illegal aliens to participate in our career, technical, or adult education programs or activities."
By now, everyone should be fully aware that President Donald Trump is most certainly not afraid to fire someone -- or a large group of people at once.
According to Breitbart, in Trump's effort to shrink a "bloated" U.S. government, the State Department, at Trump's direction, is firing a staggering 1300 workers as part of a massive reorganization strategy.
The AP broke the story, reporting that a high-level anonymous source familiar with the situation said that pink slips will be handed out to "1,107 civil servants and nearly 250 foreign service officers with assignments inside the United States."
Some of those affected by the mass firing will first be placed on leave and then formally terminated from their positions, a move that has been celebrated by Trump supporters and Republicans who are on board with cutting government waste.
The memo obtained by the AP made it crystal clear what the State Department is doing with the 1300 or so workers.
“Foreign service officers affected will be placed immediately on administrative leave for 120 days, after which they will formally lose their jobs, according to an internal notice obtained by The Associated Press," the outlet reported.
The move was described as a "departmental reorganization" in an effort to streamline "domestic operations."
It added, "In connection with the departmental reorganization … the department is streamlining domestic operations to focus on diplomatic priorities. Headcount reductions have been carefully tailored to affect non-core functions, duplicative or redundant offices, and offices where considerable efficiencies may be found from centralization or consolidation of functions and responsibilities."
Videos of some of the fired workers leaving the facility went viral across social media.
Scenes from the State Dept, showing employees leaving HQ after being fired in the mass cuts of 1300 employees today.
The recently fired bureaucrats were greeted to a round of applause as they carried their supplies out.
Cleaning house. pic.twitter.com/BK4rQHWsOz
— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) July 12, 2025
Users across social media weighed in on the news of the mass firings.
"@realDonaldTrump Great job cleaning house, a lot more needs to go. did you know that during covid, it was found that the government could run efficiently on about 25% of the people in government? what a lot of past DEMS did was hire all their Dem party & they destroyed the US," one X user wrote.
Another X user wrote, "Note that even after the layoffs nobody at this agency has to be at his/her/zir/their desk. Everyone has time to hang out in the lobby in and cheer for the departing."
It'll be fascinating to see what department and how many employees get cut next.