Tulsi Gabbard’s Deep State Gambit Hits a Wall as Durham Report Undermines Conspiracy Claims
Tulsi Gabbard, now serving as the Director of US National Intelligence, had one bold mission—prove that Barack Obama and his national security team plotted a slow-burn coup against Donald Trump. Her goal? Expose what she claimed was a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely link Trump’s 2016 victory to Russian interference.
But that mission just took a massive blow.
A newly declassified annex from Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation—initiated during the final stretch of Trump’s first term—shreds the foundation of Gabbard’s narrative. Far from vindicating her theory, the report confirms that Russian intelligence was behind the infamous hacked emails, not a fabricated scheme by the Obama team.
Let’s rewind. In 2019, Robert Mueller’s report and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation—led by Marco Rubio, now serving as Trump’s Secretary of State—both reinforced the January 2017 intelligence community assessment. That assessment expressed "high confidence" in Russia’s efforts to meddle in the election.
Vladimir Putin himself seemed to validate this during the 2018 Helsinki summit, standing beside Trump and openly stating he wanted him to win.
Now comes Durham’s 29-page declassified bombshell, released this week, delivering a stinging reality check. It reveals that Russian hackers were responsible for the emails at the center of Trump-world’s narrative—emails supposedly showing a plot by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to smear Trump.
Durham notes:
“The office’s best assessment is that the July 25 and July 27 emails… were ultimately a composite of several emails that were obtained through Russian intelligence hacking of US-based thinktanks.”
Those emails, attributed to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundation (funded by George Soros, a favorite target of Trump’s MAGA base), appeared to outline a plan to “demonize Putin and Trump” and claimed the FBI would ‘add oil to the fire’.
But here’s the kicker—Benardo and Julianne Smith, a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was also implicated, vehemently denied writing such emails. Durham’s annex backs them up, concluding the messages were stitched together from unrelated emails to look more damning than they really were.
That’s a problem for Gabbard, who’s been doubling down on her claims of a “deep state” bent on derailing Trump. The idea that forged emails, courtesy of Russian spies, are part of her “evidence” only weakens her case.
Former intelligence officials aren’t buying it either.
“Trump is lying when he speaks of a ‘deep state,’” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst. “And if it did exist, it wouldn’t be Democrat—it’s a culture that leans heavily Republican.”
Worth noting—Gabbard never served in the intelligence services, nor did she sit on the House’s intelligence committee during her time in Congress. Still, she’s pushing to prosecute Obama-era officials for allegedly “fabricating” intelligence—a charge that Durham’s findings severely undercut.
Meanwhile, John Brennan, former CIA director under Obama, told The New Yorker that Obama actually instructed agencies to avoid influencing the 2016 election, even as they uncovered Russia’s meddling.
“He made it very clear that we were to uncover everything the Russians were doing—but do nothing that could interfere in the election,” Brennan said.
Gabbard continues to lean on a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, backed only by Republicans, that questions whether Putin truly favored Trump. But that’s contradicted by Michael Van Landingham, a former CIA analyst who co-authored the original 2017 intelligence assessment.
Van Landingham laid it out clearly in an interview with PBS NewsHour:
Putin, realizing Clinton was likely to win, ordered an influence campaign against her.
Russian intelligence services hacked US data and leaked it strategically, mirroring information from a clandestine source.
Russian state media began portraying Trump in a favorable light, reinforcing the view that he’d be easier for Putin to deal with.
“All of those things gave us high confidence that Putin wanted Trump to win,” Van Landingham said.
So while Gabbard continues her crusade to prove a grand conspiracy, the facts are stacking up against her. Her “smoking gun” is looking more like Russian disinformation, and the deep state narrative—no matter how brusty it sounds—keeps unraveling.
Description:
"Tulsi Gabbard’s mission to expose a “deep state” plot against Donald Trump just hit a major snag. A newly declassified Durham report confirms Russian hackers—not Obama officials—were behind the 2016 election chaos."