07/23/2025

Story by Ian Schwartz

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MEGYN KELLY SHOW/SIRIUSXM: Megyn Kelly is joined by Matt Taibbi, editor of Racket News, to discuss Tulsi Gabbard’s release of explosive documents on Russian interference, why the Obama White House meeting on December 9, 2016 is the key Russiagate “smoking gun,” how Obama Era intel officials changed their assessment after an Obama-directed meeting, and more.

MEGYN KELLY: So your postings on Racket News over the past few days have really helped me tremendously. And so the audience knows, as I always do, I’ve read all of Andy McCarthy’s postings as well. I’ve read your detractors in the mainstream media.

And I have to say, you’ve totally convinced me. As always, you’re an honest broker, but you’ve totally convinced me. This is actually, I think they’re in deep shit.

And it’s amazing, but my biggest takeaway is how did Trump 1.0 not find these documents that Tulsi just revealed? Because they really show the story. But we’re just going to walk the audience through it like third graders, because it’s extremely dense.

And it’s taken me time and time again reading all the materials to get it. So the deal was, let’s start with, let’s go back to December of 2016. Barack Obama’s president, but Trump has won and is going to be taking over as president in January.

And they planned, the Intel officials under Barack Obama planned, this is a lot of this is from Racket News, which everybody should read directly, Matt’s group. Intel officials planned a December 9th, 2016 presidential daily brief, which is always from the Intel community for the president, letting them know what’s happening in the world. They planned a PDB that would say foreign adversaries, quoting here, foreign adversaries did not use cyber attacks on election infrastructure to alter the US presidential election outcome.

And they also planned to say, we have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results. Here’s the bottom line. What people need to know is Obama’s Intel community was about to give Obama a presidential daily brief that totally dismissed, downplayed, pooh-poohed, choose your word, the notion that Russia had meaningfully interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

That’s true. And by the way, Matt has gone well beyond the language that just speaks to manipulation of election infrastructure and pointed out that if you look at what the Intel community had been saying, it went well beyond dismissing, they’re not attacking our election infrastructure. They had doubts up and down the board about whether Russia had done anything more in 16 than it had ever done, which is just kind of attempts to be a menace and so a little bit of chaos.

And the Intel communications that are released now by Tulsi show that. So while Andy and others are zeroing in on the notion that on, before they sat with Obama, they were going to tell him, no attempts to hack our election infrastructure. And Andy will later argue them later coming out and saying, but lots of attempts to interfere in the election in general and totally to help Donald Trump.

He’s saying that’s apples to oranges. Jim Himes, you point out at Racket News, is saying that’s apples to oranges. There’s no gotcha in Tulsi’s big reveals about what was about to happen next because nothing that happened next contradicted that they didn’t try to hack our election databases.

Okay, so hopefully the audience is with me so far. What Tulsi revealed was that the Intel community was about to issue that statement to President Obama saying they didn’t. Like they didn’t try to hack our election infrastructure and there’s no evidence that they intended to alter the results this way.

And what happened was James Comey’s FBI said, we’re out. We’re not joining that. We don’t agree with that.

And we’re gonna issue our own briefing later. And as a result of the FBI saying that and saying that it was gonna draft a dissent, an official from Clapper’s office, Clapper, again, at the time, he was National Security, DNI. He was Director of National Intelligence.

And by the way, Matt points out, Clapper of all the Intel officials was probably the least enthusiastic about Russia, Russia, Russia. It was a lot more Brennan over at CIA. But anyway, Clapper’s office, okay, said we’re axing the PDB because the DNI, like Tulsi now, she does the PDB for Trump.

Whoever runs the intelligence like apparatus does it. And that was Clapper under Obama. So he said, oh, FBI’s out.

Okay, we’re killing it. We’re killing the PDB for the time being. And at that point, a meeting was held.

It was called and held, including all of Obama’s top people, all of them. And they had a big meeting on this. And the next day, things changed dramatically on the Russia narrative and changed in a way that would support the Russia, Russia, Russia allegations that would go on to undermine the entire first term of Donald J.

Trump. And Matt is gonna help us lay out this whole story. So, and Matt contends, and he’s convinced me too, it was not a matter of changing it from apples to oranges, you know, just like pointing out apples and pointing out oranges before and after this critical meeting.

It was, they had been saying, there’s no apples, there’s no apples, there’s no apples. And as a result of this meeting, they changed it to say, apples abound. We’re in an orchard.

They’re everywhere. We see nothing but apples. So it’s really not an apples to oranges situation.

We’re gonna get into all of this. Okay, Matt, thank you for my, for being patient through my thumbnail sketch. What’s the first thing you wanna say about this story?

MATT TAIBBI, RACKET NEWS: Well, first of all, I understand, and I think you did a great job walking people through everything. I understand the confusion about this. I don’t think that the report, as it was released, did a particularly good job of explaining what exactly the significance of these documents was, but they were very significant.

If you remember before the election, there was a story in the New York Times, for instance, on October 31st saying, FBI sees no link between Russia and Trump and the election. This was sort of what officials were telling people in the media. There were a few fringe attempts to kind of work the Steele dossier material, this full-on Trump-Russia conspiracy narrative into the media, but for the most part, they didn’t get there.

After the election, it was the same thing, until this moment on December 9th, 2016, when Barack Obama convened this meeting, ordered a new intelligence assessment, and then immediately, that same night, there were leaks from the administration telling people that there had been interference by Russia specifically to help Donald Trump, because there were two different- Let me stop you right there.

MEGYN KELLY: Let me just stop you right there. So they call this meeting with all the Obama top people, and no revised PDB has been issued yet, no revised intelligence community assessment has happened yet. The last thing that happened in the intel community was, we’re gonna tell them that there really was no significant Russian interference, at least insofar as election apparatus goes.

And FBI said, we’re out, we’re gonna issue our own, and then Clapper said, all right, let’s just pause everything, then everybody gets together. Right after that, before any revised intel happened, before anything happened, they began leaking to the media, WAPO, New York Times, CNN, saying something diametrically opposed, saying, Russia, Russia interfered! And that, to you, you described that as the smoking gun that shows there had been a decision to shift the entire messaging around this in a way they thought would undermine Trump, because why, if that were not the case, wouldn’t they have just waited until they had the new and newly ordered intel assessment, and then figured out what was what?

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and that’s really the striking set of documents is you can see on December 9th, there is an order from the Director of National Intelligence Office, basically giving out directions on how to put together a new intelligence community assessment per the president’s request. But as they’re giving out the assignment, the homework is already published in the New York Times and the Washington Post. In other words, they hadn’t even started work yet, or group work, on this assessment, and they were already telling everybody in the media what the conclusion was.

So the entire work period of this had to be a sham. Essentially, they pre-concluded what was going to be in the assessment and started leaking in advance.

MEGYN KELLY: And there’s no question, it appears, that this was done at the direction of the President of the United States, then Barack Obama. They convened, it was all of his top emissaries. It was John Kerry, Victoria Nuland, John Brennan, Ben Rhodes, Andy McCabe, you point at Richard Leggett from NSA, all of these top emissaries for Obama.

I mean, these are his top, top, top officials when it comes to national security. They get together and they received a group email the next day from Clapper’s office. He was DNI again, headed POTUS, meaning President of the United States, POTUS tasking on Russia election meddling, asking them to produce an assessment per the President’s request, quoting there.

He says, this intelligence community is prepared to produce an assessment, per the President’s request that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities and how Moscow’s approach has changed over time going back to 2008 and 2012 as reference points. And you write in assessing this, in some, just before Obama was about to receive a briefing that contained no reference to significant Russian interference, that briefing was called off and a high-level meeting of White House security officials was convened after which Obama himself tasked them with a new assessment that would lean toward a more aggressive conclusion. The critical job of divining Russia’s motives would be given to the CIA and Brennan.

And I think you’re suggesting here, there’s a reason that even though it was technically all under Clapper, who was the DNI, it was given to the CIA and Brennan, who all along had been very pro-Russia, Russia, Russia, and they knew full well he would go along to get along.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and this coincides with other information that we already had. Obviously, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, a few weeks ago, released the note talking about how Brennan overrode the objections of his deputy director of analysis and two of his handpicked Russia experts to include Steele dossier material in this assessment. I also did a story last year with Michael Schellenberger about that, about how they suppressed dissent in the ICA that said that Russia was actually hesitant about Trump.

They considered him mercurial and unreliable and saw that Hillary Clinton represented continuity and was manageable, and they weren’t so concerned about her being president. All of this was suppressed, and Brennan was the person who was most aggressive in pushing the other line. So the fact that he was in charge of divining Russia’s motives, and remember, motive is a key thing here.

It’s not just that Russia interfered. It’s that Russia interfered specifically to help Donald Trump. Those are two things.

Yeah, and so he was in charge of that second part.

MEGYN KELLY: Okay, and this dovetails with the report that’s in The Federalist today, entitled by Molly Hemingway, top intelligence officials contradicted the CIA’s Brennan, saying there is no intelligence to support this key Russian hoax claim. And just not to get too into the weeds, but she too is reporting that at the time, okay, so leading up to this assessment, CIA director John Brennan was pushing Russia, Russia, Russia, and that top officials working on this intelligence community analysis about Russia’s alleged interference went to him and said, we don’t have it. And we definitely should not be including in this thing the so-called key judgment, which is an important intelligence term, that Russia interfered specifically to help Trump.

We do not have that, and you should not put that in there. And you’re reporting here, dovetailing with what you just said, and you’ve reported. The senior intelligence officials pointed out the lack of evidence to substantiate that claim.

Quote, we have no intelligence to directly support this aspiration point, said one member of the group. The official worried that the inclusion of that claim would quote, open the intelligence community to align a very politicized inquiry that is sure to come up when this paper is shared with the Hill, meaning when it goes more public. And the Ratcliffe analysis, so that’s Trump’s current CIA director, he just last week took a look at all of this.

And he just concluded that the inclusion of that term, that this was a key judgment, that Putin was trying to help Trump, saying that the inclusion of that, he noted the risks of including poorly supported judgments and skeptical readers are inclined to reject an entire analysis if a single judgment appears exaggerated, biased, or unsupported. It goes on to say, this is from, I think, this is Molly writing, the experts did not disagree that Russia had continued its practice of attempting to sow chaos in presidential elections. They believe the intel indicated Russia sought to weaken presumptive winner, Hillary Clinton, and those efforts may have indirectly helped Trump, but they were concerned about the lack of evidence for the claim that became a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative in which Trump was accused of conspiring with Russia to steal the election.

The official who was objecting to all of this wrote in December of 2016, can you really prove Moscow was trying to get Trump elected?

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