Former presidential candidate and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, revealed on the Pod Force One podcast that the Russians privately believed Hillary Clinton’s victory in the 2016 U.S. election was “inevitable.” While much of the public narrative suggested that Russia backed Donald Trump, Gabbard argued that Moscow’s real objective was to cause chaos in the American political process and prepare for a Clinton presidency.
Citing recently released intelligence documents, Gabbard said Russia felt Clinton’s win was certain. “It surprised me that all of these documents still existed, quite frankly,” Gabbard said in an episode set to air Wednesday. “As we’ve learned in later documents that we’ve reviewed throughout that campaign, Russia believed that Hillary Clinton would win the election. They felt it was inevitable.”
Gabbard’s team began releasing a cache of documents last month, offering a behind-the-scenes view of the U.S. intelligence community’s activities surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 election. One of the documents, a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, suggested that Russia had intelligence claiming Clinton was “placed on a daily regimen of ‘heavy tranquilizers’ and was afraid of losing.”
Gabbard questioned why this information was not made public if Russia’s goal was to aid Trump’s election. “If Russia aspired to help Trump get elected… then Putin would have released the most damaging information and emails to help President Trump,” Gabbard said. “It was intentionally withheld and not released because they assumed that Hillary Clinton would win that election, and their plan was to wait until maybe days or weeks before her inauguration to release these documents.”
U.S. officials have long accused Russia of hacking Democratic National Committee emails during the campaign, but the 2020 House Intelligence Committee report emphasized that Russia’s principal aim was to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process, rather than backing any single candidate.
“The American people, I think, have been, and our republic has been most harmed by this,” Gabbard said, condemning the Russia collusion narrative. “Of course, President Trump went through hell and his family because of this Russia hoax that was manufactured by President Obama and his administration.”
Critics, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper, have dismissed Gabbard’s claims, accusing her of spreading “patently false” accusations. They defend the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which concluded that Russia favored Trump in the election. Gabbard’s latest revelations have prompted referrals to the Justice Department, which has now formed a “strike force” to investigate the claims further.