Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard hinted Wednesday that former President Barack Obama had been referred to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation — but did not address constitutional obstacles to a prosecution.
In a briefing with reporters at the White House, Gabbard laid out the evidence that had been released on Friday and Monday from previously classified reports, showing that the outgoing Obama administration rejected intelligence assessments that said Russia had not interfered meaningfully in the 2016 election, and prepared a new assessment that reached the opposite conclusion, ostensibly to implicate President-elect Donald Trump and to undermine — and perhaps remove — his new administration.
Asked by Townhall reporter Katie Pavlich whether “any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior,” Gabbard responded: “We have referred and will continue to refer all of these document to the Department of Justice and the FBI uh to investigate the criminal implications of this.”
She added: “The evidence that we have found and that we have release directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.”
Neither Gabbard nor White House press secretary Karolinen Leavitt addressed the constitutional issues around such an investigation, however. When a reported asked about last year’s Supreme Court ruling, holding that presidents could not be prosecuted for actions taken under their constitutional authority, Leavitt said that that decision would be left to the Department of Justice.
Gabbard also deflected when asked about her previous description of Obama’s behavior as “treasonous,” saying that she was not an attorney and that she would defer to the DOJ’s expertise on the subject.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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