CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on her claims of a Barack Obama-led plot conspiracy against Donald Trump, questioning if Gabbard merely sought to get back in Trump’s good graces.
“What would you say to people who believe you’re only releasing these documents now to improve your standing with the president after he said that your intelligence assessments were wrong?” Collins asked.
Speculation emerged that Trump had lost faith in Gabbard after he publicly dismissed Gabbard’s assertion that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon. “I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters last month as the U.S. considered whether to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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It comes as the administration has tried to distract the country from its ongoing crisis over Trump’s links to the disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, focusing instead on Gabbard’s allegations that Obama engaged in a “seditious” and “treasonous” effort to undermine Trump.
Gabbard on Wednesday ignored Collins’ Trump-focused question, instead answering Collins’ first one on whether a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report affirming Russia’s 2016 election meddling had occurred. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt leapt in to offer some clarity—and accuse the media of sowing “distrust” among Trump’s cabinet.
“That only people who are suggesting that the director of national intelligence would release evidence to try to boost her standing with the president are the people in this room who constantly trying to so distrust and chaos amongst the president’s cabinet,” Leavitt said. “It is not working.”
“He has the utmost confidence in director Gabbard,” she added. “He always has, he continues to, and that is true of his entire cabinet, who is all working as one team to deliver on the promises this president made.”
She then briskly moved on to another reporter.
Trump expressed some of that same effusive praise on Tuesday, when he said she was focused on what has become his top priority: exposing Obama’s “irrefutable” attempt to “lead a coup” against him.
Obama blasted that characterization in a rare statement on Tuesday.
“The bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” the former president’s spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement. “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.”
