A bombshell report revealed that National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard faced a wave of resistance from CIA officials when she released her searing Russiagate report, with press accounts confirming that the CIA had tried to cover up aspects of the report that DNI Gabbard refused to redact.
For background, on August 6, 2025, The Washington Post reported that National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard had been hit with major interference from the CIA when she released a searing 46-page report revealing the glaring issues with the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), the centerpiece of the Russiagate scandal, which DNI Gabbard described as a “treasonous conspiracy” upon the release of her report.
According to the Post, CIA officials expressed extreme concern with DNI Gabbard’s decision to release a “minimally redacted” version of her report. An anonymous source said that the agency had “put forward their proposed redactions and edits to the document,” but that Gabbard “has greater declassification authority than all other intelligence elements and is not required to get their approval prior to release.”
Furthermore, the same anonymous source confirmed that the president had approved DNI Gabbard’s version of the report “with minimal redactions and no edits.” In addition, A CIA spokesperson clarified that CIA Director John Ratcliffe “strongly” supported the release of the document without the redactions proposed by his agency.
Additionally, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) reportedly pushed back against the minimal redactions in the report, calling its release “desperate and irresponsible.” Sen. Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, went on to say that the “partisan” report “puts at risk some of the most sensitive sources and methods our Intelligence Community uses to spy on Russia and keep Americans safe.”
Continuing, Sen. Warner said that by bypassing the CIA’s proposed redactions to her report, DNI Gabbard was “sending a chilling message to our allies and assets around the world: the United States can no longer be trusted to protect the intelligence you share with us.” In a similar vein, former White House official Larry Pfeiffer said of the document, “Sources and methods could be easily inferred in almost every instance. … I don’t know if I’ve seen a document of that sensitivity so lightly redacted.”
Explaining the release of the report on social media on July 23, 2025, DNI Gabbard wrote, “Per President @realDonaldTrump‘s directive, I have declassified a @HouseIntel oversight majority staff report that exposes how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false.”
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Continuing, the DNI said that the Intelligence Community Assessment was focused on “promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election,” going on to add that the Obama administration officials behind the assessment “conspired to subvert the will of the American people, working with their partners in the media to promote the lie, in order to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, essentially enacting a years-long coup against him.”
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