Gabbard Says She Made Criminal Referrals to DOJ of Obama-Era Officials Over 2016 Election Documents

“This is an issue that is so serious it should concern every single American because it has to do with the integrity of our democratic republic,” she said.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears during a Senate Committee on Intelligence Hearing in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a July 20 interview that she has made criminal referrals to the FBI and the Department of Justice based on findings from declassified documents released last week related to an investigation into alleged Russian collusion involving President Donald Trump.

“The implications of this are frankly nothing short of historic,” Gabbard told Fox News.

“Over 100 documents that we released on Friday really detail and provide evidence of how this treasonous conspiracy was directed by President [Barack] Obama just weeks before he was due to leave office after President Trump had already gotten elected. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an issue that is so serious it should concern every single American because it has to do with the integrity of our democratic republic.”

In the interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, the nation’s top intelligence official said her office is “referring all of the documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI for ... criminal referral,” referring to Obama administration officials who were involved in an intelligence assessment at the time regarding alleged Russian election interference in 2016.

A memo released by her office on July 18 cites officials including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan.

“The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government,” Gabbard said in a statement. “Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.”

Earlier in July, Brennan told NBC News that an investigation into him and the others over documents related to the FBI’s controversial Crossfire Hurricane investigation is “a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process.”

He was responding to anonymously sourced reports that were published earlier in July indicating that he and Comey were being investigated. The Epoch Times has contacted Comey and Clapper for comment on the latest disclosure.

In March, Trump signed a memo ordering the declassification of “all files” in connection with Crossfire Hurricane, which was launched in July 2016 by the Obama-era FBI to investigate alleged Russian interference and collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, allowing the bureau to conduct surveillance that primarily targeted Trump’s presidential campaign.

In the early stages of Trump’s first administration, there were rampant accusations, often carried through legacy media outlets and citing anonymous sources, that the president had colluded with the Russian government to defeat the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, in that election. Trump has consistently denied the charges, calling them part of a longstanding “witch hunt” against him to first prevent and then obstruct his presidency.

In May 2017, under the first Trump administration, former FBI Director Robert Mueller took over the investigation as special counsel. In 2019, Mueller released a report concluding that there was no evidence to show that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. The report did conclude that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 campaign in a “sweeping and systematic fashion.”

Meanwhile, in the latest batch of declassified documents released by Gabbard’s office, communications show that the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) had “low confidence” in the charge that Russia was behind the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee servers and the subsequent release of thousands of emails.

A Sept. 12, 2016, intelligence community assessment that was declassified on July 17 stated that the “FBI and NSA ... have low confidence in the attribution of the data leaks to Russia.”

“They agree that the disclosures appear consistent with what we might expect from Russian influence activities but note that we lack sufficient technical details to correlate the information posted online to Russian state-sponsored actors,” the assessment stated.

A memo prepared for Obama, dated two days after the assessment, blames Russia for the hack and leak, and does not mention the dissent by the FBI and NSA, according to the newly released documents.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the date in which Gabbard’s office released the July 18 memo. The Epoch Times regrets the error.