CNN cut away from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as she outlined newly released documents about the origins of claims President Donald Trump made during Wednesday’s White House press briefing.
Gabbard released documents and a memo Friday detailing what she called a “years-long coup” against Trump after he defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, adding that she had referred the documents to the Justice Department for potential criminal activity. CNN covered Gabbard’s remarks for about three minutes before “CNN News Central” co-host Brianna Kielar and guest co-host Jim Sciutto cut away while Gabbard was speaking.
“As was reflected in the documents that we released on Friday. Multiple intelligence community assessments released in the months leading up to the November 2016 election concluded that Russia had neither the intent nor capability to impact the outcome of the U.S. election,” Gabbard said before Scuitto interrupted.
“We‘ve been listening there to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, continuing on what has now been a multi-day effort, not only with public statements like this, but release of documents to attempt to back up the quite extreme allegation that President Obama is guilty of treason and that he worked in some sort of conspiracy with Hillary Clinton, et cetera,” Sciutto said.
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“In the assessment by the intelligence community at the time that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and part of that assessment at the time was that the Kremlin had a preference in that election for Donald Trump,” Sciutto continued. “There’s a lot of conflation going on here and going beyond what the intelligence showed. I should note, having covered that election quite closely, that the assessment never said that Russia changed the outcome of the election. Access to voting systems, votes, et cetera. We’re joined now by CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, but also CNN’s Daniel Dale. Daniel, you’ve been doing a great job of quite meticulously fact-checking each of the claims here. Can you help us by fact-checking some of the things that the DNI Tulsi Gabbard, said just then?”
Later, CNN National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny claimed that Gabbard’s comments and the document release was “hardly information that we should be repeating.”
By contrast, Fox News did not interrupt Gabbard during its coverage of the briefing, covering her statement to the press briefing and questions she answered after she was introduced by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
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The dossier, created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, was repeatedly cited on CNN, MSNBC and other corporate media outlets to advance the unproven claims that Clinton lost the 2016 presidential race due to Russian interference in the election.
Special counsel John Durham released a report on May 15, 2023, on the origins of the FBI investigation of the allegations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia that found that the FBI “did not and could not corroborate” the claims from the now-discredited dossier, which was used to obtain warrants to monitor communications by Carter Page and other associates of Trump. FBI analyst Brian Auten testified in an October 2022 trial that the FBI offered Steele $1 million if he could corroborate the claims in the dossier, but Steele did not provide the corroboration.
Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee were fined by the Federal Election Commission in 2022 for their involvement in the since-discredited dossier, which was used to further allegations of collusion, CNN reported.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for former President Barack Obama, said in a statement released via X Tuesday. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
Senior intelligence officials disagreed with then-CIA Director John Brennan over key claims Brennan made about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, specifically about Russia seeking to aid Trump in defeating Clinton.
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