Does Tulsi Gabbard Have Damning Obama Evidence? See for Yourself.

Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s stupendous evidence that former President Barack Obama masterminded the Trump-Russia investigation boils down to a single word choice.

Gabbard was pressed to explain her theory—which has been roundly condemned as a thinly veiled distraction from the Trump administration’s Epstein files scandal—during an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Tuesday.

“You said there was irrefutable evidence that Obama was the mastermind of this intelligence manipulation and the perpetuation of the Russia hoax. What is that irrefutable evidence for our viewers tonight?” asked Ingraham.

Gabbard, in turn, directed Fox’s audience to her office’s website, which hosts heavily redacted versions of her report.

“And those who go in and read this will see how President Obama directed that a National Security Council meeting be called to talk about Russia, that the report that came out of that meeting was filled with tasks that were delivered by James Clapper’s assistant to [FBI Director] John Brennan and to other elements of the intelligence community,” Gabbard said.

“And very specifically, they were tasked to create an intelligence assessment that detailed how Moscow tried to influence the election—not if, but how,” she said.

But that differentiation doesn’t mean very much within the larger context of the Russia investigation, which established—via a Republican-led House investigation as well as a bipartisan Senate investigation fronted by now–Secretary of State Marco Rubio—that Russia had worked to intervene in the 2016 election. So having a president inquire “how” that occurred, rather than “if” it occurred, makes sense.

In MAGA world, however, the difference is apparently treasonous. Several of Donald Trump’s allies have called for investigations as to whether the forty-fourth president committed “treason” by looking into Russian influence in the 2016 election.

Other efforts to reframe what Trump has deemed a “hoax” have also proven to be duds. Last week, a declassified report intended to add fuel to a debunked theory that Hillary Clinton cooked up the Trump-Russia connection actually revealed that a critical document to the plot was the likely invention of Russian spies, undermining the administration’s revisionary campaign.

Republican Utah state Senate President J. Stuart Adams used his power to change local law to help a family member facing charges of allegedly raping a 13-year-old.

Adams’s family member, an 18-year-old high school student, was arrested and looking at four first-degree felonies. Then Adams stepped in.

Before Adams, 18-year-olds who had sex with 13-year-olds in Utah were treated like the adults they legally were and could face first-degree felony charges of child rape. In Utah, anyone under the age of 14 cannot legally consent. Adams successfully changed the law to allow 18-year-olds charged with child rape to be essentially tried as minors if they were enrolled in high school at the time of their crime. Adams’s family member was in high school, and although the law was not made retroactive, the 18-year-old-still went from facing years in prison to accepting a plea deal for reduced charges and no jail time beyond the week already served after the initial arrest.

While Adams swears his family member’s charges had nothing to do with his pushing of the rule change, the prosecution, defense, and judge alike all acknowledged that it played a major role in changing the charges.

The victim’s family was devastated. “It was out of nowhere,” the middle schooler’s mother told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I felt like I was punched in the gut.”

“I feel like a law is the law, regardless of who you are, but that wasn’t what was going on here,” she continued. “I feel like [Adams’s relative] just got special treatment … and nobody was going to say anything about it.”

This piece has been updated to correct the explanation of the law and to remove potentially erroneous references to the genders of the suspect and victim, which are publicly unknown.

A number of FEMA employees were told via email Tuesday night that they would be reassigned to ICE.

Sources familiar with the matter say that those who received the email were probationary employees who had been on administrative leave for months after the Trump administration attempted to fire them, according to The American Prospect.

The email told FEMA employees that they would be reassigned to ICE “due to the mission requirements of the Department [of Homeland Security].” The DHS houses both ICE and FEMA.

The kicker: If the workers don’t accept the new position, they could be fired.

Showering ICE with resources has become a central feature of the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign. Congress has just awarded $170 billion toward immigration enforcement, with ICE getting an unprecedented $75 billion of that sum. Meanwhile, ICE agents are complaining about the unrealistic quotas placed on them by deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and wondering why they’re spending so much time “arresting gardeners.”

And FEMA, which provides crucial services to Americans experiencing natural disasters, is already in dire straits: While Texans were overwhelmed by flooding, the agency didn’t answer two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, reported The New York Times. As climate catastrophes become more and more common, the president wants to eliminate the agency meant to respond to them altogether.

The priorities of the Trump administration have never been clearer: Remove immigrants at all costs, disasters be damned.

Donald Trump claimed he’s been left out of the loop by his own administration regarding its handling of the Epstein case yet again.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday, the president said that the Justice Department had left him in the dark about the decision to transfer Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison after the convicted sex trafficker sat down for interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“Were you aware of, and did you personally approve the prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell that your Justice Department—” asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

“I didn’t know about it at all, no,” Trump answered. “I read about it just like you did.”

Trump further claimed that the transfer is “not an uncommon thing,” but legal analysts strongly disagree. Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN that the move was “so unusual” because Maxwell did not meet the DOJ’s typical standards for consideration as a “cooperating witness.”

Honig explained that a “cooperator” is a person who has been “thoroughly vetted, deemed to be credible, and somebody who DOJ has brought actual prosecutions based on their testimony.”

“She’s done none of those things,” Honig said. “So she’s already gotten a substantial benefit, yet without doing the things that you would ordinarily require of what I would consider a proper cooperating witness.”

Honig further underscored that it would take a “special exemption” from a higher authority to move a convicted sex offender from a maximum-security facility to a minimum-security “camp.”

“It certainly appears as if she’s being given some benefit for what she told Todd Blanche,” Honig told the network.

Maxwell has directly appealed to the president and the Supreme Court in pursuit of a pardon. A senior Trump administration official told CNN last week that Trump was not considering clemency for the convicted sex trafficker, though Trump emphasized to reporters just days prior that he was “allowed” to give her one.

Trump similarly purported last month to have no idea that his own administration was planning to meet with Maxwell, a woman whom he had met and interacted with several times over the last three decades, as she was his “bud” Jeffrey Epstein’s closest confidant.

Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2022, when she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in the pedophile network, helping Epstein abduct and abuse underage girls over the span of a decade.

DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, a.k.a. “Big Balls,” was jumped in Washington, D.C., earlier this week—and his former boss, Elon Musk, is using the attack to call for a federal takeover of the District.

The billionaire wrote that Coristine heroically stopped “a gang of about a dozen young men” from assaulting a woman in her car at night. He said that Coristine ran over to defend the woman and saved her in spite of being “severely beaten to the point of concussion.” Musk ended his retelling by calling for the federal government to take control of D.C. 

Trump used the attack on Big Balls to echo the same goal, calling for the federal takeover of D.C. and the mass criminalization of mostly working-class Black and Latino children. 

“Crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control. Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens.… The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “Washington, D.C., must be safe, clean, and beautiful for all Americans and, importantly, for the World to see. If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore. Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City.”

The Metropolitan Police Department’s report states that officers saw a group of around 10 young people surrounding and assaulting Coristine. He told police that he had pushed his “significant other” into the car as they were being surrounded. Two 15-year-old suspects were detained and charged with unarmed carjacking. 

Fearmongering is a common tactic for Trump and other conservatives, especially around events like these. But Washington, D.C.’s unique nonstate status has emboldened the president, as he has hinted at taking over the city countless times before. Everyone deserves to feel safe in the city they live in, but Big Balls getting jumped is not a valid excuse to start rounding up kids and revoking the little autonomy the city has.  

This article has been updated to more accurately reflect the police report about the attack.