Megyn Kelly and Matt Taibbi look at the documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that President Trump says implicate President Obama in “treason.” “I understand the confusion about this. I don’t think the report, as it was released, did a particularly good job explaining what exactly the significance of these documents was. But they were very significant,” Taibbi said. “On December 9th, 2016, when Barack Obama convened this meeting, ordered a new intelligence assessment, and then immediately that same night, there were leaks from the administration telling people that there had been interference by Russia, specifically to help Donald Trump,” he explained. “On December 9th, there is an order from the Director of National Intelligence’s office giving out directions on how to put together the new intelligence community assessment per the president’s request.” “But as they’re giving out the assignment-the homework is already published in The New York Times and The Washington Post. In other words, they hadn’t even started group work on this assessment and they were already telling everybody in the media what the conclusion was.” “So the entire work period of this had to be a sham, essentially. They pre-concluded what was going to be in the assessment and started leaking in advance,” Taibbi said. “There’s no documentary evidence of a new discovery between that December 9th meeting and the start of the leaks to the media. The evidence, as we’ve now seen, doesn’t support the ‘Putin wanted Trump’ claim as a key judgment. The CIA inserted that anyway, overriding dissenting views from within the community.” “And remember, ‘key judgment’ has a very specific meaning in intelligence reports. It’s the top-line, headline conclusion. When analysts say, ‘We lack direct evidence,’ and leadership puts it in anyway, it undermines the credibility of the whole assessment.”

MEGYN KELLY: Your postings on Racket News over the past few days have really helped me tremendously. And so the audience knows-as I always do-I’ve read all of Andy McCarthy’s postings as well. I’ve read your detractors in the mainstream media. And I have to say, you’ve totally convinced me. You are, as always, an honest broker. But you’ve totally convinced me. I think they’re in deep sh-t, and it’s amazing. But my biggest takeaway is: how did Trump 1.0 not find these documents that Tulsi just revealed? Because they really show the story. Let’s-we’re just gonna walk the audience through it like third graders, because it’s extremely dense, and it’s taken me time and time again, and reading all the materials, to get it. So the deal was-let’s start with December of 2016. Barack Obama is president, but Trump has won and is going to be taking over in January. They planned-the intel officials under Barack Obama planned-a December 9, 2016 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), which is always from the intel community for the president, letting him know what’s happening in the world. They planned a PDB that would say: “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the U.S. presidential election outcome.” And they also planned to say: “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.” Here’s the bottom line. What people need to know is Obama’s intel community was about to give Obama a PDB that totally dismissed, downplayed, poo-pooed-choose your word-the notion that Russia had meaningfully interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Matt has gone well beyond the language that just speaks to manipulation of election infrastructure. He pointed out that if you look at what the intel community had been saying, it went well beyond dismissing, they’re not attacking our election infrastructure. They had doubts up and down the board about whether Russia had done anything more in ’16 than it had ever done-which was just kind of attempts to be a menace, sow a little bit of chaos. And the intel communications that are released now by Tulsi show that. So while Andy and others are zeroing in on the notion that-before they sat with Obama-they were gonna tell him no attempts to hack our election infrastructure, and Andy will later argue them later coming out and saying but lots of attempts to interfere in the election in general and totally to help Donald Trump-he’s saying that’s apples to oranges. Jim Himes-you point out at Racket News-is saying that’s apples to oranges. There’s no gotcha in Tulsi’s big reveals about what was about to happen next, because nothing that happened next contradicted that they didn’t try to hack our election databases. Okay, so hopefully the audience is with me so far. What Tulsi revealed was that the intel community was about to issue that statement to President Obama, saying they didn’t try to hack our election infrastructure and there’s no evidence they intended to alter the results this way. And what happened was James Comey’s FBI said, We’re out. We’re not joining that. We don’t agree with that, and we’re going to issue our own briefing later. And as a result of the FBI saying that-and saying that it was going to draft a dissent-an official from Clapper’s office (Clapper, again, at the time he was DNI, Director of National Intelligence)-said, We’re axing the PDB. Because the DNI-like Tulsi now does the PDB for Trump-whoever runs the intelligence apparatus does it. And that was Clapper under Obama. So he said, Oh, FBI’s out? Okay, we’re killing it. We’re killing the PDB for the time being. And at that point, a meeting was held-including all of Obama’s top people, all of them-and they had a big meeting on this. And the next day things changed dramatically on the Russia narrative, and changed in a way that would support the Russia, Russia, Russia allegations that would go on to undermine the entire first term of Donald J. Trump. And Matt is going to help us lay out this whole story. And Matt contends-and he’s convinced me too-it was not a matter of changing it from apples to oranges. It was: they had been saying There’s no apples, there’s no apples, there’s no apples. And as a result of this meeting, they changed it to say, Apples abound. We’re in an orchard. They’re everywhere. We see nothing but apples. So it’s really not an apples-to-oranges situation… Okay Matt, thank you for being patient through my thumbnail sketch. What’s the first thing you want to say about this story? MATT TAIBBI: Well, first of all, I think you did a great job walking people through everything. I understand the confusion about this. I don’t think the report, as it was released, did a particularly good job explaining what exactly the significance of these documents was. But they were very significant. If you remember before the election, there was a story in The New York Times on October 31st saying, FBI sees no link between Russia and Trump and the election. This was what officials were telling people in the media. There were a few fringe attempts to kind of work the Steele Dossier material-this full-on Trump–Russia conspiracy narrative-into the media. But for the most part, they didn’t get there. After the election, it was the same thing until this moment on December 9th, 2016, when Barack Obama convened this meeting, ordered a new intelligence assessment, and then immediately that same night, there were leaks from the administration telling people that there had been interference by Russia, specifically to help Donald Trump. MEGYN KELLY: Now, let me stop you right there. So they call this meeting with all the Obama top people, and no revised PDB has been issued yet, no revised Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) has happened yet. The last thing that happened in the intel community was: We’re gonna tell them that there really was no significant Russian interference-at least insofar as election apparatus goes. And the FBI said, We’re out. We’re gonna issue our own. Then Clapper said, Alright, let’s just pause everything. Then everybody gets together. Right after that-before any revised intel happened, before anything happened-they began leaking to the media (Washington Post, New York Times, CNN) saying something diametrically opposed: Russia interfered. And that, to you-you describe that as the smoking gun that shows there had been a decision to shift the entire messaging around this in a way they thought would undermine Trump. Because why, if that were not the case, wouldn’t they have just waited until they had the new and newly ordered intel assessment and then figured out what was what? MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and that’s really the striking set of documents. You can see on December 9th, there is an order from the Director of National Intelligence’s office giving out directions on how to put together the new intelligence community assessment per the president’s request. But as they’re giving out the assignment-the homework is already published in The New York Times and The Washington Post. In other words, they hadn’t even started group work on this assessment and they were already telling everybody in the media what the conclusion was. So the entire work period of this had to be a sham, essentially. They pre-concluded what was going to be in the assessment and started leaking in advance. MEGYN KELLY: And there’s no question-it appears that this was done at the direction of the President of the United States, then Barack Obama. They convened-it was all of his top emissaries. John Kerry, Victoria Nuland, John Brennan, Ben Rhodes, Andy McCabe. You pointed out Richard Leggett from NSA-all of these top emissaries for Obama. I mean, these are his top, top, top officials when it comes to national security. They get together, and they receive a group email the next day from Clapper’s office (he was DNI again) headed: POTUS tasking on Russia election meddling, asking them to produce an assessment per the president’s request. Quoting there: This intelligence community is prepared to produce an assessment per the president’s request that pulls together the information we have on the tools Moscow used and the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, and an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities and how Moscow’s approach has changed over time, going back to 2008 and 2012 as reference points. You write in assessing this: Just before Obama was about to receive a briefing that contained no reference to significant Russian interference, that briefing was called off. A high-level meeting of White House security officials was convened, after which Obama himself tasked them with a new assessment that would lean toward a more aggressive conclusion. The critical job of divining Russia’s motives would be given to the CIA and Brennan. And I think you’re suggesting here-there’s a reason that, even though it was technically all under Clapper (DNI), it was given to the CIA and Brennan, who all along had been very pro-Russia, Russia, Russia. And they knew full well he would go along to get along. MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and this coincides with other information we already had. The CIA Director John Ratcliffe a few weeks ago released the note talking about how Brennan overrode the objections of his Deputy Director of Analysis and two of his handpicked Russia experts to include Steele Dossier material in this assessment. I also did a story last year with Michael Shellenberger about how they suppressed dissent in the ICA that said that Russia was actually hesitant about Trump-they considered him mercurial and unreliable, and saw Hillary Clinton as continuity and manageable. They weren’t so concerned about her being president. All of this was suppressed. And Brennan was the person who was most aggressive in pushing the other line. So the fact that he was in charge of divining Russia’s motives-and remember, motive is the key thing here-it’s not just that Russia interfered, it’s that Russia interfered specifically to help Donald Trump. Those are two very different things. MEGYN KELLY: That’s it. Yeah. And that dovetails with the report that’s in The Federalist today by Molly Hemingway: Top Intelligence Officials Contradicted the CIA’s Brennan, Saying There Is No Intelligence to Support This Key Russian Hoax Claim. MATT TAIBBI: Right, and that’s the distinction that got blurred intentionally. What these documents show is that the intelligence community had long assessed that Russia’s aim was disruption-sowing chaos, undermining faith in democracy, weakening Clinton, yes-but not necessarily elevating Trump. Those are two very different assessments. But what happened after that December meeting is that the narrative shifted to say not only was Russia meddling, but they were doing it to help Trump, and that’s what turned it from a nuisance cyber issue into this massive counterintelligence scandal. That’s the foundation of the whole Trump collusion framework that dominated the next several years. MEGYN KELLY: And you’re saying that shift wasn’t based on new intelligence-it was based on pressure or pre-decided narrative change? MATT TAIBBI: Exactly. There’s no documentary evidence of a new discovery between that December 9th meeting and the start of the leaks to the media. The evidence, as we’ve now seen, doesn’t support the “Putin wanted Trump” claim as a key judgment. The CIA inserted that anyway, overriding dissenting views from within the community. And remember, key judgment has a very specific meaning in intelligence reports. It’s the top-line, headline conclusion. When analysts say, We lack direct evidence, and leadership puts it in anyway, it undermines the credibility of the whole assessment. MEGYN KELLY: So it becomes a political document at that point. MATT TAIBBI: Yes. And that politicization is precisely what these dissenting officials feared. They said including a conclusion without strong support would expose the community to exactly the kind of scrutiny and distrust that we’re now seeing. It wasn’t just a difference of interpretation-it was a conflict over the integrity of the intelligence process. MEGYN KELLY: And now, nearly a decade later, it’s clear that that moment-the one that happened before Trump ever took office-was the inflection point. The entire Russia narrative hinged on it. MATT TAIBBI: That’s right. And the release of these documents now makes it very hard to argue that this was just a misunderstanding or an honest difference of opinion. It looks more like a deliberate shaping of intelligence to fit a political outcome.

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