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OPINION

The Rotten Core of a Manufactured Scandal

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
AP Photo/Matt Freed

Did former President Barack Obama play a role in the fabrication of the Russia collusion narrative? According to National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard -- once a rising star within the Democratic Party and now a gadfly for political truth -- the answer is unequivocally yes. More than that, Gabbard suggests the Obama administration orchestrated a "treasonous conspiracy" in 2016, one that weaponized the intelligence community and buried exculpatory findings that contradicted their desired political outcome.

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Let us not pretend this charge is light. A "treasonous conspiracy" suggests not merely malfeasance but a betrayal of the public trust at the highest levels of government. If these allegations are accurate -- and the declassified documents and testimonies increasingly suggest they are -- then we are dealing with one of the most corrosive abuses of power in American history. And yet, predictably, the usual suspects in the Democratic Party and their allies in corporate media have denounced these revelations not with evidence but with noise.

Men like Sen. Adam Schiff, the architect and chief propagandist of the Russia hoax, have long enjoyed the luxury of consequence-free deception. Schiff assured the nation, repeatedly and confidently, that he had "direct evidence" of collusion between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. No such evidence ever materialized. None. Instead, what we received was a years-long investigation — one that disrupted a presidency, undermined international credibility, and cost American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars — only to conclude there was no collusion.        

The Mueller report confirmed it. The Durham investigation exposed the rot. Yet the architects of the lie remain untouched, their reputations defended by a press that has long abandoned its role as a watchdog in favor of a partisan priesthood. ;

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What Gabbard alleges, however, takes this abuse of power a step further. According to her review of intelligence findings -- now echoed by former National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe -- the original assessments from our intelligence community clearly stated that Russia's efforts had no material effect on the outcome of the 2016 election. In other words, while Russia may have engaged in cyber-meddling and online influence operations (as every major power does), it had no decisive impact on voting outcomes. That should have been the headline. Instead, it was buried.        

Why? Because the truth was inconvenient to power. Because the narrative of Russian interference served a political end: to delegitimize Trump's presidency before it even began. What followed was not a sober investigation into foreign threats but a coordinated disinformation campaign by our own intelligence apparatus at the urging of political elites. It was, as the late Justice Antonin Scalia might have argued, an affront not merely to the legal process but to the very idea of republican government.        

In Morrison v. Olson, Scalia famously dissented alone, warning against the creation of a fourth branch of government -- unaccountable bureaucracies with the power to influence political outcomes. "A government of laws, and not of men," he wrote, means that our rulers are bound by the law, just as the governed are. Yet here we are, in 2025, looking back at a moment when our rulers were the law -- when intelligence agencies were pressured into revising their own conclusions to align with political imperatives.        

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This is not a conspiracy theory. This is the documented history of the modern American state. It is what happens when ideology becomes the lens through which evidence is interpreted, and when political expediency outweighs constitutional restraint.        

And now, with Trump back in the White House, the fear among Democrats is palpable. Not because of what Trump might do in the future, but because of what he might uncover from the past. This is the nightmare scenario for the Left -- not a second Trump term but a reckoning with the truth. The emails, the memos, the redacted reports -- they may not remain buried for much longer.        

Gabbard is right to call it treasonous. Whether that charge meets the legal standard or not is almost beside the point. What matters is that Americans were lied to by their own government -- systematically, persistently, and with great sophistication. As Thomas Sowell has often warned, "It is hard to imagine a more ... dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."        

The question now is whether anyone will be held accountable. Or whether, once again, we will look the other way while the powerful write a different version of history -- one where the truth is not merely inconvenient but disposable.

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