DOJ to Convene Grand Jury Over Alleged Obama-Era Effort to Promote Trump-Russia Collusion Narrative

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to empanel a federal grand jury to determine whether senior officials from the Obama administration coordinated a disinformation campaign alleging ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, according to a source familiar with the proceedings who spoke to National Review.

Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the DOJ on Monday to take action on a referral issued two weeks earlier by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The referral accuses former Obama officials of orchestrating what Gabbard described as a “treasonous” effort to spread the unfounded claim that Trump colluded with Russian operatives to sway the outcome of the 2016 election.
While no charges have yet been filed, the grand jury will reportedly focus on whether indictments should be brought against former senior intelligence officials, including ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and ex-FBI Director James Comey.

Previous documentation has suggested that former President Obama was aware of and supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign tactic of using the Steele dossier to discredit Trump. However, newly released information has shed more light on the extent of those efforts. In July, Gabbard declassified a previously unreleased House Intelligence Committee report originally drafted in 2017. According to her statement on X, the report “exposed how the Obama Administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment [ICA] that they knew was false, promoting the LIE that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government helped President Trump win the 2016 election.”

Gabbard further asserted that the House report concluded the ICA “contrived [the] narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn’t.”

Her referral coincided with the release of a Trump administration CIA report, which upheld the ICA’s assertion—with “high confidence”—that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to influence the 2016 election. However, that CIA assessment challenged the ICA’s finding that Putin had a “clear preference” for Trump and aimed to boost his electoral prospects.

“There must be indictments,” Gabbard stated. “Those responsible, no matter how powerful they are and were at that time, no matter who was involved in creating this treasonous conspiracy against the American people, they all must be held accountable.”

Meanwhile, Brennan and Clapper have denied claims that Obama-era intelligence leaders manipulated reports or engaged in a coordinated campaign to delegitimize Trump’s presidency. Former President Obama also weighed in, describing the allegations as “bizarre” and characterizing them as a “ridiculous and weak attempt at distraction.”

“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,” Obama’s office said in a statement. “These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”