Fox News anchor Bret Baier had a strong reaction after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard\u2019s claims regarding the Obama administration\u2014most notably her allegation that former President Barack Obama engaged in a \u201ctreasonous conspiracy\u201d against President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Baier offered more analysis on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sending criminal referrals to the Justice Department for the whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger President Trump\u2019s 2019 impeachment and for the former intelligence community inspector general who notified Congress of the allegations.<\/p>\n
Initially, Gabbard sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department days earlier and accused the Obama administration of trying to \u201csubvert President Trump\u2019s 2016 victory and presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n
The referrals follow the release of documents earlier this week by Gabbard, which revealed what was called a \u201ccoordinated effort\u201d by members of the intelligence community, including then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson, to \u201cmanufacture a conspiracy\u201d that served as the foundation for Trump\u2019s 2019 impeachment.<\/p>\n
Baier spoke about the massive developments against Obama and members of his administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I look forward to seeing that interview again, Bret. You know, one of the very interesting things here is the different way that Hillary Clinton was treated as opposed to President Trump. She received a defensive briefing. It seems that the highest bar was put in place in terms of any information that could be used against her. It also is revealed in this report that at one point in the process, they were looking at investigating her because they believed that she was sort of throwing all of this stuff about Russia out there, and this dossier out there, in order to cover up for the server investigation. So, at one point, they were looking into that closely; but then there\u2019s this huge steer towards Trump with, according to these documents, a much lower bar that is needed for the credibility of the information that they\u2019re going to corral and throw at him, correct?\u201d Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that\u2019s exactly right. Now, this is the Trump investigation and this is what they\u2019re putting out here. Separately, Chuck Grassley has put out these files on the Hillary Clinton email case \u2014 which are really eye-opening, as well \u2014 and a lot of it is redacted. But I talked about both of those things with Comey back in 2018. There was a major disparity,\u201d Baier responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd in the middle of this, you have the Page and Strzok, the two lovers at FBI, who are, they come out with these texts of how biased they are against President Trump; and they\u2019re in charge of the investigation, of the interview of Hillary Clinton, of the BleachBit phones, of the interview and scheduling for Michael Flynn \u2014 then NSA director. And you see how this all kind of comes in together in a way that is \u2014 in hindsight, as you look at the big picture \u2014 really troubling. I think \u2014 listen, we are one of the only outlets that\u2019s following this in-depth, kind of on the substance, as opposed to, again, a glancing blow; and I think it deserves that kind of coverage,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
An intelligence official told Fox News Digital that the language in the referral is broad, but that it\u2019s specifically directed at Atkinson and the whistleblower who reported concerns about President Trump\u2019s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n
The referrals follow the release of documents earlier this week by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, which revealed what was called a \u201ccoordinated effort\u201d by members of the intelligence community, including then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson, to \u201cmanufacture a conspiracy\u201d that served as the foundation for Trump\u2019s 2019 impeachment.<\/p>\n
The referral is specifically aimed at Atkinson and the whistleblower who raised concerns about President Trump\u2019s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to an intelligence official who spoke with Fox News.<\/p>\n
Transcripts of Atkinson\u2019s closed-door testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which were withheld from the House Judiciary Committee during the initial impeachment trial, are among the documents Gabbard made public earlier this week.<\/p>\n
In March, Rick Crawford, a Republican from Arkansas who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, led a vote to make the transcripts public.<\/p>\n
ODNI said the documents confirmed that Atkinson \u201cfailed to conduct basic due diligence and willfully exceeded his statutory jurisdiction to mischaracterize the president\u2019s phone call with Zelenskyy as an \u2018urgent concern\u2019 to Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atkinson, during his investigation, found that the whistleblower showed indications of \u201cpolitical bias\u201d and was \u201cin favor of a rival political candidate,\u201d while still deeming the complaint a matter of \u201curgent concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whistleblower complained to Atkinson in August 2019 about Trump\u2019s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July 2019 and urged him to look into the Biden family\u2019s activities and business dealings in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The president specifically recommended that Zelensky investigate former President Joe Biden\u2019s successful attempt to remove former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, as well as Hunter Biden\u2019s activities with the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.<\/p>\n
At the time of the call, Hunter Biden was secretly the subject of a federal investigation that started in 2018 due to questionable foreign transactions.<\/p>\n
Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board, receiving thousands of dollars a month. The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018You\u2019re not getting the billion.\u2019 \u2026 I looked at them and said, \u2018I\u2019m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you\u2019re not getting the money,\u2019\u201d Biden recalled telling then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Biden recounted the conversation during a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, son of a b\u2014-, he got fired,\u201d Biden said during the event. \u201cAnd they put in place someone who was solid at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fox News anchor Bret Baier had a strong reaction after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard\u2019s claims regarding the Obama administration\u2014most notably her allegation that former President Barack Obama engaged…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labortemedi3.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}