Impeachment of Trump in 2019 was rigged to 'manufacture a conspiracy,' Gabbard says

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

When Congress impeached Donald Trump during his first term in 2019, the narrative that set the impeachment process in motion was "false," Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed this week. 

Gabbard released documents earlier this week showing how an inspector general for the U.S. intel community managed to "manufacture a conspiracy" to achieve the political end of impeaching Trump with the goal of removing him from office. On Wednesday, she referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation and appeared on NewsNation to discuss the details of what she discovered. 

“The time is always right to expose the truth. We know that the deep state rot within the intelligence community has existed for a very long time, and it is very deep,” Gabbard said. The manipulated claims hinge on a whistleblower's allegation that, during a phone call, Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into opening an investigation into Joe Biden's family. According to the whistleblower, Trump threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine. 

However, the anonymous whistleblower never claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the phone call, a fact that Michael Atkinson, an inspector general for the intelligence community at the time, completely overlooked. Atkinson, Gabbard said, never even sought a transcript of the call to verify the whistleblower's claim, essentially rubber-stamping it and allowing impeachment proceedings to be kicked off. Moreover, Atkinson only talked to four people, most of whom were known opponents of Trump before he passed along the report to Congress and the Justice Department. Gabbard suggested Atkinson's conduct amounted to a dereliction of duty.

“The responsibility is with the inspector general to deem whether or not a complaint is credible and whether or not it is urgent,” Gabbard said, adding that he neglected that duty. Trump maintained that he did nothing wrong during the call with Zelensky, however the House impeached him in December 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted Trump in February 2020.

Below, watch a clip of Gabbard discussing the findings of her investigation.