Lindsey Graham spars with NBC anchor over Tulsi Gabbard’s new Russiagate allegations

NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., if he was trying to “distract from the Epstein matter” during a heated exchange on Sunday over Trump administration allegations that former President Obama may have directed the U.S. intelligence agencies to implicate Trump in the Russiagate scandal. 

“You’re trying to sweep this stuff under the rug, and that’s not right!” Graham said. 

The argument erupted over the recent allegations lodged by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard claimed that declassified intelligence documents and a declassified 2020 House Intelligence Committee report revealed that in the waning days of the Obama administration, the then-president ordered U.S. intel agencies to alter their assessment of Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election specifically to help elect Donald Trump. 

The DNI director said that the intelligence agencies had originally concluded that Russia was not trying to help Trump get elected. Gabbard alleged that the agencies in fact had evidence that Putin expected Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. Gabbard alleged that this was tantamount to a “treasonous conspiracy.”

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“The treasonous conspiracy that we have now released to the American people — the complicity, the deflection, and the silence of politicians, of the mainstream media, and of those directly implicated into this speaks volumes,” Gabbard told Fox & Friends.

President Trump called for Obama and others to face “very severe consequences” for attempting to “rig the election.” Obama issued a rare official response to Trump, blasting the claims as “bizarre” and a “weak attempt at distraction.”

“The bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a 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,” he said. “These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio,” a spokesperson for Obama said. 

Welker claimed that she had spoken to Republican former CIA officer Susan Miller, who categorically denied Gabbard’s claims. The NBC anchor also pointed to a Trump-appointed special counsel, John H. Durham, who she claimed concluded in 2023 that there was no political interference in the Russiagate probe. She also played a clip of Graham himself saying in 2017 that the Russians interfered in the election to embarrass Hillary Clinton.

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Welker asked Graham if he was trying to distract the public from the Epstein scandal.  (NBC)

“There’s only one person in Washington that I know of that has any doubt about what Russia did in our election and is President Trump,” Graham said at the time.

The South Carolina senator replied that Gabbard’s report contained information that hadn’t previously been disclosed, and that the allegations warranted a special counsel investigation. 

“Well, what I am saying is that you left a lot out here… The Mueller investigation was crooked and rotten to the core. The Washington Post and the New York Times got a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Trump’s campaign’s relationship with Russia. It was all B.S.,” Graham said. 

Graham said he isn’t calling for former President Obama to be prosecuted for treason, but said that a special counsel should look into whether the former president ordered the intelligence report to be changed because he didn’t like the outcome. He lamented that so many lives got turned upside down by the Mueller investigation, and accused Welker of trying to sweep the administration’s findings “under the rug.”

“For years and months and days and weeks, people had their lives turned upside down, chasing the Mueller narrative that Trump was in bed with the Russians, that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russian… You’re trying to sweep this stuff under the rug and that’s not right,” he said. 

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Gabbard accused former President Obama of “treasonous conspiracy.” (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)