Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a 2016 email that she says proves the infamous Russia collusion narrative was manufactured by top Obama-era officials. The email, sent by then-DNI James Clapper, reveals that intelligence agencies were told they might have to “compromise” on their “normal modalities” to meet a politically driven deadline for the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about alleged Russian interference.

Gabbard made the revelation Wednesday on X, posting excerpts of the newly declassified top-secret exchange. She said the messages confirm what she has long argued — that the so-called Russia Hoax wasn’t the product of independent, objective intelligence gathering, but a coordinated political operation. “The decision to compromise standards and violate protocols in the creation of the 2017 manufactured intelligence assessment was deliberate and came from the very top,” Gabbard said.

The email chain begins on December 22, 2016, when then-NSA Director Mike Rogers wrote to Clapper, then-FBI Director James Comey, and then-CIA Director John Brennan. Rogers raised serious concerns that his agency lacked “sufficient access” to certain intelligence and warned that NSA personnel were not “fully comfortable” stating they had enough time to be certain in their conclusions. In other words, the NSA wasn’t confident in the sweeping claims that were being prepared for release.

Clapper’s response was telling. While promising “as much mutual transparency as possible,” he made it clear that “more time is not negotiable.” The report had to be finished quickly, and if that meant bending the usual rules, so be it. “We may have to compromise on our ‘normal modalities,’” he wrote, adding, “This is one project that has to be a team sport.”

For Gabbard, that phrase — “team sport” — captures the heart of the problem. She argues that rather than letting the evidence speak for itself, intelligence leaders decided in advance what conclusion they wanted and pressured everyone to fall in line. “The leading figures in the Russia Hoax have spent years deceiving the American public by presenting their manufactured and politicized assessments as credible intelligence,” she said.

The January 2017 ICA became the foundation for years of media coverage and political attacks on President Trump, suggesting Vladimir Putin personally ordered efforts to help Trump win in 2016. But after a 22-month investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the election.

This latest disclosure follows another bombshell Gabbard dropped in July, when she declassified a House Intelligence oversight majority staff report under Trump’s directive. That report accused the Obama administration of knowingly producing a false intelligence assessment and promoting “the lie” that Russia’s government aided Trump.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who has since become a prominent voice in Trump’s administration, says these revelations should end any lingering credibility the Russia Hoax has in public discourse. For her, the evidence is now overwhelming — the narrative was politically engineered, and the people who pushed it knew the standards were being broken in real time.

By releasing these records, Gabbard says she’s fulfilling Trump’s promise to expose the truth about one of the most politically damaging and divisive episodes in recent history. And with each new document, the picture she paints becomes clearer: the Russia collusion story was not just wrong, but willfully constructed at the highest levels of government.