Bombshell Report Debunks 2016 Russia Narratives, Trump vs. Dems on DOJ Nominees: AM Update 7/24

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Good morning, everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly.

It's Thursday, July 24th, 2025, and this is your AM update.

The implications of this are far-reaching and have to do with the integrity of our Democratic Republic.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassifying more documents supporting her claim that President Obama and key staffers knowingly relied on bad intel to create the Russia interference narrative.

And it's very clear that the Democrats are taking their sweet time in all these appointments.

And it really is cramping the ability of President Trump to run the government.

From Senate slowwalking to judicial curveballs, how the left is working to derail President Trump's nominees.

All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM update.

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The Russiagate document dump continues.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday declassifying a previously unreleased September 2020 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report.

Director Gabbard saying this report further outlines a plot by President Obama and other high-ranking officials in his administration to manufacture the 2016 Russia interference narrative with intelligence they knew to be unreliable, all in order to undermine the incoming Trump administration.

The newly released report analyzing the trade craft used to compile a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, at the direction of President Obama.

It concluded:

We also assess Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

This newly released 2020 intelligence report finding many serious flaws with the intelligence and methods used to craft that ICA.

Launched by then-chairman of the committee, Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, it was finished only after Democrats regained the majority in 2019 and under the new chairman, Democrat Adam Schiff.

Surprisingly, it never saw the light of day until now.

On Wednesday, Director Gabbard presenting to reporters some of what that buried report determined.

Then CIA Director Brennan and the intelligence community mischaracterized intelligence and relied on dubious substandard sources to create a contrived false narrative that Putin developed a quote-unquote clear preference for Trump.

Brennan and the IC misled lawmakers by referencing the debunked steel dossier to assess quote-unquote Russia's plans and intentions, falsely suggesting that this dossier had intelligence value when he knew that it was discredited.

The intelligence community excluded significant intelligence and ignored or selectively quoted reliable intelligence that contradicted the intelligence community assessment's key findings on Putin's alleged support for Trump.

The implications of this are far-reaching and have to do with the integrity of our democratic republic.

It has to do with an outgoing president taking action to manufacture intelligence to undermine and usurp the will of the American people in that election and launch what would be a years-long coup against the incoming President of the United States, Donald Trump.

This latest disclosure providing even more color to the bombshell drop late last week, which placed President Obama directly at the center of the plot to subvert the Trump administration.

In December 2016, the Intel community was prepared to conclude that Russia did not use cyber attacks on election infrastructure, and any criminal activity from Russian-affiliated criminal actors, quote, failed to reach the scale and sophistication necessary to change election outcomes.

There had been several other conclusions drawn by Intel analysts that Russia's interference in the 2016 election mirrored the minor interference it had done in many elections prior.

Director Gabbard providing a new possible explanation for why that presidential daily brief was pulled before it went to President Obama.

The presidential daily brief, drafted on December 8th of 2016, stated that no Russian or criminal actors impacted vote counts.

This document was pulled just hours before it was to be published due to quote-unquote new guidance.

If it had been published, it would have been briefed to both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.

Instead, the following day, President Obama ordered the creation of a new assessment with a predetermined narrative that contradicted what career intel analysts believed.

The 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, locked away until now, finding, quote, production of the ICA was subject to unusual directives from the president and senior political appointees, and particularly the director of the CIA, John Brennan.

The draft was not properly coordinated with CIA or the intelligence community, ensuring it would be published without significant challenges to its conclusions.

Perhaps the most important revelation from the declassified intelligence report, finding the ICA's key judgment that Putin developed a quote clear preference for candidate Trump and aspired to help him win, did not meet tradecraft standards and was based on quote information that was unclear, of uncertain origin, potentially biased, or implausible.

Again, they hid this report finding all of this from us for five years.

According to the buried and newly released report, the only classified information cited to conclude President Putin, quote, aspired to help Mr.

Trump's chances of victory was based on, get this, quote, one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from a single human report.

In fact, two of the five CIA analysts handpicked by John Brennan told him, quote, we don't have direct information that Putin wanted to get Trump elected.

He overruled them.

When analysts then objected to the discredited steel dossier being used to support this flimsy premise, Brennan reportedly said, yes, but doesn't it ring true?

The just-released 2020 House Intelligence Committee's report also flagging that the Russians had much more damaging information on Secretary Clinton than what was leaked in the DNC email hack, but did not release it.

even as the polling tightened in the final weeks of the 2016 election, directly undermining the key judgment that Mr.

Putin, quote, aspired to help Trump.

If that were true, why didn't he release the damaging information on Secretary Clinton?

Director Gabbard laying out some of the dirt the Russians allegedly had on the Secretary.

The report goes into great detail about the information that Russia and Putin had on Hillary Clinton, which included possible criminal acts like secret meetings with multiple named U.S.

religious organizations in which State Department officials offered, in exchange for supporting supporting Secretary Clinton's campaign for the presidency, significant increases in financing from the State Department.

They also had documents that showed the patronage of the State Department to State Department employees who would go and support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

There were high-level DNC emails that detailed evidence of Hillary's, quote, psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness, and that then Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.

Another damning piece of information the Russians held back was an email from the head of the DNC claiming that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose FBI was investigating the Hillary email scandal, was working to control James Comey and keeping a named member of the Clinton campaign informed on what the FBI was doing in that email investigation.

MK Media star After Party host Emily Jashinsky from the new media seat in the White House pressroom asking Director Gabbard if these allegations rise to criminality.

Do you believe that any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior?

We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this.

For even the evidence?

Correct.

The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.

There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.

On Wednesday evening, the DOJ announcing the creation of a strike force to, quote, assess the evidence publicized by DNI Gabbard and investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from those disclosures.

Coming up, stalling in Washington, maneuvering in the courts, a deep dive into the battle to keep President Trump's prosecutors out of power.

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President Trump's nominees for key U.S.

attorney positions facing resistance on multiple fronts from what the DOJ calls judicial overreach and Senate stonewalling.

Interim U.S.

Attorney General for the District of New Jersey Alina Haba set to reach the end of her 120-day term later this week.

When there is no Senate confirmed nominee, district judges are allowed to appoint a replacement.

The Trump administration lobbying the judges to reappoint Haba to the position, making her role permanent as her nomination is currently stalled out in the Senate.

However, the judges instead taking the unusual, rare step of appointing her deputy, Desiree Lee Grace, to take the top spot once Haba's term expires.

The DOJ firing back, removing Grace from her post, saying the DOJ does not tolerate rogue judges.

We spoke to senior counsel at the Article III project, Will Chamberlain, who says the judge's decision smacks of political motivation.

First off, it's abnormal for judges to ever use this statute.

It's very, very rare.

We don't usually, usually because the Senate goes ahead and acts on U.S.

attorney appointments in an expeditious manner.

But the Senate, even with a Democrat minority, is being extremely obstructionist with all of President Trump's appointees, including his U.S.

Attorney appointees.

As a result, the vacancy statutes and the interim people are becoming much more important.

So that's why this is happening.

Now,

there's a lot of questions here about what was the district court doing and were these judges motivated by improper political factors?

Because Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader in the House, actually posted that these judges should go against Alina Haba.

And these judges have an ethical obligation not to engage in any sort of political conduct conduct whatsoever or to let political motivations influence their decision making.

So, if these Democrat-appointed judges went along with a Democrat rep to thwart President Trump's control of his own executive branch, that would be a serious problem.

Chamberlain says what happens next is unclear, but the Trump administration has several options for restoring Haba to her position.

It's not clear exactly what's going to happen next, but most likely Haba is going to be reappointed under, in one of two ways.

First, she could be appointed as the first assistant U.S.

attorney in the district of New Jersey.

And under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, that would make her the acting U.S.

attorney.

So that's one way to accomplish this.

This was actually done already in the Northern District of New York with the U.S.

Attorney there.

And then the second way is theoretically under this statute, they could just reappoint Alina Haba.

Like there's, it's not clear that the statute stops Pamboni from continually making, remaking these temporary appointments and appointing the same person over again.

Chamberlain believes in a showdown between the New Jersey District Court and the Trump administration, the Trump administration will win.

The president has the right to control who's in his executive branch, fundamentally.

Attempting to appoint a U.S.

attorney against the wishes of the Department of Justice is going rogue.

I mean, how are judges supposed to be able to appoint their own prosecutor?

It's Article 3 controlling Article 2.

I think that the judges can't win this battle, given the way that the Supreme Court is looking at a lot of the removal statutes and

a lot of these independent agencies.

The Supreme Court has already made clear that they think the president has the ability to hire, for to fire, for example, the head of the Office of Special Counsel.

And it seems very likely that Humphrey's executor, which is the case that created these sort of independent agencies that limited presidential removal powers, that those are all going to go.

So I suspect that President Trump is going to win this battle, just like he's been winning almost all of his other court battles that give him the right to control the functioning of his own executive branch.

U.S.

Senators from New Jersey, Corey Booker and Andy Kim, Kim, both Democrats, condemning the firing.

The chief judge, Renee Marie Blum, a George W.

Bush appointee, responding through an aide, quote, the court will have no comment.

A second Trump nominee, U.S.

Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Acelle, covering L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties, stalled out due to lack of support from the Democrat senators from California, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla.

Chamberlain explains why these senators do not want Asaley to remain in his position.

Asali is doing a remarkably good job.

He and his office have been very clever in terms of dealing with the recalcitrants from local authorities in Los Angeles who have been trying to fight President Trump's immigration enforcement efforts.

And one of the big things he did was he found a way to work around the Sanctuary City policies of Los Angeles by instead of having ICE file detainer requests for criminal aliens, he instead just indicted them for being in the country.

And by indicting them, local authorities are allowed to disregard an ICE retainer, but they're not allowed to disregard a federal judicial warrant.

So he's found a way to route around the LA Sanctuary City policies.

One may wonder why a Republican nominee would need the approval of two rival Democrat senators, Chamberlain explains.

For U.S.

attorneys and district court and appellate judges in their states, traditionally the Senate has a history of what's called a blue slip.

This means that a judge or a U.S.

attorney won't be appointed within the jurisdiction of that senator unless the senator gives his approval.

So it's a way for any individual state senator to have a veto over the appointments in their own state.

It kind of increases the power of individual senators, which makes sense as to why the senate would adopt this practice right there.

The senate as a way of aggravating, you know, increasing the power of its members individually,

essentially defers to them on the appointments that happen in their own state.

Now,

this is just a rule and a custom.

It's not an absolute requirement, but the Senate tries to adhere to it as much as possible.

That said, here, I think that there's no reason to expect that Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla would ever sign off on anybody that President Trump would consider acceptable in these offices.

So my hope is that the Senate ignores the blue slip requirement when it comes to California.

Isaley's term is set to expire at the end of the month.

It's not yet clear whether judges in his district will attempt to follow suit with New Jersey judges in appointing their own preferred U.S.

attorney.

Chamberlain says the Senate has bypassed blue slip approval in the past, but more importantly, Republicans in the Senate need to move through nominations faster, even if it means canceling or shortening the August recess.

It's not just U.S.

attorneys.

It's throughout the government.

There are presidential appointees that are having to wait very, very patiently in line.

It's very clear that the Democrats are taking their sweet time and forcing the maximum amount of debate on all these appointments.

And it really is cramping the ability of President Trump to run the government.

The Senate needs to stay.

If Democrats are going to act like this, then John Thune shouldn't just keep every senator in Washington, D.C.

He should keep them there and have them be voting day and night weekends.

Like they should all, you know, if the Democrats want this to be the way it works, then we should, the Senate needs to just stay in D.C.

I apologize for those who have vacations that they're going to miss, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Majority Leader Thune reportedly warning senators earlier this week to be ready to possibly work through the first week of August.

And that'll do it for your AM update.

I'm Megan Kelly.

Join me back here for the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph channel 111 at Noon East, on youtube.com Megan Kelly, and on all podcast platforms.

KPMG makes the difference by creating value, like developing strategic insights that help drive MA success and embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage, or deploying tech-enabled audits to deliver more accurate and transparent outcomes.

Brighter insights, bolder solutions, better outcomes.

It's how KPMG makes the difference every day.

KPMG, make the difference.