Newly declassified documents from the Durham report suggest Hillary Clinton’s campaign approved the Russia-collusion narrative to distract from her email scandal. President Trump’s trade deadline arrives, hitting countries like India, Brazil, and Canada with steep new tariffs while South Korea secures a last-minute deal. A Daily Wire exclusive reveals that Massachusetts police are being trained to view the parental rights group Moms for Liberty as a &#8220;hate group,&#8221; based on SPLC designations.
It’s Friday, August 1, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
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<h2>Russiagate Points to Hillary Clinton</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-955381 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH1.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH1.jpg 1920w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH1-1536x864.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
Topline: Newly declassified documents from the Durham report, released by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Thursday, suggest the Obama-era FBI ignored intelligence that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign approved a plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia to distract from her email server scandal.
The declassified annex shows the Obama administration received intelligence in 2016 that Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to smear her rival Donald Trump by linking him to Russia. The goal was reportedly to derail the FBI’s investigation into her unauthorized use of a private email server. The plan allegedly involved Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, and the firm Fusion GPS hiring former British spy Christopher Steele to create the narrative.
According to the documents, high-ranking Obama officials were made aware of the Clinton plan. CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, DNI James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey on the matter in a White House meeting on August 3, 2016. The CIA later sent an investigative referral to the FBI about the &#8220;purported Clinton campaign plan.&#8221;
In a heavily redacted section, the annex reveals that the CIA prepared a written assessment in 2017 and &#8220;did not assess &#8230; the &#8230; memoranda &#8230; to be the product of Russian fabrications.&#8221; In other words, the agency found the intelligence regarding the Clinton plan to be credible. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that he has made criminal referrals to the Department of Justice. In a statement, Senator Grassley called the affair &#8220;one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.&#8221;
<h2>Trump’s Tariff Deadline Arrives</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-955379 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH2.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH2.jpg 1920w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH2-1536x864.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
Topline: The White House updated its tariff plan on Thursday evening, hours before President Trump’s deadline for new trade agreements was set to kick in.
The new <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/further-modifying-the-reciprocal-tariff-rates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plan</a> pushes the implementation of tariffs on most countries back a week from August 1 to August 7 to give Customs and Border Patrol officials time to adjust to the new levies leveled at dozens of countries. The new plan also reveals a host of tariff rates that are set to kick in.
India will now be hit with a 25% tariff, plus an additional secondary tariff for continuing to buy Russian oil. &#8220;I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,&#8221; Trump wrote on Truth Social. The move prompted Indian state refiners to pause all purchases of Russian oil.
Earlier this week, Brazil was hit with sanctions and a 50% tariff, the largest of all, due to its large trade deficit and what Trump calls the political persecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Trump&#8217;s new plan hits Brazil with a 10% so-called reciprocal tariff, which appears to be in addition to the 50% tariff that the president previously announced.
Canada, America’s second-largest trading partner, now faces a 35% tariff that took effect at midnight on August 1. The president linked the failure to secure a deal with Canada&#8217;s recent announcement that it would back a Palestinian state.
There were also several deals made as Trump&#8217;s August 1 deadline approached. The U.S. finalized a major agreement with South Korea, which includes a 15% tariff on Korean imports in exchange for a $350 billion investment in American businesses and the purchase of an additional $100 billion in natural gas. A deal was also reached with Pakistan.
Mexico was granted an extension as negotiations continue, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/29/us-china-trade-00481958">said</a> earlier this week that an August 12 extension for trade talks with China was likely.
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<h2>Massachusetts Police Trained That ‘Moms for Liberty’ Is a Hate Group</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-955377 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH3.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH3.jpg 1920w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH3-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH3-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH3-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MRN-8.1.25-Fri-SH3-1536x864.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
Topline: A Daily Wire exclusive reveals that police training materials in Massachusetts list the conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty as a &#8220;hate group,&#8221; citing the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center as a source.
Moms for Liberty obtained the training materials from the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee through a Freedom of Information request. The documents list the parental rights group in a section on hate groups alongside neo-Nazi organizations and &#8220;Antifa.&#8221; The training cites the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has labeled Moms for Liberty an &#8220;anti-government extremist&#8221; group, as its source.
&#8220;It&#8217;s crazy that we are in a time when Moms for Liberty is listed in this training &#8230; with neo-Nazi groups, with Antifa,&#8221; Tina Descovich, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, told Morning Wire. &#8220;Moms for Liberty is here to show up at school board meetings &#8230; Antifa is burning down whole cities. &#8230; These two are not equivalent.&#8221;
The training materials claim that Moms for Liberty uses &#8220;parents rights as a vehicle to attack public education and make schools less welcoming for minority and LGBTQ students.&#8221; The training links to biased PBS articles attacking the group, while simultaneously linking to an article that describes the violent extremist group &#8220;Antifa&#8221; as a &#8220;relatively small&#8221; threat. Descovich noted that despite the official training, local police officers often approach her members to quietly offer their support.
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Morning Brief: The Clinton Connection To Russiagate, Trump’s Tariff Deadline, Moms For Liberty Vs MA

2016 Election

Donald Trump

Free Trade

Hillary Clinton

India

Politics

Russia

Russiagate

Tariffs

FBI Director Kash Patel found a trove of classified documents related to the Trump-Russia probe buried inside &#8220;burn bags&#8221; in a secret room at FBI headquarters, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/patel-found-thousands-sensitive-trump-russia-probe-docs-inside-burn-bags-secret-room-fbi">reported</a> on Wednesday.
Among the thousands of documents discovered was the classified annex of special counsel John Durham&#8217;s final report on the Russian collusion conspiracy, according to multiple sources cited by Fox News. Durham&#8217;s classified annex reportedly contains the purported evidence against President Donald Trump that he reviewed. The burn bags found by Patel are used to destroy classified documents.
Sources told Fox News that the classified annex contains evidence from &#8220;credible foreign sources&#8221; indicating that the FBI might have played a role in spreading the Trump–Russia collusion conspiracy before it launched the Crossfire Hurricane probe.
&#8220;Ultimately, the release of the classified annex will lend more credibility to the assertion that there was a coordinated plan inside the U.S. government to help the Clinton campaign stir up controversy connecting Trump to Russia,&#8221; said one source who spoke to Fox News on condition of anonymity.
The Trump administration is in the process of declassifying Durham&#8217;s annex as Patel coordinates with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and acting National Security Agency Director William Hartman. The report comes shortly after Gabbard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/doj-receives-tusli-gabbards-criminal-referral-for-obama-russia-intel-controversy-report">released documents</a> indicating that the Obama administration knew it had no evidence to pin Trump on the bogus Russian collusion charges, but pushed the narrative forward anyway.
Gabbard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gabbard-obama-launched-years-long-coup-treasonous-conspiracy-against-american-people?author=Tim+Pearce&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Gabbard%3A+Obama+Launched+%E2%80%98Years-Long+Coup%2C%E2%80%99+%E2%80%98Treasonous+Conspiracy%E2%80%99+Against+American+People">said</a> that the evidence points to former President Barack Obama &#8220;leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment.&#8221; President Trump accused Obama of committing “criminal acts” over the Russiagate hoax, adding that the former president, along with other Democrats, should face &#8220;severe consequences.&#8221; Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-says-scotus-immunity-ruling-could-protect-obama-he-owes-me-big">said</a> earlier this week, however, that the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity last year would likely shield Obama from prosecution.
The FBI has opened <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-doj-puts-brennan-and-comey-under-investigation-for-russiagate-report">investigations</a> into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey over their role in the Trump-Russia probe.
Patel and his team reportedly found the documents in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) that was previously undisclosed in the FBI headquarters. The FBI director hinted at finding a secret room at the bureau&#8217;s headquarters during a June interview with podcast giant Joe Rogan, but he did not reveal what documents the room contained.
&#8220;Just think about this,&#8221; Patel said during the interview. &#8220;Me, as director of the FBI, the former &#8216;Russiagate guy,&#8217; when I first got to the bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hid access and just said, &#8216;No one&#8217;s ever gonna find this place.'&#8221;

Kash Patel

Kash Patel Finds Secret FBI Room Filled With Thousands Of Trump-Russia Docs In ‘Burn Bags’

Kash Patel Finds Secret FBI Room Filled With Thousands Of Trump-Russia Docs In 'Burn Bags'

Elections

John Brennan

John Durham

kash patel

Obama Administration

Russia Collusion Hoax

Trump Administration

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley revealed who he believes is most vulnerable to prosecution over the Russian collusion hoax aimed at destroying President Donald Trump: former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan.
Turley joined host Sandra Smith on &#8220;America Reports,&#8221; and she began by bringing up a conversation he&#8217;d had the day prior with former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) – a conversation that centered around the idea that some of those involved in pushing the Russia collusion narrative had lied under oath about it and what steps the court might take to address that.
&#8220;I want to go back to our conversation yesterday on Tulsi Gabbard. She showed up at the White House press briefing yesterday. She shook things up, citing this new declassified intel that shows the Obama administration was politicizing intelligence,&#8221; Smith began. &#8220;Jason Chaffetz joined you and went off on this on America Reports yesterday.&#8221;
Smith then cut to Chaffetz who had said the day before, &#8220;Anytime I&#8217;ve ever heard of somebody lying to a court, the court takes care of itself. There&#8217;s there are repercussions to that. So when the when the government lies to the FISA court, where is Chief Justice Roberts on this? Where is the court? How come the court is not going back? I&#8217;m not an attorney. Jonathan Turley&#8217;s gonna have to take this. Why isn&#8217;t the court demanding that there are repercussions for those people that they bogusly signed these warrants?&#8221;
&#8220;And then we ran out of time and the show was over, so can we get your response, sir?&#8221; Smith asked Turley. &#8220;Where is the court on this?&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Turley: Brennan may be most vulnerable to charges:
&#8220;He’s like a 30 point buck out in the open.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/qUPkW36gal">pic.twitter.com/qUPkW36gal</a>
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) <a href="https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/1948473577071583406?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Well, Jason has a very good point here, and he&#8217;s walked the walk. He&#8217;s been there in Congress and trying to get this information. And it does appear that a couple of these figures may have committed perjury,&#8221; Turley agreed.
&#8220;I think the most vulnerable may be Brennan, who&#8217;s like a 30-point buck now out in the open. I mean, this stuff goes directly to information that he gave to Congress. It seems to be in contradiction. And so there are real questions here,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;I mean, people talk about, well, you can&#8217;t charge Obama. That&#8217;s very likely the case. He&#8217;s probably protected. But these individuals, whether it&#8217;s Comey or Brennan, are not protected from perjury charges if the statute of limitations has not run. They are more likely to be called again to repeat prior testimony.&#8221;

US-POLITICS-HEARING-POLICE

’30-Point Buck Out In The Open’: Jonathan Turley Reveals Who’s Vulnerable To Russiagate Prosecution

'30-Point Buck Out In The Open': Jonathan Turley Reveals Who's Vulnerable To Russiagate Prosecution

Barack Obama

James Comey

Jonathan Turley

Media

President Trump personally inspects the Federal Reserve amid a pressure campaign on its chairman, as his administration secures major trade deals with Japan and Indonesia. New declassified documents suggest Russia possessed damaging information on Hillary Clinton in 2016 but chose not to release it. Columbia University agrees to a $200 million settlement with the federal government over antisemitism on campus, while Harvard continues its legal battle. 
It&#8217;s Friday, July 25, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today&#8217;s episode here:
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If you&#8217;d rather listen to your news, today&#8217;s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>Trump Pressures Fed, Secures Major Trade Deals</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-952127" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_21_19.Still001-2-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_21_19.Still001-2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_21_19.Still001-2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_21_19.Still001-2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_21_19.Still001-2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_21_19.Still001-2.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
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Topline: President Trump escalated his pressure campaign on the Federal Reserve by personally touring its headquarters on Thursday, as his administration announced major new trade deals with Japan and Indonesia. 
In an extraordinary move, President Trump visited the Federal Reserve building, the first sitting president to do so since 2006. The visit is the latest step in his public feud with Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump has accused of keeping interest rates high to damage the economy. The president has also launched an investigation into the renovation of the Fed headquarters, which is over budget by more than $2.5 billion, accusing Powell of mismanaging taxpayer funds to build a &#8220;palace&#8221; for himself and hinting at fraud, which would be a fireable offense. 
The pressure campaign comes as the White House touts significant economic victories. With an August 1 tariff deadline looming, the administration finalized a massive trade deal with Japan that will lower tariffs on Japanese imports to 15% in exchange for Tokyo opening its markets to American cars and trucks. Japan has also agreed to a $550 billion investment in the U.S. economy, which includes purchasing 100 Boeing aircraft and billions in American rice and defense contracts. A separate deal was reached with Indonesia, which will eliminate tariffs on 99% of American imports. The news sent global stocks rallying, with the S&amp;P 500 hitting another record high. 
While the broader economy shows strength, the U.S. housing market has been cooling. Sales have been sluggish for three straight years, largely due to a lack of affordability. The median existing home price hit a record high of $435,000 in June, and high interest rates—which have remained over 6% since 2022—have kept many prospective buyers and sellers on the sidelines. 
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<h2>New RussiaGate Revelations Surface</h2>
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<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-952129" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_21_16.Still003-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_21_16.Still003-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_21_16.Still003-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_21_16.Still003-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_21_16.Still003-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_21_16.Still003.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
Topline: Newly declassified documents released by DNI Tulsi Gabbard suggest that Russia possessed damaging information on Hillary Clinton in 2016 but chose not to release it, further complicating the origins of the Russia-collusion narrative. 
According to a declassified House Intelligence report, Russia had obtained hacked DNC emails that allegedly showed potential criminal bribes within Clinton&#8217;s State Department, where taxpayer funds were offered to religious groups in exchange for campaign support. Other emails allegedly detailed Clinton&#8217;s &#8220;&#8216;psychoemotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness'&#8221; and claimed she was on a &#8220;daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers.&#8221; Gabbard said Russia likely planned to use the information against Clinton had she won. 
According to investigative correspondent Jerry Dunleavy, former President Obama was &#8220;deeply involved in the Russiagate scandal,&#8221; was aware of the Clinton campaign&#8217;s plan to link Trump to Russia, and &#8220;personally directed the creation of the Intelligence community assessment in December 2016.&#8221; 
DNI Gabbard has characterized the affair as a &#8220;treasonous conspiracy against the American people.&#8221; However, some legal analysts are skeptical that the actions, while corrupt, amount to a prosecutable crime. In a recent column, National Review&#8217;s Andrew McCarthy wrote, &#8220;political smears and appalling misjudgments are not violations of the criminal law, absent some statutory federal offense. If there were a criminal offense that fit, Gabbard and Trump would cite it, rather than chanting &#8216;treason.'&#8221; Attorney General Pam Bondi is reportedly looking into the matter. 
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<h2>Columbia Settles With Feds; Harvard Fights On</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-952125" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_18_04.Still003-2-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_18_04.Still003-2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_18_04.Still003-2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_18_04.Still003-2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_18_04.Still003-2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_18_04.Still003-2.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
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Topline: Columbia University has agreed to pay a more than $200 million settlement to the federal government over its failure to stop antisemitism on campus, while Harvard University continues its legal fight against the Trump administration. 
On Wednesday, Columbia University announced it will pay the massive settlement to restore federal funding that the Trump administration had frozen over the antisemitism allegations. The school will also pay an additional $21 million to settle investigations by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the settlement a &#8220;seismic shift&#8221; and a &#8220;monumental victory for conservatives,&#8221; adding that it ensures &#8220;students and faculty know that they&#8217;re going to be evaluated on merit.&#8221; 
Meanwhile, Harvard was back in court this week, fighting to unfreeze more than $2 billion in its own federal funding. Harvard argues the funding freeze is a &#8220;blatant and unrepentant violation&#8221; of its First Amendment rights. The Trump administration contends that Harvard failed to protect its students under civil rights law. &#8220;This is about civil rights. This is about safety on campuses,&#8221; Secretary McMahon said. President Trump said that Columbia was working toward a solution while &#8220;Harvard wants to fight &#8230; and they&#8217;re getting their a** kicked.&#8221; 
Despite its combative public stance, there are signs Harvard may be &#8220;bending the knee.&#8221; The university is reportedly considering opening a new conservative center and is closing multiple diversity offices. The administration is also exerting pressure on the university by launching a new investigation into Harvard&#8217;s compliance with a government visa program and threatening to revoke the school&#8217;s accreditation.

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Morning Brief: Russiagate Reckoning & Trump V. Powell

Columbia University

Morning Wire

Tulsi Gabbard

On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard made the claim that Barack Obama committed an act of treason back in 2017 at the tail end of his presidency, just before the very beginning of President Trump&#8217;s first term.
She has now declassified documents that she claims prove intelligence officials in the Obama administration lied about Russia&#8217;s efforts to influence the 2016 election. She is claiming that the intelligence community assessment that was eventually released at the beginning of 2017, just before Donald Trump took office, was doctored in order to reach the conclusion (among others) that not only did the Russians interfere in the election, but the Russians did so in order to get Donald Trump elected.
She said Obama&#8217;s intelligence community created an intelligence assessment that they knew was false, saying, “There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false. They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump, when selling it to the American people, as though it were true. It wasn&#8217;t.”
She says that she is now going to refer Barack Obama and others in the administration for criminal investigation by the DOJ.  She added that Barack Obama might be guilty of treason, which is a specific statutory charge.
This much is certainly true: the Obama administration clearly meant to undermine the incoming Trump administration through rumor, innuendo, and nonsense compiled into an intelligence community assessment about Russia and Trump, laying the predicate for four long years of Mueller&#8217;s investigatory trash. Tulsi Gabbard going after Barack Obama on a moral level is absolutely justified. On a legal level, it does create the necessity to actually do something that I don&#8217;t think is going to be actually fulfilled: it puts more pressure on the Attorney General to do something that she is almost certainly incapable of doing legally.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2245-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
The most shocking part of what Gabbard released yesterday is a House Intelligence Committee report that says the Russians clearly had negative information on Hillary Clinton that they did not drop during the 2016 election cycle, which undermines the oft-stated claim that they wanted Trump to win. If they wanted Trump to win, in the last days of the election, when Trump was narrowing the gap, they should have dropped all of the dirt they supposedly had. 
Kimberley Strassel over at The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-russia-collusion-and-clinton-reckoning-a36909d8?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAid75p77K3NMhCFIHVbpJOt0kGgVlBlJCgMMHkUAU3lxR6wcKb1YnJkFmrIRFA%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68829d4e&amp;gaa_sig=CutcMRfcVkA6oL9l013Fy6n-zYX85kMJH_vKKGG1YCp5k8_cvSA20AhqanWcvOiUGHHB5p5BDdYUE2akq8lGxQ%3D%3D">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>By Dec. 8, 2016, the intel community had compiled a seven-page President’s Daily Brief draft on what “cyber” activities it had found during the election. The PBD cited the intelligence community’s “low-to-moderate-confidence” assessment that Russia was involved in the compromise of an inadequately protected Illinois voter registration database (and attempts on other states&#8230;The draft was scheduled to be published the next day. 
The next day, Dec. 9, the Obama White House gathered together its national-security principals to talk about a “sensitive topic,” including former DNI James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan (who had been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/brennan-and-the-2016-spy-scandal-1532039346?mod=article_inline">spinning up</a> a Russia-collusion narrative since July), FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and others.
After the meeting, Mr. Clapper’s assistant sent out an email entitled “POTUS Tasking on Russia Election Meddling,” asking DNI officials to create an “assessment per the President’s request.” </blockquote>
That was unusual. Usually, the way you do intelligence assessments is to look at the available intelligence and then the intelligence community filters it, double-checks it, and creates an assessment. You don&#8217;t have the president say, “I want you to reassess the information that you&#8217;ve already put into this intelligence assessment.” 
From there, wrote Strassel, “It was a straight shot to the new and inflammatory January 6th intelligence community assessment. The new ICA baldly blared: ‘We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgements.’”
The assessment from January 6 suggested that the Russians interfered to help Trump and to hurt Clinton. And that, of course, was the line retailed for the next several years and even up till today by Democrats. But it is not true according to this House intelligence report.
There was not strong enough intelligence to suggest that the Russians preferred Trump to Clinton, and that&#8217;s why the Obama team was doing what they were doing, as opposed to just screwing around with our elections, which is something they&#8217;ve been doing since the days of the Soviet Union.
All of this should see the light of day, of course. Much of it was already known. Russiagate is one of the worst scandals in American history, because having an administration and a deep state dedicated to undermining the president of the United States for four years is insane.
It is fully justified and necessary for people like Gabbard to expose all of this. The problem comes when you oversell, because once you oversell, you end up putting your own administration in a bad position, because people want actual prosecutions.
When you oversell, you end up under-delivering. And when you under-deliver, people get very, very angry.

White House Holds Press Briefing

Tulsi’s Bombshell: Team Obama Doctored Intel To Push Russiagate

Ben Shapiro

Direct of National Intelligence

National Intelligence

Opinion

President Trump

In a bombshell move that has shaken the foundations of American politics, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified over 100 documents exposing the Russiagate scandal as a manufactured hoax orchestrated by the Obama administration.
These revelations paint a damning picture of deliberate intelligence manipulation aimed at undermining President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 victory and subverting the will of the American people. As conservatives, we must seize this moment to demand accountability. The future of the country depends on it.
The key discoveries from these declassified files are staggering. They reveal that U.S. intelligence agencies, under direct orders from President Barack Obama, crafted a false narrative about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Contrary to the hysteria peddled by the media and Democrats, there was no credible evidence that Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win. Instead, internal memos show that Obama and his team politicized intelligence, overriding analyst objections to push &#8220;potentially biased&#8221; or &#8220;implausible&#8221; claims. The infamous Steele Dossier was funded by Hillary Clinton&#8217;s campaign and riddled with unverified rumors. Even so, it was knowingly used as the cornerstone for FISA warrants and investigations, despite officials like CIA Director John Brennan recognizing its unreliability.
The documents Gabbard released detail how, in the waning days of Obama&#8217;s presidency, a cabal of high-level officials (including Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe) conspired to lay the groundwork for the years-long Trump-Russia collusion probe.
That included a rushed Intelligence Community Assessment in January 2017 that exaggerated Russian actions to delegitimize Trump&#8217;s inauguration. Emails and meeting notes confirm Obama&#8217;s personal involvement, such as his &#8220;unusual&#8221; directives to focus on Putin&#8217;s alleged preference for Trump, ignoring exculpatory evidence. The goal was also made clear, which was to &#8220;usurp President Trump and subvert the will of the American people,&#8221; as Gabbard aptly put it.
Gabbard herself has been unflinching in her condemnation, saying, &#8220;There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.&#8221;
She elaborated, &#8220;They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn&#8217;t.&#8221;
Gabbard didn&#8217;t mince words about the broader conspiracy: &#8220;Over 100 documents that we released … really detail and provide evidence of how this treasonous conspiracy was directed by President Obama just weeks before he was due to leave office.&#8221; And on the need for action, she stated, &#8220;No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The integrity of our democratic republic depends on it.&#8221; This week, she confirmed she has referred all documents to the FBI and DOJ for potential prosecution.
Which leads us to the question of what to do next: prosecute, or don&#8217;t. On one hand, there&#8217;s a legitimate concern that weaponizing the justice system against former officeholders quickly turns the body politic into a bloodbath, with every administration change into a cycle of retribution. We&#8217;ve long held that ex-presidents and officials deserve a presumption of good faith, allowing the nation to move forward without endless vendettas. This principle has preserved stability, preventing the United States from descending into the banana republic tactics seen elsewhere.
But let&#8217;s be clear: the Left threw this standard out the window years ago with their relentless persecution of President Trump. They raided his home at Mar-a-Lago on trumped-up charges, orchestrated sham impeachments, and pursued politically motivated indictments in New York, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.
Now, we know that in their last moments of power in 2017, Obama and his allies set the stage to undermine Trump&#8217;s entire first term through this fabricated Russiagate narrative. It wasn&#8217;t just opposition. It was a soft coup, costing millions in taxpayer dollars and dividing the nation. If they can bend the law to target a sitting and former president, why should their architects escape scrutiny?
This hypocrisy demands a response: we must re-establish a sense of political mutually assured destruction. The Left has no underlying moral code — they exploit ours against us, weaponizing institutions while crying foul when held accountable. They&#8217;ve normalized lawfare, from the Mueller probe&#8217;s fruitless witch hunt to the January 6 committee&#8217;s theatrics.
Without consequences, they&#8217;ll continue eroding our republic. Prosecution isn&#8217;t revenge, it&#8217;s deterrence. By holding Brennan, Clinton, and others to account, we warn future deep state actors that the law applies equally. As Gabbard emphasized, &#8220;This is an issue that is so serious it should concern every single American because it has to do with the integrity of our democratic republic.&#8221;
Hillary Clinton&#8217;s role cannot be ignored. Her campaign&#8217;s funding of the dossier, which fueled this hoax, ties her directly to the conspiracy. Prosecuting Brennan, Clinton, Clapper, and their accomplices isn&#8217;t optional; it&#8217;s essential.
Scripture makes it clear that justice is near to the heart of God. Leviticus 19:15 tells us, &#8220;Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.&#8221; And again, Proverbs 21:15 declares, &#8220;When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.&#8221; And in Amos 5:24, we read, &#8220;But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.&#8221;
Justice isn&#8217;t optional — it&#8217;s a divine mandate. Ignoring these crimes would mock the rule of law and invite further corruption.
The answer is simple: We must prosecute. Let the Justice Department act on Gabbard&#8217;s referrals, convene grand juries, and bring charges. Anything less betrays the American people and the principles that make our nation exceptional. The time for excuses is over. Justice demands action now.
Daniel Hayworth is the Lead Pastor of Vintage Church Harker Heights near Fort Hood, Texas, where he lives with his wife and four children. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

It’s Time To Prosecute The Russiagate Perpetrators

Deep State

Former CIA Director John Brennan blew off warnings from longtime members of the intelligence community in order to push ahead with a &#8220;substandard&#8221; report because it adhered to the chosen narrative, a congressional report released on Wednesday revealed.
The &#8220;substandard&#8221; intelligence report Brennan published backed up his assertion that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election — thus bolstering claims that Trump and his incoming administration had engaged in &#8220;collusion&#8221; prior to the election.
Brennan, according to the report released on Wednesday — along with evidence compiled and released over the last several days by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — was apparently not alone in his efforts to muddy the waters of legitimate intelligence with unsubstantiated claims and subpar intelligence if it served a political purpose.
The House Intelligence Committee&#8217;s findings revealed that the CIA in 2020 had &#8220;intelligence that Mr. Putin may have favored a Mrs. Clinton win&#8221; and had intentionally scuttled it, and &#8220;instead tied Mr. Trump to Mr. Putin.&#8221; It also stated that &#8220;fabricated&#8221; information from the Steele Dossier — which was initially bought and paid for by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton&#8217;s campaign — had been included in official reports despite objections from veteran intelligence officers who argued that it doesn&#8217;t meet &#8220;basic tradecraft standards.&#8221;
Then-FBI Director James Comey also played a role in getting the Steele Dossier included in official reports — and when other officers objected, Brennan waved off their concerns: &#8220;Yes, but doesn&#8217;t it ring true?&#8221;
As the Intel Committee report noted, there was just one &#8220;scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information cited to suggest Putin &#8216;aspired&#8217; to help Trump win.&#8221;
Brennan included that statement over the objections of other officers, but left out statements from a Putin confidant who claimed the Russian leader &#8220;did not care&#8221; who won the 2016 election — and also omitted Putin&#8217;s assertion that Russia was poised to succeed regardless of who won the American presidency.
&#8220;CIA officers said that some of this information had been held on the orders of [Brennan], while other reporting had been judged by experienced CIA officers to have not met longstanding publication standards,&#8221; the report stated.

Meet the Press – Season 71

Former CIA Chief Ignored Warnings, Pushed ‘Substandard’ Report Saying Putin Wanted Trump To Win

Former CIA Chief Ignored Warnings, Pushed 'Substandard' Report Saying Putin Wanted Trump To Win

Vladimir Putin

It’s Time To Put Barack Obama In Handcuffs

Matt Walsh

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan is accusing President Donald Trump and his administration of &#8220;weaponizing&#8221; the intelligence community in their efforts to investigate his actions in 2016 — which, according to a recently published <a href="https://www.cia.gov/static/Tradecraft-Review-2016-ICA-on-Election-Interference-062625.pdf">CIA review</a>, amounted to him weaponizing the intelligence community against Trump.
CIA Director <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-doj-puts-brennan-and-comey-under-investigation-for-russiagate-report">John Ratcliffe</a> referred both Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey to the FBI for investigation and potential prosecution pursuant to their actions during the Trump-Russia investigation — and Brennan specifically was cited in the review as showing &#8220;a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness.&#8221;
The review also indicated that Brennan accepted evidence that backed his predetermined conclusions — such as the widely discredited Steele Dossier — even when others in the intelligence community warned against it, and was &#8220;more swayed by the Dossier&#8217;s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns.&#8221;
But now that Brennan is in the hot seat, he&#8217;s arguing that investigating the &#8220;multiple procedural anomalies&#8221; — over which he presided, alongside Comey — is what actually amounts to the weaponization of intelligence.
Brennan, speaking to MSNBC&#8217;s Nicolle Wallace, claimed that he was a victim of &#8220;the authoritarian playbook&#8221; and that the Trump administration was taking actions that were reflective of the early days of Nazi Germany.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨John Brennan says the investigation into him and James Comey for their role in the Russian Collusion Hoax is &#8220;the authoritarian playbook.&#8221;
He compares it to Nazi Germany.
&#8220;If a president of the United States is willing to weaponize intelligence and justice&#8230;we really are in… <a href="https://t.co/cl1sekq79x">pic.twitter.com/cl1sekq79x</a>
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1943048051092001032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;If a President of the United States is willing to weaponize intelligence and justice and, you know, law enforcement investigators, and the people who head up these departments and agencies are willing to bow to it, we really are in deep, deep trouble,&#8221; he claimed.
Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume weighed in on the investigation as well, saying first that it was worth looking into and then reminding audiences that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had financed the Steele Dossier upon which Brennan and Comey had built their case.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 WATCH: Fox’s <a href="https://twitter.com/brithume?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brithume</a> on the investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey: “It’s worthy of investigation.”
“It all comes down once again after all these years to the Steele Dossier which was a dogs breakfast of scurrilous… <a href="https://t.co/p1KSiUsxIZ">pic.twitter.com/p1KSiUsxIZ</a>
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/TVNewsNow/status/1943075038745317684?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

House Intelligence Cmte Holds Hearing On Russian Interference In U.S. Election

John Brennan Weaponized Intel Against Trump. Now He’s Mad The Worm Has Turned.

John Brennan Weaponized Intel Against Trump. Now He's Mad The Worm Has Turned

General

Steele Dossier

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-TRUMP-MEMORIAL DAY

The Russia Hoax Was Just The Beginning: The Left’s Plan To Undermine Trump’s Second Term

The Russia Hoax Was Just The Beginning: The Left's Plan To Undermine Trump’s Second Term

Democrats

James Clapper

Judges

Leftists

Peter Strzok

Robert Mueller

The Trump administration and DOGE are continuing their efforts to slash federal spending, with major cuts to the Health Department announced Thursday. Trump takes &#8220;presidential action&#8221; against the elite law firms that targeted him. And, voters in Maine overwhelmingly support keeping men out of women’s sports – but the state’s Democratic governor is still defying Trump’s order to do so.
It’s Friday, March 28th, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doges-hhs-overhaul-maine-sports-standoff-3-28-25/id1576594336?i=1000701216271" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2>DOGE Cuts HHS</h2>
<div id="attachment_899279" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-899279" class="size-large wp-image-899279" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/RFK-locks-in-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: The Trump administration and DOGE are continuing their efforts to slash federal spending, with major cuts to the Health Department announced Thursday.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday morning that his department will cut more than 10,000 jobs – more than 20% of HHS’ workforce.
Among others, the Food and Drug Administration will let go of 3,500 employees, though Kennedy said the cuts would not impact inspectors looking at drugs, medical devices, and food. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will lose 1,200 workers, the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS) 300, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2,400. The overhaul will also eliminate 13 of the department&#8217;s 28 existing divisions and create a new Administration for a Healthy America. According to Kennedy, the cuts will save taxpayer money and force health agencies to become more efficient.
“When I arrived I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” Kennedy said. “As part of President Trump’s DOGE workforce reduction initiative, we’re gonna streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and effective. … We’re gonna eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions.”
Context: America’s health care system ranks <a href="https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-health-care-system-ranks-last-overall-among-other-high-income-countries">last</a> in health among 38 developed nations, but spends 2 to 3x more per capita on each patient. HHS funding increased by nearly 40 percent under the Biden administration, as staffing went up almost 20 percent – this week’s cuts will reduce the number of employees to pre-pandemic levels.
These aren’t the only cuts being made to HHS. A day earlier, Kennedy moved to pull nearly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-government-pulls-back-over-11-billion-funding-state-health-departments-2025-03-26/">$12 billion</a> in COVID funding that had been allocated to state health departments, NGOs, and an assortment of international groups. Those funds were being used for COVID testing, COVID vaccines, etc. According to a DHS spokesman, &#8220;The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.” Instead, they say, “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic.”
According to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/about/index.html">CDC</a>, 6 in 10 Americans suffer from a chronic disease, while 4 in 10 suffer from at least two.
<h2>Trump vs. Law Firms</h2>
<div id="attachment_899281" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-899281" class="size-large wp-image-899281" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: President Trump is taking action against top law firms that have ties to people who drove investigations and litigation against him.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm Jenner &amp; Block. The order is similar to a few others he’s signed in recent weeks – it blocks the firm from entering federal buildings and revokes its attorneys’ security clearances. It also bars federal agencies from contracting with the firm.
“I just think that the law firms have to behave themselves,” Trump <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1904244385342214479">said</a>. “We have others that want to make a settlement also having to do with the elections and other things, they&#8217;ve behaved very badly &#8230; our elections are very dishonest. Very corrupt.”
A federal judge blocked one of these Trump orders earlier this month – that order targeted Perkins Coie, the Clinton-tied law firm at the center of the Russian collusion conspiracy in 2016. The judge in that case, Beryl Howell, was appointed by Barack Obama and called Trump’s order “unlawful” and a violation of the First Amendment.
The targeted firms all have deep ties to the Democratic Party and Trump’s top antagonists. In fact, Trump’s latest order singles out Andrew Weissmann. He was a partner at Jenner &amp; Block from 2021 to 2022 – but before that, he was the top deputy of special counsel Robert Mueller and is thought to have been a key player in propagating the “Russiagate” hoax.
These orders don’t appear to be final – Trump has suggested that he will negotiate with the law firms if they come to the table. When asked if his actions amounted to “coercion” by a reporter, Trump responded, “The law firms all wanna make deals. You mean the law firms that we&#8217;re going after that went after me for 4 years ruthlessly, violently, illegally? I mean, are those the law firms you&#8217;re talking about? They&#8217;re not babies. They&#8217;re very sophisticated people.”
One prominent firm in the hot seat – Paul Weiss – has agreed to make several commitments to avoid sanctions, including $40 million worth of pro bono work for causes the White House supports.
<h2>Maine Defies Title IX</h2>
<div id="attachment_899285" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-899285" class="size-large wp-image-899285" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Janet-Mills-1-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Public universities in Maine are backing down from their transgender policies, but Governor Janet Mills (D) is still refusing to comply with Trump’s order on girls’ sports.
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-spars-with-maines-dem-governor-over-men-in-womens-sports-at-white-house">public spat</a> between President Trump and Governor Mills over an executive order barring men from women’s sports has gone on for more than a month. Mills maintains that the EO does not carry the force of law and has stated flatly that she has no intention of complying with it.
“My issue is about the rule of law, pure and simple,” Mills said in a statement posted to <a href="https://x.com/TheMaineWire/status/1904334942999363625">X</a>. “[The Constitution] doesn’t allow [the president] him to make laws out of whole cloth by tweet or instagram post or press release or executive order.”
Congressional Republicans have been slow to codify Trump’s order on girls&#8217; sports. However, Title IX separates sports based on sex to ensure equal opportunity. Only during the Biden administration did the federal government decide to interpret Title IX through the lens of so-called gender identity. Eight public universities in Maine have already said they will comply with Trump&#8217;s order in response to the Department of Agriculture threatening to withhold federal funding over the issue.
Other departments have also opened investigations into Maine’s transgender policies. For example, Health and Human Services said it found Title IX violations and gave the state <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-gives-maine-10-days-to-comply-with-wh-block-males-from-female-sports">ten days</a> to comply with Trump’s order – that letter was sent on March 19.
“The letter stipulated that if there is no voluntary compliance on the part of Maine, it&#8217;s going to be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution,” Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief of The Maine Wire (no relation) told Morning Wire. “I think there&#8217;s a lot of ego and stubbornness here. They&#8217;re not used to being told that they&#8217;re wrong or that they don&#8217;t have the authority to do something.”
New polling from the American Parents Coalition – which was exclusively shared with The Daily Wire – shows that Maine residents side with Trump on this issue &#8212; 63% said school sports participation should be based on biological sex. 60% said they’d support a ballot measure to protect girls’ sports, including 64% of independents.

HHS Headquarters in Washington

Morning Brief: DOGE Cuts HHS, Trump Vs Law Firms, Maine Gov Defies Title IX

Department of Health and Human Services

Health and Human Services

Maine

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Title IX

Transgender Athletes

The following is an excerpt from the new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Disappearing The President</a>” by Lee Smith, (October, 2024, Encounter Books)
* * *
<h3>The Counterinsurgents</h3>
Many of the analysts obsessed with Russian information warfare played crucial roles in Russiagate, like Hamilton 68 founder Clint Watts. “I was talking to him at the time and quoting him in stuff I was writing because I thought what he said made sense,” says Siegel. “And some of what he said didn’t make sense. People lose track of reality when they talk about information warfare.”
A West Point graduate, Watts joined the FBI after leaving the Army, and in 2011 he joined a think-tank based in Philadelphia, the Foreign Policy Research Institute. During the 2016 election cycle, he was a go-to talking head on Russian information warfare. “Regardless of the extent of Trump’s direct knowledge about Russia’s intelligence activities, active measures [by Russian intelligence] have achieved enormous success on the back of his presidential campaign,” he wrote in a 2016 article that supported the collusion narrative. “Russia sees Trump as a tool to undermine its American adversaries. In that regard, they’ve already achieved their goal and possess the potential to exceed their expectations.” (7)
The name of Watts’ organization, Hamilton 68, refers to the 68th essay from The Federalist Papers, in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the presidency and foreign influence: “These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” (8)
The reference was clear: Trump had been raised by a foreign power. Thus, the purpose of Watts’ organization was not to track Russian “disinformation” and influence operations on social media, but was rather to add another branch to the counterinsurgents’ propaganda campaign vilifying the chief magistracy of the Union—Trump—as a Russian agent.
<div id="attachment_834755" style="width: 390px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-834755" class="size-large wp-image-834755" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL-380x576.jpg" alt="Jacket design by Steve Cooley. Encounter Books." width="380" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL-380x576.jpg 380w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL-198x300.jpg 198w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL.jpg 560w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 380px) 100vw, 380px" /></a>Jacket design by Steve Cooley. Encounter Books.</div>
Watts was supported by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a project of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington, D.C. based think-tank funded by private donors; government agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development; foreign governments like Norway, Sweden, and Belgium; Big Tech oligarchies Google, Microsoft, and Amazon; and major Democratic Party donor George Soros, a Shadow Network giant.
ASD was founded in 2017 by a left-right coalition of anti-Trump activists who had supported and promoted Russiagate. Its board of advisors included: 
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Jake Sullivan, a longtime Clinton aide and now Biden’s national security advisor</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Michael McFaul, Obama’s ambassador to Russia</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">David Kramer, aide to Senator John McCain. Kramer gave a copy of the Steele dossier to BuzzFeed, which published it in January 2017.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Bill Kristol, anti-Trump editor of the now-defunct magazine, the Weekly Standard</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Michael Morrell, former acting CIA director and longtime deputy director under President Obama</li>
</ul>
Morrell explained the ASD’s purpose as it was getting off the ground in July 2017. “In a perfect world, we would have a national commission that would be looking into exactly what happened, exactly what did the Russians do and what can we do as a nation to defend ourselves going forward and deter Putin from ever doing this again,” Morell told a journalist. “We all know this is not going to happen, so things like the GMF [German Marshall Fund] effort are hugely important to fill the gap.” (9)
In reality, ASD and Hamilton 68 were partners in the FBI’s ongoing anti-Trump operation, which had been off-boarded to Robert Mueller’s team when the special counsel investigation began in May 2017.
When the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag appeared, Hamilton 68 reported that it was being spread by Russian bots. (10) Schiff and Feinstein’s letter on the hashtag relied exclusively on Hamilton 68’s data.
Even as the corporate media dutifully reported Hamilton 68’s declarations as fact, however, the Big Tech platforms were becoming increasingly wary of Watts’ analyses.
The Daily Beast offered a glimpse of this skepticism with a January 23, 2018 story reporting that Twitter analysts had determined the #ReleasetheMemo hashtag was spread by legitimate American accounts, not by Russian bots. (11)
Behind the scenes, Twitter officials were coming to believe that Hamilton 68 was a fraud. Twitter’s trust and safety head Yoel Roth told colleagues that a secret list of around 600 Russian bot accounts that Hamilton 68 monitored was “weird and self-selecting. They’re so unwilling to be transparent and defend their selection that I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.” (12)
Twitter identified the 600 accounts tracked by Hamilton 68 and found they were neither Russian nor bots. Rather, Roth wrote to colleagues, “they appear to strongly preference pro-Trump accounts, which [Hamilton 68] use to assert that Russia is expressing a preference for Trump.” Roth wanted to confront Hamilton 68 publicly. “My recommendation at this stage is an ultimatum,” he wrote, “you release the list or we do.”
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Some Twitter employees were worried about taking on an organization that represented a powerful consortium of political and intelligence officials. Others represented those same interests inside the company. “We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly,” wrote Emily Horne, who later landed a job in the Biden White House. Another Twitter executive, Carlos Monje, wrote, “I also have been very frustrated in not calling out Hamilton 68 more publicly, but understand we have to play a longer game here.” Monje later became a senior advisor to Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Twitter lawyers drafted a careful response to Schiff and Feinstein explaining that the company’s initial inquiry regarding #ReleaseTheMemo had “not identified any significant activity connected to Russia.” Twitter wrote that “because the Hamilton Dashboard’s account list is not available to the public, we are unable to offer any specific context on the accounts it includes. …We have offered to review the list of accounts contained in the Dashboard and this offer remains open.” (13)
Facebook responded simply by noting that Hamilton 68’s allegations concerned content on Twitter, not Facebook. (14)
Those responses were not good enough for the California Democrats. On January 31, Schiff and Feinstein sent another letter demanding that Twitter and Facebook try harder. “It is unclear from your responses whether you believe any of the Russian-linked accounts involved in this influence campaign violated your respective user policies,” the duo warned. “We reiterate our request that you immediately take necessary steps to expose and deactivate such accounts if you determine that they violate your respective user policies.” The letter continued, “Twitter inexplicably…neglected to answer the question of whether Russian sources were actively engaged in promoting the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag, as illuminated by the Hamilton 68 dashboard of the German Marshall Fund.” (15)
In other words, You must find a way to tie pro-Trump accounts to Russian bots and then censor them—or else.
“In the end, Schiff, Feinstein, and the Dems just beat Twitter down,” says Langer, the Nunes aide. “They were threatening to take all kinds of retaliatory action if the platforms didn’t produce the right results. And eventually, Twitter found a way to connect #ReleaseThe Memo to Russian bots, even though there was no evidence for it and they knew Hamilton 68’s findings were fraudulent.”
The following January, Twitter released a report detailing its research into a new batch of 418 accounts that “appeared to originate in Russia.” The company admitted it could not determine if they actually were Russian bot accounts, but claimed they behaved similarly to Russian bots. Of the top three hashtags employed by these 400 accounts, number two was #ReleaseTheMemo, which was included in approximately 38,000 Tweets. (16) Thus, based on a few hundred accounts that may or may not have been Russian, Twitter insinuated that a grassroots campaign among American conservatives might really be a Russian influence operation.
“These possible Russian bot accounts comprised less than one-half of one percent of activity on the hashtag,” says Langer. “That’s a drop in the ocean. It’s statistically irrelevant. But Twitter left that out of the report.”
The release of the Nunes memo on February 2, 2018, exposed Russiagate as an instrument of information warfare, paid for by the Clinton campaign and directed by Obama’s spy chiefs. It was the Shadow Network’s counterinsurgency campaign targeting Trump, his allies, and supporters.
“What we’re now experiencing is what countless other countries around the world have experienced since the start of the Cold War,” says Benz. “When the U.S. government controls your information eco-systems, controls your political leadership, censors you, spies on you, and propagandizes you. People in Boston are now experiencing what people in Baghdad did. This is what it feels like when the U.S. government deploys its military, its intelligence, and civil society partners and media in a whole-of-society campaign to re-engineer your country.”
* * *
Lee Smith is the author of the New York Times bestseller &#8220;The Plot Against the President.&#8221; His other books include &#8220;The Permanent Coup&#8221; and &#8220;The Strong Horse.&#8221; A veteran journalist and regular contributor to Tablet Magazine, Smith lives with his wife and son in Charleston, SC.
This excerpt is published by permission from Encounter Books. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Disappearing The President</a>” by Lee Smith, (October, 2024, Encounter Books). Copyright 2024 by Lee Smith. Jacket design by Steve Cooley.
The views expressed in this book excerpt do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
* * *
NOTES:
Chapter Three: The Counterinsurgents
7. Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts, and Jim Berger, “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy,” War on the Rocks, November 6, 2016, https://warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolling-for-trump-how-russia-is-trying-to-destroy-our-democracy/.
8. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp
9. Josh Rogin, “National Security Figures Launch Project to Counter Russian Mischief,” Washington Post, July 11, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/07/11/national-security-figures-launch-project-to-counter-russian-mischief/.
10. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/right-wing-demand-releasethememo-endorsed-russian-bots-trolls-n839141
11.  Spencer Ackerman, “Source: Twitter Pins #ReleaseTheMemo on Republicans, Not Russia,” Daily Beast, January 23, 2018, http<a href="http://www/">s://www.</a> thedailybeast.com/source-twitter-pins-releasethememo-on-republicans-not- russia#:~:text=The%20online%20groundswell%20urging%20the,widely%20 since%20late%20last%20week.
12.  Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), “1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15 MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD,” X, January 27, 2023, 12:49 p.m., https://x.com/mtaibbi/ status/1619029772977455105.
13.  Vijaya Gadde, Twitter General Counsel letter to The Honorable Dianne Feinstein and The Honorable Adam Schiff, January 26, 2018, https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/twitter_response_jan_26.pdf. 
14. https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6/4/64bd3267-fdc9-46fb-b265-589dc5d08eff/8DBC13B7F818DA79F0E8C614A8F8159D.facebook-response-to-feinstein-schiff-1.26.18.pdf
15.  “Feinstein, Schiff Send Follow Up Letter to Twitter and Facebook on #ReleaseTheMemo Campaign,” U.S. Senate Committee on The Judiciary, January 31, 2018, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/feinstein-schiff-send-follow-up-letter-to-twitter-and-facebook-on-releasethememo-campaign.
16.  Twitter, “Retrospective Review: Twitter, Inc. and the 2018 Midterm Elections in the United States,” January 31, 2019 (updated February 4, 2019), https:// cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/ company/2019/2018-retrospective-review.pdf.

President-Elect Donald Trump Meets With Biden, Congressional Leaders In Washington

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