Media’s Response to Recent Claims about 2016 Election

Major players in the legacy media, such as NBC News and the New York Times, seem to be actively engaged in damage control following recent statements about the 2016 election. On Friday, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tarcigabad, made a notable announcement that has prompted further scrutiny.

NBC highlighted comments from Gabbard, suggesting she’s “rewriting the history of the 2016 election.” The article went on to imply that Gabbard and former President Donald Trump are attempting to reframe the narrative around Russia’s influence on that election.

The NBC piece emphasized findings from the widely discussed 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) and a 2020 Senate investigation. In a tweet on Friday, Gabbard claimed that internal emails revealed that the intelligence director under Obama had concluded that Russia’s cyberattacks had no effect on the election results.

Interestingly, while NBC accused Gabbard of historical revisionism, it did not reference any specific emails from the Obama-era intelligence agencies. Instead, they quoted a prepared statement from James Clapper, the DNI at the time.

On December 8, 2016, intelligence officials prepared an assessment indicating that Russia had conducted cyberattacks but “had no impact on recent US election outcomes.”

Additionally, NBC did not address a memo sent from a Department of Homeland Security official to Clapper, which Gabbard claims has been declassified.

Similarly, Glen Kessler, a fact-checker for the Washington Post, pointed out that Gabbard’s accusations seemed “based on thin ground.” He expressed skepticism regarding the claims that the now-discredited Steele dossier had a role in shaping the ICA.

Kessler noted that former CIA Director John Brennan was reportedly insistent on including certain documents in the ICA, even ignoring warnings from agency officials about their validity. According to a 2025 CIA review, Brennan appeared to prioritize narrative coherence over analytical integrity.

Both National Public Radio and the New York Times joined NBC and the Washington Post in scrutinizing Gabbard’s assertions, adding crucial details from her disclosures. Gabbard’s documents indicated that Obama had canceled a critical briefing known as the President’s Daily Brief on December 9, 2016.

Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, had previously commented that he reviews the President’s Daily Brief whenever it is published. Trump’s first PBD was delivered in November 2016.