Hello and happy Saturday. Summer is when Americans hit the road, piling into the family truckster to relax at the beach, hike through our beautiful national parks, or visit far-flung friends and family. The Trump administration also went on a journey this week—a nostalgia trip.
On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced at a White House press briefing that the Obama administration had “conspired to subvert the will of the American people” by interfering with the investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, “launching what would be a yearslong coup against [Trump] and his administration.”
She also released a declassified 2017 House Intelligence Committee report that she said would “confirm a treasonous conspiracy” against Trump by former President Barack Obama.
What’s going on, exactly? The story actually begins last Friday, when Gabbard issued a press release claiming that Obama had “manufactured and politicized intelligence” after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. I’ll let Michael Warren explain. On Tuesday he wrote:
This is Gabbard’s case in brief: The government’s intelligence community assessed prior to the 2016 election that Russia did not have the capability to “hack” the election and alter its outcome, but once Trump was elected, and under the direction of Obama himself, then-DNI James Clapper issued a politicized intelligence assessment that falsely concluded Russia had meddled in the election to boost Trump’s campaign. According to Gabbard, every effort to “delegitimize” Trump’s first presidency, from the Mueller investigation to both of his impeachments, can be traced to this “treasonous conspiracy.”
Just one problem, Mike noted: “None of Gabbard’s claims and purported evidence provide anything new to our knowledge of what Russia did and didn’t do in 2016.”
As we explained in The Morning Dispatch on Friday, Gabbard is, at minimum, overstating the contents of the 2017 House Intelligence Committee report that she declassified and released: “The lawmakers faulted the Obama team for rushing the [January 2017 intelligence assessment] and relying on shaky intelligence, but their recommendations largely focused on improving future assessments. And they certainly didn’t make the case for criminal prosecution.”
That’s not all, though. TMD continued:
The Trump administration’s new case also conflates allegations that Russia attempted to rig the 2016 election by hacking voting machines with claims that it sought to influence its outcome through other means, like online influence campaigns and phishing operations to obtain damaging information on Clinton.
The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it was creating a “strike force” to investigate the allegations and consider next steps.
While the fact that the administration has made hay of this issue is perhaps unsurprising, given Trump’s campaign rhetoric around retribution, but … why now? In Boiling Frogs, Nick Catoggio offered a few theories. He writes that Gabbard and Trump have different motivations for elevating these misleading allegations but that both stand to benefit. Gabbard had angered Trump earlier this summer by posting a weird video featuring AI-generated nuclear explosions and warning that the world was “on the brink of nuclear annihilation” and was subsequently sidelined in the leadup to the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. For his part, Trump is happy to have something to talk about besides the Jeffrey Epstein files. Nick wrote:
In the Republican Party of 2025, alleging a treasonous conspiracy involving a prominent Democrat is the surest way to boost your political Q-rating. If I were Pete Hegseth and felt the ice cracking beneath my feet, I’d be hard at work building a case that Hunter Biden is the secret mastermind behind Mexican narco-trafficking.
The second theory, that the “treason” chatter is a contrived distraction, is so plainly true that it barely warrants comment. Not only has Trump begun to deflect questions about Epstein by pivoting to Obama’s “coup,” he’s publicly encouraged other Republicans to do the same.
Nick did suggest a third theory, that the Obama administration is guilty as charged, but he dismissed it as “silly.”If you could use a palate cleanser, please check out Adam White’s Next 250 essay on the courts in our contentious era, David M. Drucker’s deep dive on the Republican Jewish Coalition, or John McCormack’s in-depth report on how Baltimore is reducing violent crime. Or all of them! Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.
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As it happens, the relationship between courts, the rule of law, and the rest of government was a central focus of the Declaration of Independence. After the Declaration’s famous opening passages, as the document turns to an indictment of King George III’s misdeeds, the list starts with his abuses of legislative powers but then moves to his abuse of the courts. “He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers,” the signatories announced. “He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” ... When the colonies won independence, they were able to restore judicial independence, to varying degrees, on a state-by-state basis. But federal law, such as it was in the initial confederacy, still was subject to the states’ own whims and preferences, because the Articles of Confederation provided for no federal judiciary except for courts for the trial of “piracies and felonies committed on the high seas.” In all other respects, an interstate rule of law would depend on each state giving “full faith and credit” to “the judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.”
A few days after taking the speaker’s gavel, Rep. Mike Johnson was in Las Vegas attending his first-ever Republican Jewish Coalition gathering, the group’s annual leadership conference, frequented by some of the party’s most prolific campaign donors and connected political activists. His appearance was punctuated by an efficient 15-minute address to the roughly 1,000 RJC members and guests who packed a convention center ballroom adjacent to the Venetian Resort. For the 40-year-old group, Johnson’s presence that weekend was validation. His decision to rush out to the conference—it was Johnson’s first public event as speaker—offered recognition of the RJC as both a fundraising juggernaut and effective grassroots organizer. More broadly, RJC leaders insist it suggests the group occupies rarefied air within the GOP hierarchy that few other party-aligned organizations can claim.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott first took office in December 2020, a year that saw 335 murders in Baltimore. The number of murders ticked to 338 in 2021 and remained stubbornly high at 334 in 2022. But then there was a dramatic drop: There were 262 murders in 2023, 202 murders in 2024, and the city is on pace to have fewer than 150 murders in 2025. What led to the big decrease since 2022? The most obvious inflection point was the defeat of Baltimore’s top prosecutor, progressive Marilyn Mosby, by moderate Ivan Bates. During the campaign, Bates promised to reverse Mosby’s non-prosecution policy for low-level offenders and to focus prosecutions on repeat violent offenders. Since taking office as state’s attorney in Baltimore, Bates has done just that.
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