The Dictatorship
It’s Tulsi Gabbard’s turn to target Trump’s enemies
President Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019, charged by the House of Representatives with abusing his office to gain leverage over Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election. This week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard rebooted that scandal with the release of a handful of newly declassified documents that question the beginning of the impeachment investigation — in hopes of discrediting everything that followed.
MS NOW confirmed Wednesday that Gabbard’s office has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department for the whistleblower whose concern over a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy launched the impeachment inquiry and the former inspector general who fielded their complaint. The referrals were first reported by Fox News.
Gabbard’s new disclosures mirror a well-worn playbook used by Trump’s loyalists to investigate his investigators. But in every instance, including this latest endeavor, the evidence gathered of wrongdoing on Trump’s part has far outweighed proof of misconduct from his investigators.
In every instance, the evidence gathered of wrongdoing on Trump’s part has far outweighed proof of misconduct from his investigators.
In Gabbard’s telling, as she posted on Xthe process was an inherently corrupt conspiracy where “deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that Congress used to usurp the will of the American people.” Michael Atkinson, former inspector general for the Intelligence Community, is painted in a press release accompanying the new materials as a rogue actor who spun a secondhand tale into an attempted coup.
Newly-declassified records expose how deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that Congress used to usurp the will of the American people and impeach duly-elected President @realDonaldTrump in 2019.
Today, we reveal the truth 👇… pic.twitter.com/oLXW5nqi2n
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) April 13, 2026
The materials posted Monday do provide an interesting window into the chain of events eventually leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Among them are official records from the preliminary 14-day investigation Atkinson undertook to determine that the whistleblower’s initial complaint was of “urgent concern” and needed to be reported to Congress. Also included are transcripts from Atkinson’s two closed-door interviews with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, one before the White House released the transcript of the Zelenskyy call and one after the impeachment inquiry was underway.
But despite Gabbard’s breathless claims of a “coordinated effort … to manufacture a conspiracy,” nothing among the materials contradicts anything uncovered later. If anything, the initial interviews with the whistleblower, conducted in late August 2019, line up neatly with the fuller story that would be revealed over the coming weeks in the press and during the House’s impeachment inquiry. Both the whistleblower and a corroborating witness were extremely forthcoming about exactly what they did and did not know about the call, and why they were deeply concerned by Trump’s repeating conspiracy theories and pressing Zelenskyy to resume an investigation into Biden.
Gabbard’s cries of “politicization” from Atkinson are likewise overblown. Her claim is based on a section in the IG’s interview process where subjects were asked if they have anything in their background that might reveal any biases that could be used against them. The responses given suggest a certain hesitation to speak out for fear their words would be spun into right-wing attacks but was overridden by the necessity to speak out. Atkinson transparently mentioned in a letter to then-acting DNI Joseph Maguire that there was an “indicia of an arguable political bias” from the complainant, but that it didn’t alter his determination that their information was credible.
Maguire initially prevented Atkinson from providing the complaint to Congress, claiming that the Justice Department ruled it was outside of the IG’s remit. Atkinson disagreed and told lawmakers an “urgent concern” existed, as he believed the law required him, but did not provide the whistleblower’s complaint. Instead, it was only after media reports of the investigation and the White House’s subsequent release of the so-called perfect call with Zelenskyy that Atkinson was able to speak to Congress about the complaint directly.
All of this, in Gabbard’s telling, amounted to a “weaponization” of the process.
Several things stand out at this point. First is how ill-equipped Gabbard is to be leading America’s intelligence community. Her emphasis on how the first people to come forward about Trump’s scheme didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the call would be laughable if it weren’t so inept. It is literally the job of the intelligence community to consume partial information as it is received and work that raw data into a complete analysis. What Gabbard is essentially saying is that someone who only saw a single piece of the puzzle, at first, cannot be trusted to put together a picture in their head once more pieces have come together.
It is literally the job of the intelligence community to consume partial information as it is received and work that raw data into a complete analysis.
Second is how blatantly she has copied the failed formula of the GOP’s efforts to discredit the Russia investigation during Trump’s first term. For years now, through numerous investigations from the House and an independent counsel alike, Republicans have tried to claim wrongdoing from the FBI and other supposed “deep state” figures when first investigating hints of Russian interference in the 2016 election. But John Durham’s four-year-long probe came up empty, and despite Trump’s demands for revenge, there have been no criminal charges filed against anyone involved in the case.
Finally, it’s worth remembering Gabbard’s position when she was serving as a U.S. representative from Hawaii during Trump’s first impeachment. By the time the House voted on the articles of impeachment, she was already running a longshot bid for president. Accordingly, she was attempting to position herself as not beholden to the left wing, but still a viable candidate to be the Democratic nominee.
Gabbard was the only Democrat in the House to vote “present” on the articles. But she made clear in a statement afterward that she believed “President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing.” Her vote, or nonvote rather, was cast because, in her view, “removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.” The centrism by way of cowardice branding that brought her to prominence has fully given way — she now simply yields to the rightward pressures she finds herself under as part of Trump’s cabinet.
In his first interview with the House Permanent Select Committee on IntelligenceAtkinson described himself as a first responder, one who may not have had the full picture, but who had heard a fire alarm ringing and chose to act. “I don’t know whether it is just smoke, don’t know whether it is a small fire,” he told lawmakers as he refused to reveal what he’d learned from his preliminary findings. “All I know is that there was a time when … another first responder was not getting information about an alleged fire.”
Atkinson did what he thought was right and in accordance with the law by telling Congress that a complaint existed. The whistleblower did the same, despite the potential reprisals they’d face from a vengeful White House. Gabbard is now targeting them specifically for doing so, even as it is her job to be the early warning system against the nation’s greatest threats. It’s disturbing then to think what alarm bells she would prefer to silence, what risks she would take with America’s safety, rather than risk upsetting Trump.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.
Writer E. Jean Carroll finally has the $5 million — plus interest — that a jury ordered President Donald Trump to pay her in damages in one of her two cases against him, after Trump fought the payout for years.
Court records posted Tuesday show a transfer of $5,625,005.48 to Carroll’s legal team took place the day before.
Carroll received the money more than three years after a jury found that the president was liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in 1996, and then for defaming her on social media. Trump has repeatedly appealed the judgment to no avail — including petitioning the Supreme Court multiple times — and last week launched a last-ditch attempt to block her from getting the money.
Last Tuesday, his legal team filed a briefrequesting that the disbursement of the damages be halted, pointing to his pending request for the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal.
A federal judge nevertheless ordered Wednesday that Carroll be paid, prompting a swift appeal from Trump and a motion for an emergency administrative stay on the disbursement of the funds.
That request was denied.
“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict,” said Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
To the extent that the United States and Iran had a ceasefire deal in place to end the deadly, destabilizing war, that agreement has unraveled. Donald Trump has declared the ceasefire “over”; both countries have renewed their military strikes; and the American president is positioning the U.S. as a mercenary forcewith plans to charge tolls to pay for guarding the Strait of Hormuz.
As for the deal the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, formally known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, conservative host Hugh Hewitt asked the president whether the framework was “built to fall apart.” The Republican responded with an answer he hadn’t shared previously.
“It was built to test. It was a test,” Trump replied. “We didn’t know. It didn’t, look, memorandum of understanding, when you’re dealing with sleazebags, don’t mean much. And they don’t mean much when you’re dealing with honorable people, too, because it’s memorandum of understanding. It doesn’t mean much.”
The president went on to say that Iran “didn’t honor the test,” before suggesting that he had predicted from the outset that officials in Tehran would cause the agreement to collapse through noncompliance. “I said, ‘Watch, I guarantee. Watch.’ And they never, they never followed it.”
The apparent point of the on-air comments wasn’t merely to blame Iran for the unravelling deal, it was also to convey the suggestion that Trump knew all along Iran would cause the framework to collapse.
The trouble is, very recent history proves otherwise.
It was exactly one month ago when the president published a statement to his social media platform, announcing, “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” About an hour later, seemingly eager to pat himself on the back, he added“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace.”
In the days that followed, not only did Trump continue to celebrate his alleged triumph, but the White House invested an enormous amount of time and effort in touting the deal, all while Vice President JD Vance went on a media tour, doing his best to defend the policy on the merits.
There was nothing about this being a “test.” Not a word was uttered about the idea that the deal “doesn’t mean much.”
If the president expects his post hoc rationalization of this failure to persuade anyone, he’s probably going to be disappointed.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell
We’ve known for a month that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was hospitalized, but neither he nor anyone on his team has been willing to say why. Over the weekend, McConnell finally took steps to end the speculation, issuing a statement to explain that he’s been recovering from a fall, followed by what he described as “a mild case of pneumonia.”
The statement was accompanied by a photograph of the senator in a hospital bed alongside his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. For good measure, the image showed a newspaper — specifically, Sunday’s Washington Post sports section — in McConnell’s right hand.
It stood to reason that the statement and photo would revive the conversation about why the former Senate majority leader hadn’t disclosed any of these details earlier — the lack of transparency surrounding his personal health has long been a point of concern — but some in conservative politics went furtherfloating assorted conspiracy theories about the authenticity of the image of McConnell and his wife.
The chatter was not limited to the far-right fringe.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appeared Monday on conservative media channel Real America’s Voice, where the senator told host Eric Bolling, in reference to the McConnell image, “I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know.” (He did not identify his alleged “sources.”)
The Wisconsin Republican went on to say that he hadn’t spoken directly with McConnell, but that he hoped his colleague has a speedy recovery so he can return to Capitol Hill and help advance Donald Trump’s agenda.
Hours later, when pressed by reporters about his conspiratorial on-air comments, Johnson said, “It was a rumor, don’t — discount it, just discount it. … I just heard it, so assume it’s false.”
The bigger picture matters. Johnson isn’t just some guy; he’s a three-term member of the U.S. Senate who was speaking to a national television audience about an ailing colleague. It’s the opposite of his job to amplify baseless “rumors” and add fuel to fringe conspiracy theories. As the Wisconsin Republican really ought to know, those in his position have a responsibility to avoid conspiratorial nonsense.
What’s more, there’s the GOP senator’s track record to consider. Shortly after Trump grudgingly left the White House after his 2020 defeat, he was effectively banned from most major social media platforms and made few television appearances. Around this time, The New York Times described Johnson as Trump’s successor as the GOP’s “foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.”
In the years that followed, Johnson seemed a little too eager to prove his critics right, peddling bizarre and easily discredited nonsense about Covid-19. And the Jan. 6 attack. And vaccines. And climate change. And the 2020 presidential election. And the 2024 presidential election.
Last year, the Wisconsin Republican reached new depths, becoming the only senator from either party to embrace fringe ideas from the so-called 9/11 truther movement.
With this in mind, his on-air comments about McConnell and what he’s “heard from some other sources” are consistent with what we’ve come to expect from Johnson, though this only makes matters worse for his unfortunate reputation.
Finally, that the senator walked back his own rhetoric seemed like a step in the right direction, though I’m curious about his motivation: Did Johnson urge reporters to “discount” the “rumor” he spread because he recognized it as irresponsible, or was he scrambling to better position himself as the next chairman of the Senate Budget Committee in the wake of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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