A newly declassified intelligence memo confirms U.S. agencies had no evidence that Russian officials shared damaging information about Hillary Clinton with the Trump campaign—raising fresh questions about the FBI’s surveillance during the 2016 election.
A memo released Friday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard states that senior Obama-era intelligence officials privately concluded Russia did not affect the outcome of the 2016 election
The classified document, authored in 2016 and delivered to then-President Barack Obama, states unequivocally that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.”
It further clarifies that while voter databases may have been probed, no substantial effort came close to compromising actual vote tallies.
The disclosure marks a significant vindication for President Donald Trump, who for years has claimed the so-called “Russiagate” scandal was politically motivated.
Trump and his allies have long argued that the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign engineered the Russian collusion narrative to delegitimize his presidency before it began.
The memo emphasized that systems targeted by cyber actors did not include infrastructure involved in vote tabulation and were therefore unlikely to affect any official vote counts.
“Criminal activity also failed to reach