“Obama himself manufactured the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX.”

Truth Social posts following the DNI Tulsi Gabbard release of selected intelligence documents

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan, five-volume, 1,300plus-page report built on more than 200 witness interviews and a million documents, concluded that Russia waged an "aggressive, multi-faceted effort" to influence the 2016 election. That investigation, completed in August 2020 under GOP leadership, also found the intelligence community's January 2017 assessment was "coherent and well-constructed," the exact opposite of Trump's claim that it was wrong.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 2019 report independently documented the interference in granular detail: Russia's GRU military intelligence hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign, leading to the indictment of 12 GRU officers in July 2018, while the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency ran a social media operation that reached millions of Americans. Thirteen IRA operatives were also criminally indicted.

Trump's own appointees confirmed it. His first-term Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and his FBI Director Christopher Wray both testified to Congress affirming that Russia interfered in 2016. PolitiFact has repeatedly rated denials of Russian interference "Pants on Fire," and named the claim that interference was a "made-up story" its 2017 Lie of the Year. "The Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election." — Bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence final report, 2020