In the Name of Ending ‘Weaponization,’ the DNI’s New Report Ignites a Dangerous New Phase in America’s War Over Truth
The Hot War is Here, and It Brought Popcorn
In our last analysis, we detailed the anatomy of America’s cold war over the events of 2016. We said the nation was trapped in a seemingly endless war over truth. It turns out ‘endless’ was the wrong word. ‘Prelude’ would have been better. Last week, the very government entity created to secure the peace decided it was time to escalate, dousing the whole system in rhetorical gasoline and tossing a match.
In a move of spectacular irony, the Director of National Intelligence’s new “Initiatives Group”—let’s call them DIG, because they love to dig—fulfilled its stated mission to “end weaponization of government” by, you guessed it, weaponizing the government. They didn’t just drop a bombshell; they lobbed a geopolitical IED into the Beltway. The newly released documents allege that the entire Russia-collusion narrative was a “treasonous conspiracy,” claiming that the public-facing January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) was intentionally manipulated under presidential orders, using intel from the now-discredited Steele Dossier to frame the incoming administration.
This isn’t another round of “he said, she said.” This is a formal accusation, delivered with the dry poise of a hangman.
“Correct,” stated Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, with the calm precision of someone lighting a very long fuse. Her message was simple: “The referral contains evidence that the narrative which has dominated the last eight years was a deliberate hoax.”
And with that, the political hot potato lands in the lap of the National Security Division, the place where accusations go to get a case number. Now begins the stately, methodical process of turning political fury into billable hours. Lawyers will lawyer, agents will agent, and eventually, a grand jury of citizens will be asked to make sense of a political feud so convoluted it makes the proscription lists of the Second Triumvirate look like a friendly neighborhood watch roster.
But just as the battle lines were being drawn for a war between two presidents, Trump executed a breathtaking act of legal judo. In an impromptu press gaggle on the White House lawn, he publicly granted his predecessor a get-out-of-jail-free card. “Obama committed crimes,” Trump declared, “but now he’s immune… thanks to me. He owes me big.” By fighting for and winning broad presidential immunity for himself, he had, in a single stroke, extended it to his rival.
With that move, the war was masterfully refocused. This was no longer Trump vs. Obama. This was now Trump vs. the administrative state—the unelected intelligence officials, the FBI agents, and the bureaucrats who, in his view, had carried out the “hoax.” The biggest fish was thrown back, and the hunt for the rest of the crew had officially begun.
The Anatomy of a “Hoax”
To understand why DNI Gabbard’s office would take such a monumental step, one must understand the specific mechanism of the “hoax” they allege. This isn’t a vague claim of lying; it’s an accusation of a specific political warfare tactic.
Influential figures like former State Department cyber official Mike Benz have publicly detailed this process. In a widely circulated interview with Shawn Ryan, for example, Benz lays out what he describes as a “color revolution” model of statecraft being applied domestically. He argues that intelligence officials used the “two-hop rule” as a pretext to justify mass surveillance, allowing them to “light up the social graph” of the entire Trump campaign based on a few foreign contacts. From this perspective, the entire Russia investigation was not a reaction to a threat, but a pre-planned intelligence operation to frame a political opponent. This specific, detailed allegation is the intellectual foundation for the DNI’s criminal referral.
The Critics’ Rebuttal
The administration’s critics, however, call this theory a paranoid fantasy. They argue the public record completely dismantles it, pointing to a single, infamous Senate hearing in January 2017. There, Senator Marco Rubio got DNI James Clapper to state under oath that Russia did not hack the vote tallies. They highlight Senator Tom Cotton getting Clapper to state for the record that the Steele Dossier was not used as a basis for the official assessment.
But their trump card is no longer a C-SPAN clip. It’s a cartoon. They gleefully point out that the DNI’s entire theoretical framework—this complex web of “narrative laundering” and “circular reporting”—has become such a self-parody that it was recently the subject of a blistering satire on South Park. For critics, this is the ultimate proof that the administration has lost the plot. Their argument is simple and devastating: the DNI is basing a formal criminal referral on a conspiracy theory so convoluted it has literally become a punchline on a comedy show.
The Calculated Silence
But if the administration’s core beliefs are being mocked on television, why not shout their doctrine from the rooftops? The fact that they don’t is a sign not of hesitation, but of cold, political calculation. Invoking “ideological subversion” is the political equivalent of a nuclear option. It’s a term for the KGB, not the West Wing. The moment you officially use it against former American leaders, you are formally branding them enemies of the state. It would fail the “normie” test. “Investigating a hoax” sounds like justice. “Waging a counter-subversion operation” sounds like a paranoid purge from a Cold War spy novel. And so, the administration is engaged in a masterful, if terrifying, balancing act. They are acting on the premise of subversion while arguing in the language of justice—a silence made all the more strategic by the loud, public absolution of President Obama himself.
The Cycle of Weaponization
And so, we arrive at the central irony: the fire department has shown up with a flamethrower. To understand the DNI’s move, you have to look at its political bookend: January 6th.
Picture it: a dimly lit cigar bar. A donkey and an elephant, both with security clearances, nursing whiskeys. They’re looking at the same country but living in different realities.
For the donkey, the situation has become a nightmare. They came to defend their former President, only to watch their current adversary give him a pardon. They are now forced to defend not a man, but the faceless actions of the entire intelligence apparatus, all while Trump claims to be the noble one upholding the sanctity of the presidency.
But the elephant, now armed with their doctrine, sees a two-tiered system of justice where their political allies are hunted, while the permanent state that perpetrated what they believe was a hoax faced no consequences. For them, this new, focused referral isn’t an escalation. It’s payback, surgically delivered.
This is Washington’s new perpetual motion machine, a terrifying feedback loop of vengeance. One side’s necessary prosecution is the other’s unforgivable transgression. This is how weaponization becomes company policy, where a transfer of power is no longer a peaceful transition but the starting gun for the next round of investigations. The war over truth is over. Now, we have a battle of competing prosecutions, fought by a system that has finally decided to eat itself.
The Myth of the Peaceful Off-Ramp
And so, the system careens toward a cliff, which begs the final, desperate question: is there an off-ramp? Is there a circuit breaker for this feedback loop of mutually assured destruction?
The Beltway’s old guard, clutching their pearls, whisper about a return to “institutional norms.” They pray for a unifying figure to call for comity, for both sides to lay down their arms for the good of the Republic. This is a beautiful fantasy. From the Elephant’s perspective, a call to respect institutions is a demand they surrender to the very “deep state” they believe tried to destroy them. For the Donkey, it’s a plea for them to ignore what they see as a five-alarm fire of authoritarianism. In this war, “comity” is just a code word for surrender.
Others hope for a cataclysmic external event—a major war, a financial collapse, something to shock the system and force a “rally ’round the flag” moment of unity. But this, too, is wishful thinking. A modern America doesn’t unite in a crisis; it fractures. A war would trigger arguments over who started it. A market crash would become a blame-game over whose policies caused it. The crisis wouldn’t be a cure; it would just become another weapon.
The only remaining path for the system itself is the bleakest one: exhaustion. The quiet death of a republic, not with a bang, but with the whimpering apathy of a populace that has accepted the system is broken and has tuned it all out.
But the Founders figured on one last, most dangerous off-ramp that exists outside the system itself. They believed that when a government becomes locked in a “long train of abuses and usurpations”—when the system of justice becomes a weapon and the branches of government no longer check each other but only fight for their own power—the contract with the people is broken. At that point, the right to “alter or to abolish it” is not just an option; it is, in their view, a duty.
This, then, is the unspoken solution looming over the entire conflict. Not a peaceful exit, but a catastrophic reset. It’s the one “off-ramp” that doesn’t lead back to the current road but to a new, unknown destination forged in fire. And it may be the only option that both the Donkey and the Elephant, in their darkest moments, truly believe they have left.
