Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard claimed Russia aimed to stir chaos during the 2016 election, and they anticipated a Hillary Clinton victory, according to a Sunday New York Post interview.

Gabbard shared her takeaway in an interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine on “Pod Force One,” set to be released Wednesday.

“As we’ve learned in later documents that we’ve reviewed throughout that campaign, Russia believed that Hillary Clinton would win the election,” Gabbard said. (RELATED: Report Discovered In ‘Burn Bags’ Shows Obama FBI Ignored Evidence Of Clinton’s Russia Collusion Hoax)

“They felt it was inevitable,” she added in the interview.

Russia was accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) emails in 2016, and an ODNI memo released in July stated, “supporting evidence [indicates] the Russian government directed hacking of the DNC and the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee].”

Gabbard questioned why the Kremlin would wait until after the election to share damaging information on Clinton if they were so keen on seeing President Donald Trump in office, according to the interview.

She referred to a recently published 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, which revealed Russia potentially had intelligence demonstrating Clinton was using “heavy tranquilizers” to address “intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.”

Gabbard wondered why that reported intelligence was not made publicly available.

“If Russia aspired to help Trump get elected, which is what the manufactured January 2017 intelligence community assessment says with high confidence, according to Brennan and Clapper, then Putin would have released the most damaging information and emails to help President Trump,” Gabbard said, according to the New York Post.

WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 23: White House Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard talks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. Gabbard released a 2017 report from the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence that she says undermines the conclusion of intelligence agencies during the Obama administration that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Referring to the House report, Gabbard said the information “was intentionally withheld and not released because they assumed that Hillary Clinton would win that election, and their plan [was to] wait until maybe days or weeks before her inauguration to release these documents.”

Gabbard also discussed further information revealed through the release of documents by her office in July.

“It surprised me that all of these documents still existed, quite frankly,” Gabbard told the outlet.

Gabbard announced that she had made referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding the ODNI’s findings at a White House press briefing in July. (RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard Says She’s Referring Obama For Criminal Charges)

“What we now know came from President Obama was a covert mission, essentially, to subvert the will of the American people, create this lie that would challenge the legitimacy of President Trump’s election and the four years of his administration, resulting and affecting in what was truly a yearslong coup,” Gabbard told the New York Post.