YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE RUSSIAN SPY TO SEE SOME THINGS.

There's a Soviet era joke, goes something like "Sgt. Ivanov got sent to gulag for 25 years for calling his colonel an idiot.  He got thirty days in stockade for insubordination and the rest for revealing state secret."

The latest release of state secrets from the Trump presidency includes the current director of national intelligence dishing on a former secretary of state.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard addressed reporters during Wednesday’s White House press briefing, outlining how in a report declassified on Monday, it was revealed that former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was "allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers."

"There were high-level DNC emails that detailed evidence of Hillary's quote, psycho emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression and cheerfulness, and that then Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers," said Gabbard.

The current administration is releasing this information as part of its effort to demonstrate that it was the Obama administration doing what it could to overturn the results of the 2016 election.  The story includes findings of Russian spy.

"As of September 2016, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) had Democratic National Committee (DNC) information that President Obama and party leaders found the state of Secretary Clinton's health to be 'extraordinarily alarming' and felt it could have 'serious negative impact' on her election prospects. Her health information was being kept in 'strictest secrecy' and even close advisors were not being fully informed.

"The SVR possessed DNC communications that Clinton was suffering from 'intensified psychoemotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression. and cheerfulness.' Clinton was placed on a daily regimen of 'heavy tranquilizers' and while afraid of losing, she remained 'obsessed with a thirst for power,'" the report stated.

Heck, the Russkies could have lifted the symptoms off Cold Spring Shops.  It's not polite to say "strident," but we've been doing so for years.  "Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been making extraordinary efforts to modulate her tone and sound reasonable on the stump, although lately her handlers must have coached her to dial up the strident again. Being firm without being nasty is an important part of saying no and upholding standards, which is what professors get paid to do, and getting the content across without coming off as sarcastic or angry or difficult ought to be what the experts in faculty development get paid to do."

Tranquilizers, though?  That might be in character.  "Eighty-six-proof anaesthetic crutches" are for corporate types.

At the moment, the document releases are getting considerable play from the usual suspects.

The Russians held back their most damaging intel on Clinton, not out of restraint, but to keep their leverage intact. That is not something a country does when it’s trying to stop someone from becoming president. That’s what they do when they want someone to become president.

Meanwhile, the report accuses the Obama-era intelligence officials of ignoring alternatives and forcing a predetermined conclusion that fit their political aims. The ICA authors, the report says, “had little choice but to ignore contrary evidence and attempt to force-fit weak evidence to make their case.”

The conclusion is unmistakable: The narrative that Trump was Putin’s puppet was politically manufactured, and the real concern should have been Clinton’s vulnerability to Russian blackmail. The intelligence was there. The Obama administration just didn’t want to admit it.

At post time, none of my go-to, more establishmentarian sources (National Review, Outside the Beltway) or reliably Trump-skeptical sources (Common Dreams, Reason) have commented on the new documents.  I have a pretty good guess what the Trump-friendly cable channel shows will be doing tonight.