 "Former US President Barack Obama and US President-elect Donald Trump speak at an event in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 2025. File image/ Reuters")
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of “treason,” without providing evidence, for leading an effort to falsely link him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign.
While Trump has regularly targeted Obama by name, he has not gone so far as to accuse his Democratic predecessor of criminal action since taking office in January.
A representative for Obama did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
During his remarks in the Oval Office, Trump seized on statements made by his intelligence head, Tulsi Gabbard, on Friday in which she threatened to bring Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian influence in the 2016 election.
She declassified documents and said the information she was releasing showed a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 by top Obama administration officials to undermine Trump.
“It’s there, he’s guilty. This was treason,” Trump said on Tuesday. “They tried to steal the election, they tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever imagined, even in other countries.”
An assessment by the US intelligence community in 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign and bolster Trump. The assessment determined that the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow‘s efforts actually changed voting outcomes.
A 2020 bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee had found that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 election to help Trump’s campaign.
Impact Shorts
View AllTrump under pressure
Trump has called the assessments a “hoax” on many occasions. Trump has been reposting a fake video of Obama being arrested in handcuffs in the Oval Office on his Truth Social account in recent days.
Following pressure from his conservative supporters to provide further details regarding Jeffrey Epstein, who committed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, Trump has been attempting to shift the focus to other matters.
Supporters of Epstein conspiracy theories have encouraged President Trump, who socialised with the disgraced billionaire in the 1990s and early 2000s, to disclose investigation files on the case.
When questioned about Epstein in the Oval Office, Trump swiftly shifted his focus to attacking Clinton and Obama.
“The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold,” Trump said. “What they did to this country, starting in 2016 but going up all the way to 2020 and the election, and they tried to rig the election, and they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that.”
Trump suggested action would be taken against Obama and his former officials, calling the Russia investigation a treasonous act and the former president guilty of “trying to lead a coup.”
“It’s time to start, after what they did to me, and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama has been caught directly,” he said.
Democrats, responding to Gabbard last Friday, had called her accusations false and politically motivated.
Democratic Congressman Jim Himes posted on X in response to Trump’s Oval Office allegations against Obama: “This is a lie. And if he’s confused, the President should ask @SecRubio, who helped lead the bipartisan Senate investigation that unanimously concluded that there was no evidence of politicization in the intelligence community’s behavior around the 2016 election.”
Former Republican Senator Marco Rubio is now Trump’s secretary of state.
Obama has long been a target of Trump. In 2011 he accused then-President Obama of not being born in the United States, prompting Obama to release a copy of his birth certificate.