Former President Barack Obama's office issued a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump on Tuesday after the president accused his predecessor of having committed "treason" and rigging the 2016 and 2020 elections.
"Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response," Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said. "But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction."
When reporters on Tuesday asked Trump about the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he pivoted to what he called Obama's "criminality."
“After what they did to me — and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly,” Trump told reporters. “What they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It’s criminal at the highest level. So that’s really the things you should be talking about.”
“Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question,” Trump added. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”
Trump was referring to claims made by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in social media posts and television appearances that they had found Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence and conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
Gabbard posted on social media on Friday that she was making a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
At an event with congressional Republicans later Tuesday, Trump praised Gabbard and again accused Obama of being part of an effort to rig the elections. “These are vicious, horrible people,” he said of the former president and others.
Rodenbush said the Trump administration is being misleading about the information it's using to push its claims.
"Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio," Rodenbush said.
Asked to comment on Obama's statement, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, "The White House is appreciative of Director Gabbard’s commitment to transparency and effort to end the weaponization of government against American citizens.”
Gabbard alleges the documents show that Russia did not seek to interfere in the 2016 election for Trump's benefit, despite numerous investigations that showed otherwise.
“On Dec 8, 2016, IC officials prepared an assessment for the President’s Daily Brief, finding that Russia 'did not impact recent U.S. election results' by conducting cyber attacks on infrastructure. Before it could reach the President, it was abruptly pulled 'based on new guidance.' This key intelligence assessment was never published,” Gabbard wrote in one post.
The Obama administration, however, never claimed that Russian cyberattacks impacted the election results. “I can assure the public that there was not the kind of tampering with the voting process that was of concern … the votes that were cast were counted — they were counted appropriately,” Obama said from the White House, days after receiving the December 2016 brief to which Gabbard referred.
The Obama White House said that Russia sought to interfere in the campaign by leaking hacked documents and using bots and troll farms to spread misinformation about the election — a finding that was later backed by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and a Senate report.
Another special counsel, appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr and championed by Trump, investigated claims that the Russia-related investigations were politicized for over three years. John Durham's report was critical of the FBI's handling of the probe, saying that it found senior "FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor toward the information they received" — but nothing to the level of criminality now alleged by Trump.
The Senate report, meanwhile, was unequivocal about Russia's actions.
“The Committee’s bipartisan Report found that Russia’s goal in its unprecedented hack-and-leak operation against the United States in 2016, among other motives, was to assist the Trump Campaign. Candidate Trump and his Campaign responded to that threat by embracing, encouraging, and exploiting the Russian effort," the report said.
Democratic lawmakers said the administration is trying to rewrite history in order to assuage Trump.
“This is just another example of the DNI trying to cook the books, rewrite history, and erode trust in the intelligence agencies she’s supposed to be leading,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a statement.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California told NBC News on Monday that “it’s all a distraction."
"[T]hey’ll release anything if it buys them another day or two to not talk about Epstein or to get the angry mob to talk about Epstein,” Aguilar said.
The Russia investigation is only one of a number of old grievances that Trump has revived in recent days while coping with backlash from MAGA supporters about the handling of the Epstein case.
Trump has used his Truth Social platform to accuse his old foe Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., of breaking the law and shared AI-generated mug shots of various Democratic officials who've been Republican bogeymen over the years.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, released thousands of files related to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on Monday and announced it had sent a redacted report to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, about the FBI’s handling of files related to “former-FBI Director James Comey’s failed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of highly classified information” during Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
