Trump admin leans into unsubstantiated claims Obama committed ‘treason’

The Trump administration says former President Obama sought to undermine Trump through faulty claims.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has again pushed unsubstantiated claims that former President Barack Obama committed treason by falsely tying him to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

Speaking at the White House on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that Obama and key allies had misled the public and manipulated intelligence to undermine Trump.

Asked if she believed Obama had committed treason, Gabbard said it was up to the Department of Justice to bring criminal charges, but said that the actions of Obama and his allies could “only be described as a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an effort to undermine President Trump’s administration”.

Trump has frequently pushed baseless claims about his political rivals and threatened them with persecution. He has also remained fixated on past grievances, promoting allegations that he has been undermined by murky forces and repeating the false claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 election.

His administration has recently come under increased pressure from members of his own right-wing base, some of whom have been disappointed with his administration’s handling of information about disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump has said that he wants Obama, who served as president before Trump’s first term in office, to face “accountability”.

“It’s there; he’s guilty. This was treason,” Trump said on Tuesday, pushing accusations widely denounced as baseless. “They tried to steal the election, they tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever imagined, even in other countries.”

Asked about those comments on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not specify what actions Trump would like to see.

“It’s in the Department of Justice’s hands and we trust them to move the ball forward,” she said.

During her remarks on Wednesday, Gabbard also named several figures from the Obama administration, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan.

A spokesperson for Obama has previously said that Trump’s “bizarre” claims of treason are “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction”.

Trump faced allegations of attempting to overturn his loss in 2020 through anti-democratic means after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to prevent the certification of the election results based on false claims pushed by Trump that the election had been “stolen” through massive fraud.

Source:

Al Jazeera and news agencies