Donald Trump on Tuesday accused his predecessor Barack Obama of treason and called for his prosecution over a report alleging that officials in the Democrat's administration manipulated information on Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to a report published Friday that asserted the Obama officials had been part of a "treasonous conspiracy."
Gabbard claimed Obama and his team had manufactured intelligence regarding Russian election interference to "lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump."
Her accusations were widely criticized as they fly in the face of findings by four separate criminal, counterintelligence and watchdog probes between 2019 and 2023 -- all of which concluded that Russia did intervene on Trump's behalf in the 2016 election.
The Republican leader was asked whom the department should target over Gabbard's report during an Oval Office press event with visiting Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.
"Based on what I read -- and I read pretty much what you read -- it would be President Obama. He started it," said Trump, who was criticized on Monday for sharing an AI-generated video of Obama being arrested.
Trump also singled out Obama's then-vice president Joe Biden, former FBI director James Comey, former DNI director James Clapper and ex-CIA director John Brennan as being part of a conspiracy.
But he said the "leader of the gang" was Obama, accusing him of being guilty of "treason."
Trump has claimed since they were launched that the various probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election -- and his own campaign's involvement -- were a "hoax."
Trump's latest remarks were dismissed by his opponents as an attempt to shift focus away from the mushrooming crisis around the administration's failure to release files connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case.
They drew an angry rebuke from Obama's office, which said they were "ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction."
"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," Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said.
A bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee -- spearheaded by then acting chairman Marco Rubio, now Trump's secretary of state -- found in 2020 that the Trump campaign sought to "maximize the impact" of leaks of Democratic documents stolen by Russian military intelligence.
The aim of the hack, it said, was to help Trump and hurt Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.
"The Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 US electoral process, and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era," the report said.
