() President Donald Trump said criminal prosecutors should charge President Barack Obama and other Democrats, citing a report from his Director of National Intelligence that accused the Obama administration of engaging in a conspiracy.
Trump repeated allegations of wrongdoing from his political opponents during a press conference with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., as the two leaders prepared to discuss trade.
The president began unprompted remarks on the Obama administration and the allegations after being asked about the Jeffrey Epstein files that have not been released and the Department of Justice’s efforts to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell.
The president referenced a memo from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, which used declassified emails to suggest that the Obama administration “manufactured” Russian collusion during the 2016 election. Gabbard has referred the issue to the Justice Department.
“Based on what I read, and I read pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. He started it. President Biden, Comey, Clapper,” Trump said when asked who should be prosecuted.
The memo released by Gabbard used declassified emails regarding two intelligence reports to allege that Obama instructed his national security team to create a new intelligence assessment about Russian interference that she says contradicts earlier assessments.
But the two reports Gabbard bases her claim on deal with two different aspects of Russian interference in U.S. elections, drawing two different conclusions based on the type of election interference being analyzed.
One assessment focused on election infrastructure, concluding that there was no threat of Russia interfering with election infrastructure or changing vote tallies.
The other report that Gabbard has called contradictory does not focus on infrastructure and instead addresses Russian efforts to influence the election using social media disinformation, hacking campaigns and bots to encourage distrust in U.S. democracy.
Trump attacked both Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying they were criminal actors and acted “seditiously.”
The president also fell back on claims that the 2020 election was rigged, despite there being no proof of interference in the election and multiple legal challenges were rejected.
“They caught President Obama absolutely cold,” Trump said.
The conclusions made by Trump and Gabbard also run contrary to a bipartisan study on conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was signed by all members of the committee, including now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
