President Donald Trump baselessly accused former president Barack Obama and others of illegally plotting against him, calling it “treason” and declaring: “It’s time to go after people.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday during a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Trump listed Obama, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence John Brennan and others who he accused of plotting against him and attempting to “rig the election.”
“After what they did to me, whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people,” Trump said from the Oval Office as he repeated a baseless claim former President Barack Obama and other officials had engaged in treason.
Trump was not making his claims for the first time, but he delivered them when administration officials are harnessing the machinery of the federal government to investigate the targets of Trump’s derision, including key officials responsible for scrutinizing Russia’s attempts to intervene on Trump’s behalf in 2016.
Trump’s tirade unfolded against the backdrop of a new report from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that represented his administration’s latest attempt to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation, which has infuriated him for years.
The report, released Friday, downplayed the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election by highlighting Obama administration emails showing officials had concluded before and after the contest that Moscow had not hacked state election systems to manipulate votes in Trump’s favor.
But Obama’s Democratic administration never suggested otherwise even as it exposed other means by which Russia interfered in the election, including through a massive hack-and-leak operation of Democratic emails by intelligence operatives working with WikiLeaks, as well as a covert foreign influence campaign aimed at swaying public opinion and sowing discord through fake social media posts.
Democrats swiftly decried the report as factually flawed and politically motivated.
Russia’s broad interference in 2016 has been established through a series of investigations, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and a thorough 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report that was completed when the panel was led by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who’s now Trump’s secretary of state.
