Barack Obama is hitting back at the Trump administration for accusing the former president of treason.
Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, last week shared documents that she misleadingly claimed proved that the Obama White House manufactured intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election “to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”
The president seems keen on using this purported evidence of “sedatious” activity (as he inventively put it Tuesday) to force the national conversation off his perceived lack of transparency regarding the case of deceased sex criminal and his former friend Jeffrey Epstein.
The president on Sunday shared memes about imprisoning Obama. On Tuesday, he told a reporter with an Epstein-related inquiry that Gabbard’s story is what they “should be talking about” instead.
Later Tuesday, Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush responded to the attacks with a statement excoriating Trump’s allegations as “bizarre,” “ridiculous,” and “a weak attempt at distraction.”
“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,” the statement reads. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one.”
Rodenbush continues: “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,” he also points out, “were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee,” which was then chaired by Marco Rubio—meaning that, somewhat uncomfortably for Trump, Gabbard’s accusations of “treasonous conspiracy,” taken at face value, would implicate the second-highest-ranking official in his Cabinet.
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