President Donald Trump is once again pushing the widely disputed claim that Barack Obama attempted to stage a “coup” after the 2016 election, and insists those involved “must pay.”
In a flurry of posts on Truth Social, the president has returned to his familiar playbook of trying to distract his MAGA base from the ongoing fallout of the Epstein files by repeating unfounded accusations against Obama and former U.S. intelligence officials who concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
“The Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX is now TOTALLY UNDISPUTED! THE FACTS ARE ALL THERE, IN BLACK AND WHITE,” Trump posted Friday morning. “It is the biggest scandal in American History. The perpetrators of this CRIME must pay a big price. This can never be allowed to happen in our Country again!”
He then shared a video from The Daily Signal featuring right-wing historian Victor Davis Hanson accusing Obama-era intelligence leaders of conspiring to “destroy” Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton. “They must pay for the crime of the Century,” Trump added.
The renewed attacks stem from claims made earlier this month by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who cited newly declassified documents to allege a “treasonous conspiracy” by Obama and senior national security officials to fabricate Russian election interference in order to undermine the legitimacy of the results.
Gabbard alleged that Obama, as well as national security officials, engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” by manufacturing evidence of Russian interference at the 2016 election, and therefore trying to undermine the legitimacy of the results.
Gabbard accused Obama and his team of trying to lay the groundwork for “what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump” while presenting misleading information.
Gabbard’s claims rely heavily on an apparent contradiction regarding U.S. intelligence findings in Jan. 2017 that Russia ran an influence campaign to help Trump in 2016 and separate unfounded claims that Moscow successfully manipulated votes in favor of the Republcian.
However, the Obama administration never claimed Russia changed vote totals or hacked voting machines.
In 2020, a report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, which included the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also found that Russia had tried to help Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“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’s office said in response to Gabbard’s allegations.
Elsewhere, a number of Trump loyalists including Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino have reacted with glee after declassified documents showed the FBI investigated intelligence reports alleging Clinton approved a plan to try and vilify Trump by linking him to Vladimir Putin ahead of the 2016 election.
However, as noted by The New York Times, an annex to a 2023 report by Special Counsel John Durham suggests that this supposed approval from Clinton may have been out together by Russian spies.
The Truth Social posts from Trump attacking Obama came as the president continues to dig himself deeper into the furore about what he knows about the crimes of Epstein, the billionaire pedophile who died in Aug. 2019.
After years of claiming their friendship ended over a real estate dispute, Trump now says he cut ties with Epstein because the financier “stole” young workers from Mar-a-Lago.
“He took people. I say, ‘Don’t do it anymore,’ you know, they work for me,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “He took some others. Once he did that, that was the end of him.”
One of the women Trump alleged Epstein “stole” from him was Virginia Giuffre, a sex trafficking victim of Epstein’s who died via suicide in April.
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