White House Escalates Attack on Obama, Relitigating 2016 Grievances
'This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This has to do with the integrity of our Democratic republic and American voters,' Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during an unusual appearance in the press briefing room.
The campaign to revisit the 2016 election and its aftermath responds to grievances the president has nursed for eight years over what he considers to be unfair treatment by the intelligence community – feelings of being wrongly targeted that inflamed his distrust of the government he has set out to remake. He has repeatedly focused on the issue in recent days, with Gabbard declassifying two batches of election-related investigative documents in less than a week.
On Wednesday, she and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt batted away criticism that elevating what they described as fresh findings in the case was an effort to deflect attention from Trump's own political struggles. Trump is under steady attack, including by some of his allies, for his administration's handling of the release of Justice Department files concerning the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Gabbard spent more than 13 minutes detailing what she claimed was a 'years-long coup' by Obama-era officials against Trump that laid the groundwork for nearly a decade's worth of efforts to undermine, impeach and prosecute him. Gabbard said she had referred recently declassified documents to the Justice Department and FBI for criminal investigation, including into Obama.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said it would be launching a 'strike force' to assess evidence to support the criminal referrals and determine the next legal steps, though any effort to prosecute Obama would face formidable legal hurdles.
'We will investigate these troubling disclosures fully and leave no stone unturned to deliver justice,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Gabbard's appearance at the White House to denounce former senior government officials whom Trump considers political enemies appeared to be an unprecedented act for a serving senior intelligence official, who are supposed to remain apolitical. Gabbard pledged at her Senate confirmation hearing to check 'my own views at the door' and deliver intelligence without bias or political influence.
Trump himself has not been shy about his desire for retribution.
'Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people,' he said during a lengthy diatribe against Obama on Tuesday, speaking in the Oval Office while the visiting president of the Philippines sat by and watched.
A major Supreme Court ruling in 2024 granted presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecutions for acts committed while they are in office. Even if the Justice Department found that Obama committed any wrongdoing, as Gabbard alleges, courts could dismiss charges if they determined that his actions were committed while he was carrying out the responsibilities of being president.
Trump hailed that high court decision when it was released because it made it harder for the Justice Department to prosecute him on charges that he tried to subvert the results of the 2020 election. Now it could, in turn, thwart his efforts to go after his predecessors. Other federal officials might be shielded in other ways. And, as with any investigation, federal prosecutors would need to present their case to a grand jury to determine if sufficient evidence exists to bring any charges.
The gist of the White House attack is that Obama and top officials of his administration wrongly tried to connect Trump with Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election. It's unclear whether any of the allegations, even if they were proven, would amount to a violation of a criminal statute.
Obama's office on Tuesday issued a rare statement admonishing Trump, calling the allegations 'bizarre' and 'ridiculous.'
Earlier Wednesday, Gabbard declassified an eight-year-old intelligence report by congressional Republicans that sought to cast doubt on a key element of the probe of Russia's 2016 election interference, the latest step in a campaign by her, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Trump to portray the Russia investigation as a 'hoax.'
The previously secret 2017 report by Republican staff on the House Intelligence Committee confirmed spy agencies' findings that Russian intelligence services, acting on President Vladimir Putin's orders, interfered in the 2016 contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
But the report asserted that the spy agencies were wrong in determining that Putin developed a preference for Trump and aspired to help. The Republicans said that assessment was based on weak or questionable intelligence. Former Democratic officials described the 2017 report as a partisan document that does not accurately reflect U.S. intelligence officials' work to unravel Russia's election interference.
The assessment by U.S. spy agencies that Putin hoped to see Trump elected has long been the most contentious aspect of their report on Moscow's actions in the 2016 election, which was released in January 2017. But it has been upheld by several investigations, including a years-long bipartisan probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the report of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Mueller concluded that Russian government actors successfully hacked computers and obtained emails from people associated with Clinton's campaign and Democratic Party organizations to sow discord in the United States, hurt Clinton and help Trump.
The 46-page report that Gabbard released Wednesday contains an investigation by Republican staff working for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California), who was then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The panel was riven by partisan tensions at the time, and the probe ultimately concluded that the spy agencies' finding that Putin wanted Trump to win was based on intelligence reports that contained flawed information or were subject to multiple interpretations.
Nunes currently works as CEO of Trump's social media company, Truth Social.
'These failures were serious enough to call into question judgments that allege Putin 'developed a clear preference for candidate Trump' and 'aspired to help his chances of victory' and that 'Russian leaders never entirely abandoned hope for a defeat of Secretary Clinton,'' the report says.
After Obama in late 2016 called on U.S. intelligence agencies to deliver an assessment of Russia's actions in the just-concluded U.S. presidential contest, his CIA chief, John Brennan, ordered that 15 previously unpublished intelligence reports based on information from CIA agents be published internally. Three of those reports were flawed, but those three became the foundation of the conclusion that Putin aspired to help Trump win, the House Intelligence Committee report said, adding that some CIA officers questioned how solid they were.
Brennan did not immediately respond to a request for comment relayed via an aide.
The House intelligence report stated that the assessment that Putin favored Trump's election was based on 'one scant, unclear and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from a single' human source. The sentence fragment – 'whose victory Putin was counting on' – was the only classified information cited by the assessment for its conclusion, the report stated. The report cited a senior CIA operations officer saying of the fragment, 'We don't know what was meant by that' and 'five people read it five ways.'
But Michael van Landingham, a former CIA Russia analyst and one of the assessment's lead authors, said the source was 'very reliable and well-regarded' and that analysts familiar with the source material believe it clearly indicated Putin wanted Trump to win – something a CIA assessment said was consistent with raw intelligence. Further, he noted, a recent CIA tradecraft review of the assessment found that the assessment authors' 'interpretation of [the clause's] meaning was most consistent with the raw intelligence.'
Susan Miller, a retired CIA officer who led the compiling and writing of the January 2017 intelligence assessment, disputed the House report's findings on the underlying intelligence. 'We had all the good sourcing. We did exactly what should have been done,' she said.
'We had very, very exquisite access,' Miller said of the CIA's sources in Russia. 'There's no doubt,' she said, that Moscow tried to influence the election in Trump's favor.
Trump praised Gabbard's work on the Russia investigation, a sharp contrast to his public rebukes of her last month over her statements that Iran's leaders had not actively sought to build a nuclear weapon.
The top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees denounced her release of the report.
'It's appropriate that this shoddy and partisan report was released by Director Gabbard on the day that House Republicans are quite literally fleeing Washington, DC for six weeks rather than releasing the Epstein files that Trump is so desperate to cover up,' said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Connecticut), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Times
4 hours ago
- Japan Times
Akazawa returns to U.S. for more talks as tariff deal looks shaky
A trade deal reached by Japan and the United States after months of talks has turned out to be exceedingly fragile, as it emerged that the two countries view the handshake agreement very differently . The lack of formal documentation and slow implementation by the United States of a key tariff concession have left open the possibility that there's not much of deal to begin with . 'The recent Japan-U.S. agreement regarding U.S. tariff measures does not constitute a legally binding international commitment,' economy and fiscal policy minister Ryosei Akazawa told a Lower House budget committee hearing on Monday. Akazawa, Japan's chief negotiator in talks with the United States who shook hands with U.S. President Donald Trump to signal the agreement, departed Tokyo again on Tuesday evening for a four-day trip to Washington. Just two weeks after his triumphant mission-accomplished moment, Akazawa is back in the U.S. for a ninth round of talks. Under the terms of the July 22 deal, the U.S. will impose a 15% 'reciprocal' tariff on most Japanese goods — up from the current 10% but lower than the 25% Washington threatened to impose. Implementation of this portion has been set for Thursday . Also agreed upon was that Trump's tariffs on automobiles were to be cut in half from 25%, with the new total being 15% when a 2.5% levy independent of the Trump tariffs is included. The White House put out a fact sheet soon after the two sides reached the agreement, and the Japanese government issued a four-page powerpoint slide with an outline of the agreement. Among the discrepancies found between the two documents was the implementation of a $550 billion investment pledged by Japan. The U.S. president said Japan will invest at least that amount and at his direction, and that the United States would keep 90% of the profits. Japan said all it had agreed to was to provide loans, loan guarantees and equity investment up to that total through financial institutions backed by the government, and that direct equity investment will be just 1%-2% of the $550 billion. Japanese officials, including Akazawa and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, have repeatedly said there's no plan to issue a joint statement with the United States of any sort. 'There are pros and cons of drafting an agreement document. And because the cons outweigh the pros and it would not serve Japan's national interest, the decision was made not to issue a formal agreement document,' Ishiba told the Lower House on Monday. He said the government will consider releasing more details of the agreement in the coming days. Japan views auto exports as vital to its economy and wants the U.S. to cut the tariff on cars as soon as possible. | Reuters The United Kingdom has a written agreement with the U.S. outlining its trade deal as negotiated with the Trump administration, but the European Union and South Korea do not. In its fact sheet, the EU noted in a bold font that the deal it reached with the U.S. is 'not legally binding.' Richard Katz, an economist and author of 'The Contest for Japan's Economic Future,' said Japan is likely hoping that 'if we don't put the agreement in writing, we don't have to fulfill Trump's demands. 'It can evade the promises Trump may think Japan made — or that Trump is just making up now — all while insisting that Japan is fulfilling its part of the bargain.' The Trump administration has yet to issue a direct order to lower the levies on Japanese vehicles. Auto manufacturing is seen by Japan as a business at the core of its economic interests, and its insistence that the United States lower the rate or eliminate the new duty altogether on cars became a major sticking point during negotiations. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned that tariff rates could "boomerang" back to 25% if Trump is 'unhappy' with the implementation of the deal — specifically the $550 billion of investment by Japan into the U.S. One thing that the two sides do have mutual understanding on, according to Akazawa, is the need to ensure the other side lives up to its commitments. 'We have been asking the U.S. to sign the necessary presidential order to lower tariffs on automobiles as soon as possible, and the U.S. side also wants to move forward while reaffirming a shared understanding of the agreement,' Akazawa told an Upper House meeting before his departure. 'We will press for the prompt issuance of a presidential order on auto and auto parts tariffs, even if it's just a day sooner,' he added. "What we are asking for is very simple — just for the president to issue an executive order setting automobile tariffs at 15%,' Akazawa said in Tokyo just before leaving for the airport on Tuesday. 'It's not that there are complicated negotiations or tactics involved.'
Japan Times
6 hours ago
- Japan Times
'Not a normal person': Ishiba shoots from the hip when it comes to Trump
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has found himself in a unique position in Japan's staid political world. As he fights for his political survival, Ishiba — known for being a straight shooter — is calling things as he sees them. On Monday, he offered his views of U.S. President Donald Trump and the American leader's negotiating tactics — colorful comments that were unusual for their candor but not widely reported in Japan. '(Trump) is not a normal person. He's someone who changes the rules,' Ishiba said in response to demands in parliament by opposition parties that the government draft a formal document to put in writing the recent trade deal Japan sealed with the U.S. that lowers onerous tariffs. 'We are most concerned that creating such a document will delay the reduction of tariffs,' he added. Although Ishiba's comments did not appear to be a criticism, it is extremely unusual for a sitting prime minister to publicly speak about the leader of the United States, Japan's top ally, in a manner that could be construed as such. Japan is a top economic and security partner with the United States and hosts some 55,000 American troops that serve as a bulwark against rivals such as China. While Japanese leaders have at times been known to be critical of their U.S. counterparts, these views have almost universally been kept under wraps by officials working to keep relations on an even keel. It was not immediately clear what Trump had thought of the remarks, or if he even knew of them. In the past, however, the mercurial U.S. president has relished being labeled as America's 'dealmaker-in-chief.' As he fends off demands to resign, Ishiba may feel that he has little to lose in shooting from the hip, especially when it comes to Japan's trade interests. The prime minister has been targeted by some in his ruling Liberal Democratic Party for its thumping in the July 20 Upper House election. That loss saw the LDP and Komeito bloc lose their majority in the upper chamber following the October loss of its majority under Ishiba's leadership in a Lower House poll. Although calls for his head have grown steadily quieter in recent days, Ishiba has continued to justify the necessity for him to stay at the country's helm by claiming that he must shepherd the U.S. trade deal through to implementation. Trump, for his part, has largely moved on from Japan after his dramatic announcement of the trade deal to focus on other headline-grabbing issues such as the war in Ukraine. Still, Ishiba's remarks — as well as his administration's insistence that Trump quickly sign an executive order to bring an agreed-to 15% tariff rate on automobiles into effect — have the potential to become an irritant for the notoriously thin-skinned U.S. president. Japan's top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, was set to visit Washington from Tuesday to push for more details on the deal. A perhaps more likely scenario, however, is that Trump simply views Ishiba and his team as savvy and tough negotiators. Indeed, this is not the first time that the prime minister has had harsh words for the U.S. side. At an election rally on July 9, Ishiba delivered a fiery rebuke of Trump's trade demands, framing the tariff talks as 'a battle for national interests.' 'We will not be disrespected,' he said, in comments that raised eyebrows in Japan. 'We must say what we need to say, fairly and squarely, even to our ally.'
The Diplomat
6 hours ago
- The Diplomat
Malaysia Agreed to $150B in Purchases as Part of US Tariff Deal: Minister
Despite the White House's release of updated tariff figures last week, there is much still to be negotiated between Washington and its trade partners. Late last week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced updated tariff rates for 67 nations, including nine from Southeast Asia, which are set to come into effect on August 7. However, given the unpredictability of the Trump administration and the speed of the negotiations that preceded last week's announcement, there is a lot that we don't know about these figures, and how they will affect each nation's trade with the U.S. For instance, while most Southeast Asian nations succeeded in negotiating a reduction in the tariff rate to around 19-20 percent, it still remains unclear specifically what each agreed to. It is also unclear what exemptions might apply to their major exports to the U.S. and whether other geopolitical conditions may have been slipped into the trade discussions. As James Guild wrote recently for The Diplomat regarding the deals with Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, which were announced prior to last week's announcement, 'many important details are missing. In fact, many of the countries on the other side of these deals quickly made it known they viewed things a bit differently than President Trump.' Yet, as the days go by, further details are emerging about what each nation put on the table during the rapid trade negotiations with the Trump team. Speaking to parliament yesterday, Malaysia's trade minister offered some details about how his nation managed to secure a reduction in its tariff, from 25 percent to 19 percent. In comments to parliament, Reuters reported that Tengku Zafrul Aziz said that Malaysian negotiators have agreed to spend up to $150 billion over the next five years to buy equipment from U.S. multinationals, in order to address the trade imbalance between the two countries. This includes agreements for state energy firm Petroliam Nasional Berhad to buy liquefied natural gas worth $3.4 billion a year. As Reuters reported, Malaysia 'will also commit to $70 billion in cross-border investments in the United States over the next five years.' He confirmed that Malaysia had also agreed to remove its tariffs on more than 98 percent of U.S. goods. Last year, Malaysia had a trade surplus of around $24.9 billion with the U.S., according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Tengku Zafrul said that the two countries were finalizing a joint statement covering the commitments that had been made, which also included tariff exemptions that Malaysia managed to secure on its pharmaceutical products and semiconductor exports to the U.S. In his address to parliament, the minister warned that semiconductor chips may still be subject to additional tariffs under U.S. tariffs on the grounds of national security. 'Therefore, we need to continue to be prepared for any possible additional tariffs imposed on the semiconductor industry,' he said. He added that the country was seeking similar exemptions for important raw materials, including cocoa, rubber, and palm oil, but that these had not yet been finalized. While Tengku Zafrul's comments bring some clarity to Malaysia's situation, it also highlights the challenge of negotiating trade agreements, which often take years of negotiations, on such a short time scale. Another area of considerable uncertainty that has been kicked down the road involves transshipped goods. Trump's tariff announcement included a blanket 40 percent tariff on any goods deemed to have originated in China. Like much else, it is still unclear how (and by whom) the provenance of goods will be established and verified. Lurking behind the uncertainty about the specifics of the deal, there is the larger uncertainty about whether the tariffs will even be in place in a month, a year, or a decade's time. One writer in Free Malaysia Today argued today that Malaysian policymakers should not panic, assuming that the tariffs are 'an assertive, yet unstable, use of executive power' that might not last. 'The current tariff wave is not a permanent reordering of trade architecture,' the op-ed argued, 'it is a phase of legal and political experimentation.' As such, the article argued that Malaysia should avoid making knee-jerk concessions to Trump. However long the tariffs are in effect, the short-term 'wins' that Trump has secured through the brute leveraging of U.S. economic power will likely be outweighed by the long-term drain of U.S. influence, as Southeast Asian governments seek out more predictable and 'like-minded' trade partners.
