Under the gun over Epstein, Trump tries to finger Obama for ‘treason'
On Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), it was the Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos Jr who bore witness to a stunning display of temerity as the US president accused one of his predecessors, Barack Obama, of trying to engineer a coup and committing 'treason'.
The allegation, spurious as it is, arises from a document compiled by Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, alleging a 'treasonous conspiracy' by senior Obama administration officials in 2016 to wrongly assert that Russia interfered in the presidential election of that year, which Trump won.
In short, the dossier suggests intelligence officials changed their findings under political pressure from Obama and others, and embraced the narrative that Vladimir Putin's regime tried to swing the vote for Trump.
The 11-page memo disingenuously conflates different findings. Officials never alleged a Russian operation to hack voting systems; they did, however, come to the view that Russia backed Trump over Democrat rival Hillary Clinton and attempted to influence the election outcome in surreptitious ways.
That was also the conclusion of multiple investigations, including a lengthy Senate Intelligence Committee report signed in 2020 by Republicans, including now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
But Trump is now propagating the idea it was all invented at a December 2016 White House meeting, based on an email tasking intelligence chiefs to prepare an assessment 'per the President's request', referring to Obama.
'Obama's been caught directly. His orders are on the paper. The papers are signed,' Trump raged in the Oval Office. 'They have them stone-cold and it was President Obama. The leader of the gang was President Obama. Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him?'
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