
‘This was treason': Trump attacks Obama to deflect from Jeffrey Epstein backlash
He claimed Obama sought to undermine the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
The US intelligence community concluded that Russia sought to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign and bolster Trump.
US President Donald Trump accused former US president Barack Obama of 'treason' on Tuesday, accusing him, without providing evidence, of leading an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign.
A spokesperson for Obama denounced Trump's claims, saying 'these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction'.
While Trump has frequently attacked Obama by name, the Republican president has not, since returning to office in January, gone this far in pointing the finger at his Democratic predecessor with allegations of criminal action.
During remarks in the Oval Office, Trump leaped on comments from his intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, on Friday in which she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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She declassified documents and said the information she was releasing showed a 'treasonous conspiracy' in 2016 by top Obama administration officials to undermine Trump, claims that Democrats called false and politically motivated.
'It's there, he's guilty. This was treason,' Trump said on Tuesday, though he offered no proof of his claims.
They tried to steal the election, they tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever imagined, even in other countries.
Donald Trump
An assessment by the US intelligence community published in January 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign and bolster Trump.
The assessment determined that the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow's efforts actually changed voting outcomes.
A 2020 bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee had found that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 election to help Trump's campaign.
'Nothing in the document issued last week (by Gabbard) undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes,' Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement.
Trump, who has a history of promoting false conspiracy theories, has frequently denounced the assessments as a 'hoax'.
In recent days, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a fake video showing Obama being arrested in handcuffs in the Oval Office.
Trump has been seeking to divert attention to other issues after coming under pressure from his conservative base to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Backers of conspiracy theories about Epstein have urged Trump, who socialised with the disgraced financier during the 1990s and early 2000s, to release investigative files related to the case.
Trump, asked in the Oval Office about Epstein, quickly pivoted into an attack on Obama and Clinton.
'The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold,' Trump said.Trump suggested action would be taken against Obama and his former officials, calling the Russia investigation a treasonous act and the former president guilty of 'trying to lead a coup'.
'It's time to start, after what they did to me, and whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Obama has been caught directly,' he said.
Democratic Representative Jim Himes responded on X: 'This is a lie. And if he's confused, the President should ask @SecRubio, who helped lead the bipartisan Senate investigation that unanimously concluded that there was no evidence of politicisation in the intelligence community's behaviour around the 2016 election.'
Former Republican Senator Marco Rubio is now Trump's secretary of state.
Since returning to office, Trump has castigated his political opponents whom he claims weaponised the federal government against him and his allies for the 6 January 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters and his handling of classified materials after he left office in 2021.
Laura Cavanaugh and Handout/various sources/AFP
Obama has long been a target of Trump.
In 2011 he accused then-President Obama of not being born in the US, prompting Obama to release a copy of his birth certificate.
In recent months, Trump has rarely held back in his rhetorical broadsides against his two Democratic predecessors in a way all but unprecedented in modern times.
He launched an investigation after accusing former President Joe Biden and his staff, without evidence, of a 'conspiracy' to use an autopen, an automated device that replicates a person's signature, to sign sensitive documents on the president's behalf.
Biden has rejected the claim as false and 'ridiculous'.
Gabbard's charge that Obama conspired to subvert Trump's 2016 election by manufacturing intelligence on Russia's interference is contradicted by a CIA review ordered by Director John Ratcliffe and published on 2 July, a 2018 bipartisan Senate report and declassified documents that Gabbard herself released last week.
Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The documents show that Gabbard conflated two separate US intelligence findings in alleging that Obama and his national security aides changed an assessment that Russia probably was not trying to influence the election through cyber means.
One finding was that Russia was not trying to hack US election infrastructure to change vote counts and the second was that Moscow probably was using cyber means to influence the US political environment through information and propaganda operations, including by stealing and leaking data from Democratic Party servers.
The January 2017 US intelligence assessment ordered by Obama built on that second finding: That Russian President Vladimir Putin authorised influence operations to sway the 2016 vote to Trump.
The review ordered by Ratcliffe found flaws in the production of that assessment.
But it did not contest its conclusion and upheld 'the quality and credibility' of a highly classified CIA report on which the assessment's authors relied.
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San Francisco Chronicle
21 minutes ago
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Trump just floated a tax idea that would hugely benefit California homeowners
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Mike Thompson, D-Napa, said via email that there are areas of the state and nation where rising property values 'are making the capital gains tax a barrier for many empty nesters and retirees seeking to sell their homes or downsize. This has worsened California's housing crisis, leaving too many houses off the market … As Ranking Member of the (House) Tax Subcommittee, I support solutions that would address these issues, including raising the current exemption for the capital gains tax." Considering how many tax breaks Congress just granted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it's not clear how much support there is for legislation that would mainly benefit wealthy homeowners. Double the exemption? A more modest bill, the ' More Homes on the Market Act,' would double the existing exemptions to $500,000 for singles and $1 million for couples and index them to inflation. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Santa Cruz, reintroduced the bill in February after it died in 2023, despite having broad bipartisan support. In an emailed statement, Panetta said, 'It's a good thing that the President is finally acknowledging the seriousness of the affordable housing issue…' and that he is 'willing to work with anyone on solutions for my constituents…especially when it comes to our bipartisan bill.' Asked whether he favors eliminating the capital gains tax on homes, his office said Panetta would first have to review any such legislation and the analysis. Doubling the exemption would wipe out the tax for most homeowners, but 'in the Bay Area and California, you would need to quadruple it, to $2 million,' DeLeon said. Since May 1997, the median price of a single-family home nationwide has risen by almost 250% to $441,500, according to National Association of Realtors data. But in California, it shot up 386% to almost $900,000, and in San Francisco County, it soared about 500% to $1.75 million, based on California Association of Realtors data. The old rules Freeing up inventory was also one of the main reasons behind the tax law change in 1997. Under the old law, when sellers made a profit on their primary residence, the tax was deferred (not forgiven) if they purchased a replacement home within a specified time and the new house cost at least as much as the sales price on the old home. A homeowner could continue rolling the untaxed profit from one house to another, as long as they kept buying more expensive homes. If and when they sold a home, all of the accumulated untaxed gains would become taxable. If they left it to their heirs, the gains up until the owner's death generally would escape capital gains tax because of the step-up in basis. The old law also let people 55 or older sell their primary home and exclude up to $125,000 (married or single) in accumulated profits, but only once in a lifetime. As a result, homeowners had to keep meticulous recordkeeping from every house they owned. Some lawmakers and academics believed the law created distortions in the market, such as discouraging homeowners from downsizing, moving into rental housing or from higher-cost to lower-cost markets as their circumstances changed. The new rules The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 was intended to reduce these distortions, stimulate sales, simplify recordkeeping and eliminate capital gains taxes for almost all homeowners. It exempted the first $250,000/$500,000 in profits from capital gains tax, whether or not the seller bought a new house. Profit is what's left after you subtract what you paid for the house and eligible improvements from your sales price minus commissions and other selling expenses. Taxpayers with gains under the limits generally do not have to report the sale on their tax return. Any profit over the exemption is taxed as a capital gain. The federal rate on long-term capital gains is 0%, 15% or 20% depending on income. That's lower than the rate on 'ordinary income,' such as from a job or self-employment. A large taxable gain from the sale of a home could also trigger an additional 3.8% 'net investment income tax.' A bulge in income can also force some seniors to pay substantially more for Medicare for one year. California also excludes the first $250,000/$500,000 from the sale of a primary home, but it taxes capital gains just like ordinary income, at rates up to 13.3%. Homeowners can use this exemption as often as every two years, as long as each home has been their primary residence for at least two out of five years before the sale. What happened after 1997? Initially, the new law did eliminate tax for the vast majority of homeowners, but as home prices soared, so did the number who owed tax. Between 2000 and 2003 – a few years after the rule change – only about 38,000 home sales per year nationwide, or 1.3% of all existing home sales, had gross capital gains (excluding homeowner improvements) that exceeded $500,000, according to Cotality. By the end of 2023, almost 230,000 homes or 7.9% of all home sales nationwide – and almost 29% in California – were over the limit. A study commissioned by the National Association of Realtors found that 34% of homeowners today could already exceed $250,000 in capital gains and 10% have potential gains above $500,000. Those numbers could be 56% and 23%, respectively, by 2030 and nearly 70% and 38% by 2035. 'These outdated (exemption) thresholds are already distorting the housing market and locking up inventory, and it is getting worse every year,' the association wrote. What research says Several academic studies found that the tax law change in 1997 did increase housing turnover, and may have contributed to the sharp runup in home prices from the early 2000s until 2008, when the bubble burst. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 'played a significant role in facilitating the boom in the residential real estate market that began shortly after its enactment,' Pete H. Oppenheimer, then a professor at the University of North Georgia, wrote in a 2014 paper. It created an opportunity for homeowners to receive tax free income when they resold their principal residences, which made homeownership more attractive and caused the real estate market to 'expand in volume and price,' he added. It also helped 'real estate investors and professionals to achieve tax free income … by converting rental property into a personal residence.' 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When he left his job at the University of Southern California to teach at the University of Cincinnati, Painter kept his home near Long Beach and rented it out because he didn't want to pay capital gains tax, but also in case he wanted to return to California one day. It's not just capital gains tax Capital gains are not the only culprit locking up inventory. Many homeowners with mortgages around 3% are reluctant to move, now that rates are hovering around 6% to 7%. That is the 'big 1,000-pound gorilla that has reduced mobility," Painter said. And in California, many sellers would face a big increase in their property tax assessment if they sold a long-held home and bought another. Proposition 19, passed by voters in 2020, was supposed to boost inventory by making it easier for people 55 or older to transfer their assessment from their current home to a new one, thus avoiding or reducing a property-tax increase. It also made it harder for children to keep a parent's low property tax base on an inherited home. It appears that more Bay Area seniors did move after Prop. 19 took effect, at least in the first few years. But results varied by county and the effects wore off over time. In Contra Costa, requests by seniors for Prop. 19 transfers went from around 200 per year before 2020 to about 1,000 a year after two years, but since then has tapered off to around 600 a year, said Gus Kramer, the county's assessor. In Santa Clara County, Prop. 19 'has been a lot less successful than anticipated. The biggest negative by far is capital gains,' DeLeon said. Unintended consequences If Congress eliminated capital gains tax on homes, Painter believes more people would move out of California. For people contemplating a move, losing their low property-tax base 'is not an issue, but (capital gains) taxes are. This would be an opportunity to cash in on their equity,' he said. And instead of making homes more affordable, it could increase prices. 'More generous tax treatment of homes could bid up home prices on the demand side, exacerbating concerns about housing affordability,' Joseph Rosenberg , a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said via email. San Francisco Chief Economist Ted Egan concurs. 'The expectation of reduced taxes upon sale would likely result in modest upward pressure on housing prices in places, like San Francisco, where profits on home sales often exceed the threshold,' he said via email. 'This in turn would lead to a modest increase in property taxes.'


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