Analysis: Trump accuses Obama of treason, annotated
The claims confuse the allegation that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the idea that Russia actively tried to change results by hacking into voting systems. CNN's Jeremy Herb and Katie Bo Lillis went through them and talked to people who worked on a bipartisan Senate review of the 2016 election.
'Wildly misleading' is how the information was described by one source in their report.
But that didn't stop President Donald Trump from accusing former President Barack Obama of treason, a crime punishable by death in the US, when he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Tuesday. Trump made the accusation while appearing at an event to discuss trade with Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Trump's very long, meandering answer is a window into how his mind works. All roads lead back to immigration and his 2020 election loss.
Obama's office issued a rare statement in response:
'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. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,' said spokesman Patrick Rodenbush. 'These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. 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 were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.'
Here's a look at what Trump said, along with some context from CNN reporting.
QUESTION from reporter: Tulsi Gabbard has submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. From your perspective, who should the DOJ target as part of their investigation, what specific figures in the Obama administration?
TRUMP: Well, based on what I read, and I read pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. He started it. And Biden was there with them and (then-FBI Director James) Comey was there and (then-Director of National Intelligence James) Clapper. The whole group was there — (then-CIA Director John) Brennan. They were all there, the — in a room. Right here, this was the room.
(Trump said all of this in the Oval Office, which he has bedecked with gold filigree, portraits from the White House vault and a copy, behind a curtain, of the Declaration of Independence.)
TRUMP: This (the Oval Office) is much more beautiful than it was then, but that's OK. I have nice pictures up. They came out of the vaults. They were in there for 100 years. This is much more beautiful. We have the Declaration of Independence now in the room, which wasn't here. I guess people didn't feel too good about putting it here, but I do. But you know what? If you look at that — those papers, they have them stone cold, and it was President Obama. It wasn't lots of people all over the place — it was them too — but the leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him?
(From CNN's report: The new allegations from Gabbard lean on assessments before the election and statements from Obama-era intelligence officials finding that Russia did not alter the election results through cyber-attacks aimed at infiltrating voting systems. But the January 2017 intelligence community assessment never concluded that Russian cyberattacks altered the outcome of the 2016 election or compromised any election infrastructure in the first place, though state voting systems were probed.
Instead, the assessment focused on Russia's influence campaign ordered by President Vladimir Putin and cyber operations against US and Democratic Party officials, including the hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.)
TRUMP: And except for the fact that he gets shielded by the press for his entire life, that's the one they — look, he's guilty. It's not a question. You know, I like to say, 'Let's give it time. It's there. He's guilty.' They — this was treason, this was every word you can think of.
(Treason, the crime of trying to overthrow the government, could be punishable by death in the US. Even when the Department of Justice during the Biden administration accused Trump of election interference for trying to upend the 2020 election, it did not accuse him of treason.)
TRUMP: They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever even imagined, even in other countries. You've seen some pretty rough countries. This man (Marcos) has seen some pretty rough countries but you've never seen anything like it. And we have all of the documents. And from what I — Tulsi told me, she's got thousands of additional documents coming.
(We anticipate seeing them, although previously promised document dumps have failed to live up to expectations.)
TRUMP: So President Obama, it was his concept, his idea, but he also got it from crooked Hillary Clinton, crooked as a $3 bill. Hillary Clinton and — and her group, the Democrats, spent $12 million to Christopher Steele to write up a report that was a total fake report. Took two years to figure that out, but it came out that it was a total fake report, it was made-up, fiction. And they used that — now, the one thing they weren't able to do was to — and probably the only thing I respect about the press in years is the press refused to write it before the election, they refused to put it in. The Steele report was a disaster, all lies, all fabrication, all admitted — an admitted fraud. She paid $12 million, and the Democrats, for that report to a wise guy named Christopher Steele. He wrote a phony report, and they wanted to get that report in before the election.
(The Steele dossier has been discredited, but the larger conclusion of the US intelligence community that Russia tried to meddle in the US election has stood. So has the Mueller report's conclusion that there were interactions between Trump's campaign and Russians during the 2016 campaign. Mueller's report did not conclude that Trump's campaign colluded with Russians or that Trump committed a crime. It also did not exonerate him.)
TRUMP: And I'll tell you what, I talk about — all of the time — the fake news, how bad it is, but in this case, they wouldn't do it. They saw it, they read it, and they said, 'We don't believe it.' And it was only after — substantially, like, a month and a half after the election that it got printed and it was a big wisp — it was just like a bang of nothing, because the election had ended. If that report had gotten published by the New York Times or somebody — and I respect the Times for maybe only this cause they're crooked as you can be, they're a terrible paper, a crooked, corrupt paper — but for this one moment, they said, 'This is bullshit. We can't put this in.'
(At the time, few organizations published the full Steele dossier in large part because it could not be corroborated, unlike Russia's election meddling, which was documented by US intelligence agencies.)
TRUMP: And neither could any other pa — Wall Street Journal's a lousy paper, very, very dishonest paper. As you see, I'm suing them for a lot of money 'cause they do things very badly. It's a really — it's got a nice name but it's really — in my opinion, it's a terrible paper and it can be corrupt. But just so you know, they didn't take the Steele report. It was the dossier. Remember the famous dossier? I called it the fake news dossier. The news wouldn't publish it. And I'm amazed, they had two and a half months. It was finished two and a half months. That was supposed to be what was going to happen and it got published a couple of months after the election. And frankly, nobody cared too much about it. But that was a big thing.
(Related: Read CNN's 2021 report, The Steel Dossier: A reckoning)
TRUMP: No, no, we caught Hillary Clinton. We caught Barack Hussein Obama. They're the ones — and then you have many, many people under them. (Former national security adviser) Susan Rice. They're all there. The names are all there. And I guess they figured they're going to put this in classified information and nobody will ever see it again, but it doesn't work that way.
(There's no evidence for this type of conspiracy.)
TRUMP: And it's the most unbelievable thing I think I've ever read. So, you want to take a look at that and stop talking about nonsense, because this is big stuff. Never has a thing like this happened in the history of our country. And by the way, it morphed into the 2020 race and the 2020 race was rigged. And it was, it was a rigged election. And because it was rigged, we have millions of people in our country. We have — we had inflation. We solved the inflation problem.
(There's still no evidence the 2020 election was rigged. There's plenty of evidence that Trump tried to subvert the results. The inflation problem is not necessarily solved, especially if Trump's tariffs go into effect.)
TRUMP: But millions and millions of people came into our country because of that. And people that shouldn't have been — people from gangs, and from jails, and from mental institutions. People that we don't want in our country and people that we're getting out, dangerous people — 11,888 murderers. Many of them, 50 percent, more than 50 percent, murdered more than one person. I hate to say this with such a distinguished guest but, you know, they asked me a question. I got to answer the question.
(Trump frequently tries to claim a large portion of undocumented immigrants are murderers. There's no evidence for that. Read one of CNN's Fact Checks of Trump's claims about undocumented immigrants).
TRUMP: No, Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader. Hillary Clinton was right there with them, and so was sleepy Joe Biden. And so were the rest of them. Comey, Clapper, the whole group, and they tried to rig an election and they got caught. And then they did rig the election in 2020.
And then, because I knew I won that election by a lot, I did it a third time and I won in a landslide. Every swing state won the popular vote. But I won that all the same way in 2020 and look at the damage that was caused.
(Trump did win in 2024. It was far from a landslide.)
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