Former President Barack Obama’s office issued President Donald Trump’s rare responsibilities on Tuesday after the president accused his predecessor of rigging the 2016 and 2020 elections as “treason.”
“By respecting the presidency, our office usually doesn’t give dignity in response to the constant nonsense and misinformation that flows from this White House,” Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said. “But these claims are outrageous enough to deserve one. These strange allegations are ridiculous and weak attempts of distraction.”
When reporters on Tuesday asked Trump about Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender who died, he pivoted on what he called Obama’s “crime.”
“After what they did to me and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to chase people. Obama was caught directly,” Trump told reporters. “What they did in 2016 and 2020 is a very criminal. It’s a criminal at the highest level. That’s what you’re really supposed to be talking about.”
“Look, he’s guilty. That’s not a problem,” Trump added. “This was treason. This was all the words you could think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”
Trump was referring to allegations by National Intelligence Director Tarsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe in social media posts and television appearances where he discovered Obama administration officials manipulated information and conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election victory in 2016.
Gabbard posted on social media on Friday that he was referring to the Department of Justice.
Rodenbush said the Trump administration is misleading the information it uses to promote its claims.
“The documents issued last week conclude the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but failed to manipulate the vote. These findings were confirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Election Committee led by then-chairman Marco Rubio,” Rodenbush said.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said he was asked to comment on Obama’s statement. “The White House is grateful for Superintendent Gabbard’s commitment to transparency and efforts to end the government’s weaponization of American citizens,” he said.
Gabbard argues the documents show that Russia did not attempt to interfere in the 2016 election in Trump’s interests, despite numerous investigations that have shown otherwise.
“On December 8, 2016, IC officials prepared an assessment of the president’s daily outline, finding that Russia “had no impact on recent US election results” by carrying out a cyberattack on infrastructure. Before reaching President, Gabbard wrote in one post, “we were suddenly pulled based on new guidance. This important intelligence rating was never published.”
However, the Obama administration did not argue that Russian cyber attacks had an impact on the election outcome. “We can assure the public that we haven’t tampered with the voting process of concern… the votes voted were counted – they were counted properly,” Obama said from the White House just days after receiving the December 2016 summary, which Gabbard mentioned.
Former President Barack Obama and former woman Michelle Obama confirmed Vice President Kamala Harris in a new video posted on Harris’ YouTube channel on Friday.
The Obama White House said Russia attempted to interfere with the campaign by leaking hacked documents and using bots and troll farms to spread misinformation about the election.
Another special adviser, appointed by the then Power of Attorney Bill Barr and defended by Trump, investigated allegations that Russia-related investigations had been politicized for more than three years. John Durham’s report was critical of the FBI’s handling of probes, saying “FBI officials show a serious lack of analytical rigor over the information they receive,” but there is nothing at the level of crime Trump is currently claiming.
Meanwhile, the Senate report was clear about Russia’s actions.
“The commission’s bipartisan report found that Russia’s goal in the unprecedented Hack and Leak operation against the United States in 2016 was to support the Trump campaign. Candidate Trump and his campaign responded to the threat by embracing, encouraging and exploiting Russian efforts,” the report states.
Democrats said the administration is trying to rewrite history to soften Trump.
“This is another example of DNI trying to cook books, rewrite history and erode trust in the intelligence agency that she is supposed to lead,” says D-Va. Senator Mark Warner said in a statement.
“It’s all a distraction,” Speaker Pete Aguilar, the Caucus Speaker of the California House of Representatives Democrats, told NBC News Monday.
“[T]I’ll release anything if I don’t talk about Epstein or buy them to talk about Epstein to an angry mob,” Aguilar said.
The Russian investigation is just one of many old complaints that Trump has recently revived, dealing with backlash from Magazine supporters over his handling of the Epstein case.
Trump used his true social social media platform to share mug shots generated by AI of his old enemies, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif, law-breaking and various Democratic officials who have been a longtime Republican bogeymen.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced on Monday it released thousands of files related to the assassination of Martin Luther King JR and sent a compiled report to Sen. Chuck Grassley of R-Iowa.
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