Trump accuses Obama of ‘treason' over 2016 election in stunning attack
Donald Trump
in
the Oval Office
. Yes, they are entering the sanctuary of arguably the most fabled political office in the world. But they are also entering the stream of consciousness of Donald J Trump himself, bystanders and props in whatever subject on which he feels the need to vent.
On Tuesday, it was the turn of the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. After a few civil remarks about the historic and economic relations between the nations and an inevitable trade agreement, Marcos was invited to sit back and watch as his host accused a former US president,
Barack Obama
, of 'treason' and 'sedition'.
The president spoke quickly and fluently and at length and managed to not once mention the name of the ghost who hangs over a stagnant summer week in Washington, DC, Jeffrey Epstein. The clamour, from Republican Maga supporters and several prominent legislators, to release the files into the public domain will not die down.
Over on Capitol Hill, House speaker Mike Johnson called an early summer recess rather than take a vote on the issue of releasing the files on the investigation into the late financier. Meanwhile, it was announced that the Department of Justice would seek to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the former English newspaper baron Robert Maxwell, and a former girlfriend of Epstein's, at her Florida prison. She is currently serving 20 years for sex trafficking minors in consortium with Epstein. She remains the lone conviction in the Epstein investigation.
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President Trump cocked an ear when this issue was brought up in the Oval Office before launching into a surreal attack on the 44th president.
'I don't know anything about it,' Trump began when Ghislaine Maxwell's name bounced around the walls of the Oval Office – a weird moment in itself.
'They're going to what ... meet her? Yeah, I don't know about it but I think it is something that sounds appropriate to do.'
Among the officials involved in that interview would be Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's personal attorney during last year's Manhattan trial and now the deputy attorney general of the United States.
President Donald Trump and president Ferdinand Marcos Jr of the Philippines speak in the Oval Office of the White House. Photograph: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
'I have no concern,' Trump said in relation to that.
'He's a very talented person. He's very smart. I didn't know that they were going to do it. I don't really follow that too much. It's sort of a witch hunt. The witch hunt you should be talking about is they caught president Obama absolutely cold. Tulsi Gabbard. What they did to this country starting in 2016 but going up to 2020 – they tried to rig the election. And they got caught. And there should be very severe consequences for that. After what they did to me, whether it is right or wrong it is time to start going after people. Obama has been caught directly. His orders are on the papers. The papers are signed. They were highly classified. And what they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It is criminal at the highest level.'
The 'papers' referenced by Trump related to last week's report issued by Tulsi Gabbard, his national security director, on the 2016 election that claimed to show 'a treasonous conspiracy' to insinuate Russian electoral voting interference designed to harm Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton that November.
Senior Democrats dismissed the report as error strewn and either inept or mischievous in its finding. Virginia senator Mark Warner, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, argued that the report mixed two distinct issues: Russian hacking into voting systems and Russian influence on public opinion.
'We're talking about apples and oranges,' Warner said.
'The Russians were not successful at manipulating our election infrastructure, nor did we say they were.'
Obama and Trump's most recent public interaction took place on the snowy January morning when they chatted and laughed amicably in their pew as they gathered with the other living presidents – George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden – for the funeral of Jimmy Carter.
But on a swampy July morning, Trump once again cast Obama as his nemesis and suggested that the former president should be the primary target of an investigation. It was an audacious diversionary tactic, like attempting to draw the crowd away from one circus by setting up another in the adjacent field and promising more lions, more fire-eaters.
'Well based on what I read – and I read pretty much what you read – it should be president Obama. He started it. And Biden – he was there with him. And Comey. Right here. This is the room. It is much more beautiful now, but that's okay. It's there. He's guilty. This was treason. This was ... every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody has ever even imagined.'
'This man', he said, remembering Marcos for a second, 'has seen some pretty rough countries but you have never seen anything like it. President Obama – it was his concept, his idea. But he also got it from Hillary Clinton, crooked Hillary Clinton. This is the biggest scandal in the history of our country. And it really goes on to even the autopen because it all relates to [the] same thing. It all started – the same sick minds. The autopen was used by people and Biden knew nothing about it.'
It was a stunning attack and one that could add to a complex mess that is of the Republicans' own creation. For the first time, the decision not to release the Epstein files has caused a serious breach of faith between Trump and prominent Maga figures. Now, he is promising an investigation into president Obama which he knows either will not happen or lead to nothing. Having called those supporters pushing for more clarity on the Epstein files 'stupid' last week, he now risks stretching their incredulity to breaking point.
Obama, who has remained above the fray to a degree that has frustrated many Democrats, issued a swift and scornful dismissal through his spokesperson, Patrick Rodenbush.
'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. 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.'
House speaker Mike Johnson affected the role of patient pastor as he made light of the Repubican rebellion. Photograph:By Tuesday evening, a gathering of Republican lawmakers was under way in the White House as president Trump heaped lavish praise on speaker Mike Johnson. In the morning, Johnson had defended his decision to announce summer recess a week early, announcing that 'there is no daylight between the White House and the House.'
But some Republicans have, for the first time, begun to ask questions which president Trump could do without. One of their number, Thomas Massie, is in outright revolt in his determination to have the Epstein files released. Johnson affected the role of patient pastor to a sometimes unruly flock as he made light of this rebellion.
'Some people I try to protect from themselves. They kick and scream and bite their own colleagues. I don't understand Thomas Massie's motivation. He could have brought his discharge petition any time over the past four-and-a-half years. I try to follow Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment – never speak ill of another Republican. My gosh, it's hard to do sometimes. Bless his heart. I don't know what else to say about it.'
Reagan's old edict has been one that Republican representatives and senators have followed devoutly through the first six months of this term. But for the first time now come whispers of discontent.
Meanwhile, old photographs and snatches of film keep lurching out of the 1990s, when Trump was just a big-haired scenester in Manhattan, out on the town with Epstein. The dead financier's brother, Mark, described them on Tuesday evening as 'best friends'. Mark Epstein has no issues about his late brother's guilt. But he believes he was murdered in the Manhattan correction centre.
Donald Trump's on-the-town times with Epstein were a full decade before the revelations into the financier's sexual abuse of minors were investigated. There has been no suggestion that Trump had knowledge of Epstein's crimes. But the entire saga and something about the idea of the release of the files has left him addled.
He has lost his grip on the narrative and it hovers now on the skyline over Capitol Hill like a massive, ominous hot air balloon that he cannot make disappear. The late night talkshow satirists are gleefully sharpening pencils. The jokes are incessant. And at the heart of this, unanswered questions as to who knew what about a monstrous dead guy who sexually abused minors while schmoozing with the 'elite' of American society a couple of decades ago.
One of those victims, Virginia Giuffre, the woman whose testimony was crucial in Epstein's 2019 arrest, took her own life in April, aged 41. Her name has scarcely been mentioned throughout this entire bleak fiasco.
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