Obama blasts 'bizarre' Trump claim of 2016 election 'treason'
Trump's comments on Tuesday came as he faced questions from reporters about late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial.The president's administration has been facing pressure from his own political supporters to release more information about the well-connected convicted paedophile.US House speaker shuts down chamber to block Epstein vote"The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold," Trump told reporters."It's time to go after people, Obama's been caught directly," he added."He's guilty. This was treason. This was every word you can think of," Trump said.His comments came as he hosted Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the Oval Office.Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said: "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."
Friday's report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified emails between Obama aides, and argued they had suppressed intelligence findings that Russia had failed in probing attempts to hack US election databases.A declassified copy of a president's daily briefing prepared by US security service chiefs for Obama weeks after Trump beat Clinton and dated 8 December 2016 said: "We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure."But the FBI dissented from the findings it had initially co-authored, and a meeting was held at the White House a day later with top officials, according to the report.Afterwards an aide to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper emailed intelligence chiefs asking them to create a new assessment "per the president's request" detailing the "tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election".Gabbard alleged the emails showed evidence of a "treasonous conspiracy" to harm Trump, and she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the justice department for prosecution.But Obama's spokesman said in his statement on Tuesday: "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."The US intelligence community published an assessment in January 2017 concluding that Russia had sought to damage Clinton's campaign and boost Trump in the vote three months earlier.US officials found this effort had included Russian bot farms on social media and hacking of Democratic emails, but they ultimately concluded the impact was probably limited and did not actually change the election result.A 2020 bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee also found that Russia had tried to help Trump's 2016 campaign.Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a senator at the time, was among the Republicans who co-signed that report.The first two years of Trump's first presidency were overshadowed by an investigation from his own justice department into whether he had conspired with Russia to sway the 2016 outcome.The resulting Mueller report found a lack of evidence that Trump or his campaign co-ordinated with the Kremlin, and no-one was ever charged with such crimes.A subsequent special counsel inquiry found the original FBI probe had lacked "analytical rigor" and acted on "raw, unanalysed and uncorroborated intelligence".
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