Trump Escalates Attacks on Obama and Clinton as Questions Swirl About Epstein

New York Times

22-07-2025

President Trump, under fire over his administration's handling of the Epstein files, escalated his distract-and-deflect strategy on Tuesday, accusing former President Barack Obama of treason and declaring, 'It's time to go after people.'
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump condemned questions about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as 'sort of a witch hunt,' and then launched into a rant against a now-familiar string of rivals and the media.
'The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama,' Mr. Trump said, referring to a report from Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, that tried to undermine the eight-year-old assessment that Russia favored his election in 2016.
'Obama was trying to lead a coup,' Mr. Trump said. 'And it was with Hillary Clinton.'
Mr. Trump's extended digression, which came during a visit with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, was a stark example of his campaign of retribution against an ever-growing list of enemies that has little analogue in American history.
It even prompted a rare response from Mr. Obama's office.
'These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,' said Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for Mr. Obama. '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.'
Ms. Gabbard's report, which claimed there was a 'treasonous conspiracy' by top Obama officials, contradicted a lengthy study by the Senate Intelligence Committee that was signed by all Republican members of the committee, including Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state.
The Obama administration never contended that the Russians had manipulated votes; instead, the administration, and the Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded that Russia mounted a major effort to influence voters.
Still, in his remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Trump claimed that he could have sent Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state and another of his political rivals, to prison but chose not to. He said he would show no such leniency to Mr. Obama.
'I let her off the hook, and I'm very happy I did, but it's time to start after what they did to me,' Mr. Trump said. 'Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Obama's been caught directly.'
The president then listed even more enemies he wanted his Justice Department to target, including his former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
'It would be President Obama,' Mr. Trump said. 'He started it, and Biden was there with him, and Comey was there, and Clapper, the whole group was there.'
'He's guilty,' he said of Mr. Obama. 'This was treason. This was every word you can think of.'
Trump's campaign to exact revenge against his perceived enemies has taken many forms. Over the past six months, he has pulled protective details from former colleagues facing death threats from Iran. He has revoked or threatened to revoke the security clearances of Mr. Biden, members of his administration and dozens of others. His administration has taken steps to target members of the media seen as unfriendly, taken the hatchet to entire agencies perceived as too liberal and fired or investigated government workers deemed disloyal.
The re-examination of the intelligence around the 2016 election began with John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, ordering a review of the agency's tradecraft that went into the intelligence community assessment in December of that year.
The review was deeply critical of the Obama administration and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan. C.I.A. analysts took issue with the speed of the assessment and accused Mr. Brennan of allowing an unverified dossier prepared by a former British intelligence officer to influence the assessment.
But Mr. Brennan has long denied that the so-called Steele dossier had any impact on the assessment, and other former officials said that the analysts working on the report paid no attention to it, maintaining that it was unverifiable rumor.
Mr. Ratcliffe wrote on social media that the review had shown that the process was corrupt, and then he made a criminal referral to the F.B.I.
Last week, Ms. Gabbard issued another report that criticized the findings of the intelligence assessment even more directly.
Ms. Gabbard's report suggested that in the winter of 2016, intelligence officials under pressure from the White House changed their assessment from one that Russia had failed to mount a significant effort to hack election infrastructure to one that the Kremlin was trying to boost Mr. Trump and denigrate Mrs. Clinton, the democratic nominee.
But Ms. Gabbard's report conflated two different intelligence findings. Intelligence officials had concluded that Russia had not engaged in any major effort to hack election systems and change votes. But they also believed that Russia had tried to influence the election in various ways by releasing hacked documents to harm Mrs. Clinton and sow dissent.
Ms. Gabbard has also called for several Obama officials to face criminal investigation, without naming them.
Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.