The Treason Allegations Against Obama

Ridiculous but still dangerous

On July 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a press release and report claiming that former president Obama and some of his senior intelligence officials had engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to “subvert president Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.” She said she had uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence about Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Those efforts, she claimed, “la[id] the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” Gabbard said she was supplying her evidence to the Department of Justice so that those involved in this alleged conspiracy could be brought to justice.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard at a White House news conference (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Attorney General Pam Bondi quickly fell in line, announcing that the Justice Department would form a “strike force” to investigate the allegations. (This phrase brought to mind Trump’s 2020 “elite strike force” of attorneys assigned to investigate the false allegations of election fraud after his loss to Biden. Most of those attorneys ended up being criminally charged, disbarred, or both.)

Not to be outdone, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the allegations. Trump himself responded by accusing Obama and other officials of treason, a crime punishable by death, and shared a fake video of Obama being handcuffed in the Oval Office and sent to prison. “He’s guilty,” Trump said of Obama. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

These allegations are so flimsy and ridiculous that I debated whether they are even worth writing about. The timing of resurrecting these events from nine years ago strongly suggests this is simply a transparent effort to change the subject and distract the public and media from the ongoing scandal involving the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. “Obama! Hillary! Comey!” — when in trouble, Trump always rolls out his greatest hits to fire up the base.

But despite how frivolous they are, the allegations predictably are now playing nonstop on Fox News and in right-wing social media, and are being repeated in more mainstream media by Trump’s allies. So in case you need something to show your MAGA relative who says he saw that Obama was recently charged with treason – here you go. Godspeed.

More seriously, even though the allegations are baseless, what they represent is something real and dangerous: Trump’s willingness to use the criminal justice system to “go after” – in his own words – his political enemies. As I’ve written before, it’s ironic that Trump routinely claims the justice system was “weaponized” against him. In reality, it’s under the current Trump administration that the true weaponization of the DOJ has begun.

Gabbard’s Misleading Memo About the “Russia Hoax”

Graphic used by Gabbard during her announcement

The memo released by Gabbard first summarizes various intelligence findings leading up to and shortly after the 2016 election. These reports generally concluded that Russia did not interfere with the election results by using cyber attacks to tamper with voting machines or otherwise manipulate the actual vote counts.

The memo then says that on December 9, 2016, the Obama White House convened a meeting of senior intelligence officials regarding Russian meddling in the election. It was already known at that time that Russia had hacked the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee and stolen files from them. Before leaving office, President Obama wanted a full report on the details of Russian interference in the election, including Russia’s methods and goals. (Presumably, and reasonably, the administration feared that once Trump took office he would have little interest in conducting such an investigation.)

The resulting Intelligence Community Assessment (“ICA”) was assembled quickly and released shortly before Trump took office. It concluded that Putin had conducted an influence campaign involving the 2016 presidential election with the goals of undermining U.S. faith in the democratic system, denigrating Hillary Clinton, and damaging her campaign. The report also concluded that Putin had a clear preference for Trump and aspired to help him win the election.

Gabbard charges that, based on Obama’s directive at the December 9 meeting, the various intelligence agencies altered their earlier findings. Whereas before they had said Russia did not interfere, in the final ICA they concluded that Russia did in fact meddle in the 2016 election. She claims officials also leaked these false claims to the press, resulting in news reports that Russia sought to tip the election to Trump. This “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Trump’s victory, she claims, ultimately led to the Mueller investigation, two impeachments, and pretty much everything else bad that happened to Trump during his first term.

The most fundamental problem with Gabbard’s report and referral is that she misleadingly conflates two different types of findings. The first set of findings related to whether Russia had the desire and ability to interfere with the election by hacking election infrastructure and actually altering the vote counts. The intelligence community concluded that did not happen. That conclusion stands today, and no reasonable person or agency argues that Russia actually manipulated the vote count.

(By contrast, as you’ll recall, it was the Trump administration, following his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, that embraced wild conspiracy theories about vote counts being altered in Biden’s favor by rigged voting machines or Italian military satellites - none of which were true. It’s remarkable how, once again, every accusation by this administration is really a confession.)

The second set of findings, embodied in the ICA, related to Russia’s efforts to influence the election through phony social media campaigns, the theft and release of emails from the Clinton campaign, and other efforts. Again, those conclusions still stand, and have been corroborated by multiple investigations. Special Counsel Robert Mueller (appointed by the first Trump administration) ultimately indicted about two dozen Russian intelligence agents for seeking to influence the election through computer hacking, releasing stolen documents, phony social media campaigns, and other efforts.

In addition, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was headed by Republicans and chaired by Marco Rubio, Trump’s current Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, released a five-volume report in 2020 on the Russian meddling. It said it had found “irrefutable evidence” of these Russian efforts to interfere in the election, while also saying it found no evidence that any votes were actually altered.

Gabbard’s referral misleadingly suggests that after the (still correct) intelligence conclusions that Russia had not hacked actual voting machines to alter votes, Obama pressured intelligence officials to alter their findings. They then reached the (also still correct) conclusion that Russia had sought to meddle in the election by other means. But this wasn’t an alteration of the findings, directed by Obama to undermine Trump’s victory. It was two different types of findings - both of which are still valid.

Obama’s office made this point when it issued a rare statement in response to the allegations:

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.

Exactly. Gabbard’s release doesn’t alter that conclusion — but it does seek to muddy the waters through misleading claims.

Gabbard’s “New” Evidence

Most of the information in Gabbard’s memo is not new. But the released information does include a couple of newly-declassified 2020 reports, one from the CIA and one from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, as well as a more recent review ordered by Trump’s CIA Director John Ratcliffe. These reports fault the CIA for giving too much credence in 2016 to reports that Putin’s goal was to help Trump win the election, although the reports do not otherwise dispute the findings about Russian interference.

In other words, the released reports agree that Russia meddled in the election to undermine faith in democracy and damage Hillary Clinton. They just argue there was insufficient intelligence to support the third conclusion of the ICA: that Putin wanted Trump to win. Gabbard claims that adoption of this apparently thinly-sourced conclusion about Putin’s motive is the key to the entire “treasonous conspiracy” to bring down the president.

But as the recent CIA review itself noted, even if the conclusion about Putin’s desires was not based on strong intelligence, it was a reasonable inference from all the evidence. In a two-candidate race, hurting Clinton necessarily equates to helping Trump win. And there is no question the Russians sought to hurt the Clinton campaign, including by hacking her campaign emails and giving them to Wikileaks – which began releasing them just as the “Access Hollywood” tape scandal exploded and threatened to sink Trump’s candidacy.

Perhaps, as the reports suggest, Putin was actually indifferent to who won the race. Or perhaps, like many people, he assumed Trump had no chance and his goal was just to dirty up the incoming Clinton administration as much as possible. Regardless, it is undisputed that Putin intended to, and did, interfere in the election in ways that hurt Trump’s opponent - which, by definition, helped Trump.

Although this wasn’t known at the time the ICA was prepared, Putin himself has since said he did indeed want President Trump to win the election. So even if the criticism of the conclusion based on the strength of the intelligence at the time is valid, the conclusion was in fact correct. Yet Gabbard suggests that including this ultimately correct conclusion about Putin’s motives was somehow the key to a conspiracy to undermine the entire Trump presidency.

Special Counsel? Been There, Done That

The calls for a special counsel by Trump sycophants Senators Graham and Cornyn are particularly shameful. They are eager to please Trump by agreeing that golly, yes, there sure seems to be a scandal here that needs to be investigated!

They must have forgotten that we already did that. Remember this guy?

Former special counsel John Durham

John Durham was a special counsel, appointed by Trump to investigate “Russiagate” and allegations of criminal misconduct surrounding the investigation of the Trump campaign for possible ties to Russia. Durham was charged with investigating the following:

whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump . . . .

Sure sounds like it would cover these “new” allegations, doesn’t it?

After a more than three-year investigation, Durham released his report in May 2023. Although he was critical of certain FBI practices and steps taken during the investigation into Russia and the 2016 campaign, he found nothing to support any criminal charges related to that investigation. The only conviction resulting from his investigation was a guilty plea to a misdemeanor by an FBI lawyer who admitted altering an email related to a warrant application. Durham prosecuted two men for allegedly lying to the FBI; both of those flimsy cases ended in embarrassing acquittals. He charged no one in the FBI, or any other intelligence official, with any crimes related to the gathering or use of intelligence about the 2016 election — the crimes that Gabbard is now alleging.

Gabbard apparently believes that during his wide-ranging investigation Durham somehow missed her “overwhelming evidence” of a conspiracy to undermine Trump by manipulating the Russia intelligence. Or maybe he covered it up and is part of the conspiracy himself?

Where’s the Crime?

Let’s assume that the assertion in the ICA that Putin wanted Trump to win lacked sufficient support. How does that translate into a criminal conspiracy? Gabbard leaves us guessing.

Try to follow the red strings connecting the dots here: By examining the extent of Russian meddling in the election, Obama supposedly was seeking not to understand what happened and to help prevent future meddling but to undermine Trump’s presidency. This conspiracy continued after Obama and his administration were out of office and out of power — apparently they were still pulling the strings. It somehow led to the appointment – by Trump’s own DOJ – of a special counsel, and to two impeachments for events completely unrelated to the 2016 election. And in the meantime, virtually all of the underlying facts that supposedly were invented by this treasonous conspiracy have been independently verified by Senate Republicans and a Trump-appointed special counsel.

So how did this conspiracy operate, exactly? No one knows. The Deep State works in mysterious ways. But you know what they say about a good conspiracy theory: if you can’t find any evidence that it’s true, that just proves how good the conspirators were at covering their tracks.

And what exactly is the alleged crime and how was it supposedly committed? Gabbard didn’t spell that out or cite any statutes that were allegedly violated, saying she would leave that to DOJ. Conspiracy is a crime, but it must be a conspiracy to commit a recognizable offense, and none is apparent here.

Treason is also a crime, of course, but it requires levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. Gabbard didn’t explain how an alleged mistake in an internal intelligence report gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Perhaps her definition of “treason” is doing anything that is critical of or embarrassing to president Trump. (That may, in fact, be Trump’s definition.)

Oh, and by the way – if this were a true criminal investigation, you wouldn’t announce it by issuing a report describing your evidence and holding a press conference. That’s not how criminal investigations work; you generally don’t say anything public unless and until there is an indictment, and certainly don’t publicly discuss your evidence before the investigation even begins. Rolling out the accusations through a press event just further highlights that this is political, not criminal.

I hesitate to even touch on these next points, because merely discussing them risks dignifying the suggestion that there were potential crimes here. But most of these events took place eight or nine years ago - well outside the standard five-year statute of limitations. How exactly would they be prosecuted? And thanks to president Trump and the Supreme Court, Obama would almost certainly be immune for any of the alleged actions, even if they were criminal.

The Real Danger: Abuse of the Justice System

Image posted by Trump on social media

Despite how ridiculous these allegations are, they do represent something more serious and dangerous. They follow other criminal referrals of former Obama officials such as FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan for vaguely-alleged crimes related to Trump investigations. In his second term Trump, surrounded by pliant officials at DOJ and the FBI, has no hesitation about using the criminal justice system to score political points and pursue perceived political enemies. These allegations and investigations aren’t based on the facts and the law, but on Trump’s political goals and personal grievances. Trump and his administration are using the power of the federal criminal justice system to serve the interests of one man: Donald Trump.

Trump’s failed nominee to be the U.S. Attorney for D.C, Ed Martin, is now the head of the “weaponization working group” at DOJ. He recently said that even if investigations did not find any criminal conduct, they could still be used to name and shame the subjects of their inquiries. That is not, of course, the role of the criminal justice system, but that is now the norm at Trump’s Department of Justice.

There is zero chance that any of these allegations will result in a provable criminal case that would sustain a conviction. But that doesn’t mean Trump and his DOJ can’t make life miserable for the targets of the allegations by conducting lengthy investigations, forcing them to hire attorneys, and continuing to make public accusations about their supposed misconduct to score political points.

These are the characteristics of an authoritarian regime, not of a constitutional system governed by the rule of law. Trump’s corruption of the justice system is the real scandal here.

Along with the Epstein files, of course. Ask your MAGA relative why those haven’t been released.