Published 18:14 IST, May 14th 2020
What is Obamagate? Here's what US President Donald Trump's latest attack theory entails
Over the weekend, Trump started tweeting a huge number of stories and theories after Obama, in a private call, criticized Trump's handling of the coronavirus
Advertisement
US President Donald Trump has slammed his predecessor Barack Obama and his aides, including former Vice President and potential Democratic challenger to Trump's re-election bid Joe Biden, for alleging that he had conspired with Russia to win the 2016 elections.
Advertisement
Trump's Obamagate allegations
Over the weekend, President Trump started tweeting and retweeting a huge number of stories and theories after Obama, in a private call, criticized President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News. Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”
President Trump then launched into a series of accusations, including one which stated that Obama was the first-ever President to criticize his successor's administration and another, by a right-wing podcaster Buck Sexton who claimed that the Obama administration, during the transition period, made attempts to sabotage Trump's administration. Trump later said that it was "The biggest political crime in American history, by far!".
Advertisement
During a press briefing, Trump was asked about the exact crime he was accusing Obama of, and he said, "Obama gate, it has been going on for long time. It's been going on for before I even got elected and it's a disgrace that it happened and if you look at what's going on and if you look at now, all of this information that is being released, and from what I understand it is only the beginning." However, when he was asked about what the crime was, he did not specify and said that the crime was "very obvious".
Advertisement
Trump's accusations have only increased after two Republican critics of the Russia investigation, Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, disclosed a list of names of Obama administration officials who they say may have received Flynn’s identity from intelligence reports in 2016 and 2017. Among the names is Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, who was vice president when the Russia probe began.
Advertisement
Biden and the other officials had full authority to seek the name of the unidentified American in the reports — it turned out to be Flynn — and did so through proper channels, according to Trump administration documents. Rather than reveal any actual wrongdoing, the release of the information by the president’s allies seems designed to create suspicion around Biden and other senior Democrats as the November election approaches.
14:15 IST, May 14th 2020