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Former President Barack Obama is speaking out against President Donald Trump's claims that he committed "treason" amid the 2016 election by "manufacturing" evidence of Russian interference.
“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," a spokesperson for Obama said in a statement on Tuesday (July 22), per The Guardian. “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 [and now U.S. Secretary of State] Marco Rubio," the statement adds.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a report accusing Obama and other members of his administration of manufacturing intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election to "lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump."
Trump called for the Department of Justice to "go after" Obama and his administration officials as he fielded questions about his handling of the files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
“This was treason,” Trump alleged. “Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader. Hillary Clinton was right there with him and so was Sleepy Joe Biden, and so were the rest of them: [former FBI Director James] Comey, [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper, the whole group. They tried to rig an election and they got caught. And then they did rig the election in 2020. And then because I knew I won that election by a lot, I did it a third time and I won in a landslide."
Following Obama's statement, Gabbard claimed that more documents would be released on Wednesday (July 23), proving that the former president manufactured evidence suggesting that Russia helped Trump win the 2016 election.
“We will be releasing further documents tomorrow that will refute that statement," Gabbard said of Obama's rebuttal. “We will be pulling a whole host of statements that were made by the Obama administration, by Hillary Clinton, by senior Democrat officials, by their friends in the media that state, over and over again, after this January 2017 manufactured intelligence document was created, that repeat the narrative.”
“The legal path forward will be up to the Department of Justice to determine. However, I will say how essential it is as an American that we hold people accountable, no matter how powerful they are, no matter what position they have held," she added.
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