Donald Trump Lashes Out At Barack Obama, Says He’s Involved In ‘Biggest Political Crime’ In US History
President Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out at former president Barack Obama, accusing him of knowledge of the “biggest political crime in history.”
In a Facebook post, Trump suggested the Senate or the House of Representatives needs to call in the 44th president to testify before either body.
“If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama. He knew EVERYTHING. Do it Lindsey Graham, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!” he wrote.
What crime Trump is calling on the South Carolina senator — or any of his colleagues in either legislative body — to investigate is unclear, as of this writing.
As Slate reported, Trump has been mentioning unspecified crimes supposedly committed by Obama for a few days now, sometimes referring to the matter as “Obamagate.”
Over the previous weekend, Trump tweeted several times about “Obamagate” and “the biggest political crime in history,” without mentioning what that supposed crime could be. When questioned about it by The Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker, Trump intimated there’s no ambiguity about the supposed crime.
“You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours,” Trump told Rucker.
.@PhilipRucker: You appeared to accuse Obama of a crime yesterday. What did he do?
TRUMP: "Obamagate."
RUCKER: What is the crime?
TRUMP: "You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody." pic.twitter.com/EUueidNwGp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 11, 2020
Slate writer Jeremy Stahl posited that “Obamagate” refers to a supposed 2016 incident of which Obama was never tied to any wrongdoing.
In March 2017, shortly after his inauguration, Trump tweeted that Obama had ordered his phones in his office at Trump Tower wiretapped, a claim that had appeared in Breitbart News.
At the time, Representative Devin Nunes, the then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee, promised to investigate. Some time later, then-FBI Director James Comey testified before the committee that neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice had any evidence supporting the idea that Trump’s phones had been wiretapped, the Associated Press reported.
Two years later, in April 2019, Trump revisited the allegation, this time appearing to concede that no crime was committed and intimating instead that he was not being literal, that his allegations were made on a hunch, and that they were “insignificant.”
However, in August 2019, as The Hill reported, Trump said the allegation of wiretapping “turned out to be true.”
As of this writing, Senator Graham has not responded to Trump’s appeal to call Obama to testify.
