Team MAGA is going all-in on trying to make Tulsi Gabbard’s half-baked Obama conspiracy stick.
As President Donald Trump was facing his own supporters’ fury over the administration’s failure to provide new evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein case, Gabbard announced last week she had uncovered a “treasonous conspiracy” involving Obama.
In a series of social media posts, the director of national intelligence accused former President Barack Obama of “politicizing” and “weaponizing” intelligence back in December 2016, in order to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup” against Trump.
The basic thrust of the new claims is that Obama used the lame-duck period at the end of his presidency to kickstart what Trump calls the “Russia Hoax.” After the election, Obama directed the intelligence community to investigate Russia’s potential meddling, “contradicting” previous assessments, Gabbard wrote.
The previous assessments that Gabbard cited, however, found that Russia had not hacked electronic voting machines—not that Russian President Vladimir Putin hadn’t interfered in the election at all.
Gabbard nevertheless wrote that she was sending all the documents to the Department of Justice, and White House officials breathlessly reposted the non-scandal.
Trump shared a fake video made with artificial intelligence that showed Obama being hauled out of the White House in handcuffs and then pacing a jail cell in an orange jumpsuit.
Now, other key MAGA figures are jumping on board trying to accuse Obama—whose most notorious presidential scandal may have been wearing a tan suit—of masterminding a “seditious coup.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said during an interview with CBN News that Congress was considering opening an investigation and could subpoena Obama, adding that he “had no concerns” about calling in a former president to sit for a deposition.
“If it’s uncomfortable for him, he shouldn’t have been involved in overseeing this, which is what it appears to us has happened,” he said.
Retired Gen. Michael Flynn told MAGA provocateur Benny Johnson that the possibility of Obama facing a military tribunal “ought to be explored,” given the president’s role as the commander-in-chief.
Far-right influencer and podcast host Matt Walsh also called for Obama’s arrest, saying that if Gabbard’s claims are true—which they “obviously” are—Obama “should be in handcuffs.”
Perhaps hinting at the reality-check that got the Trump administration into the Epstein mess, he continued on the latest episode of The Matt Walsh Show, “You cannot allege a treasonous conspiracy and then do nothing about it... Go arrest these people and bring them to justice.”
This despite the fact that a massive bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded in 2020 that Russia had “engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election” in Trump’s favor.
A 2018 House investigation, which was led by Republicans, reached a similar conclusion, though it didn’t specify that Russia’s interference aimed to help Trump, CNN reported.
Some of Trump’s own allies, including his former national security adviser Mike Waltz, have said that Russia is trying to destabilize the U.S. by interfering in its elections, even as they deny that Trump has colluded with Putin.
John Ratcliffe, who was Trump’s director of national intelligence during his first term and now serves as his CIA director, said during his confirmation hearing that Russia had “meddled in or interfered with active measures in 2016,” CNN reported.
“They interfered in 2018. They will attempt to do so in 2020. They have a goal of sowing discord, and they have been successful in sowing discord,” he testified.
Just days before Gabbard conveniently shifted the narrative from Epstein to Obama, Ratcliffe issued a report praising the “robust” tradecraft and “analytic rigor” of the original intelligence assessment that Obama ordered.
