21 hours ago
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Former Florida MAGA Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed in a TV interview that former President Barack Obama was seeking a third term in office through a Hillary Clinton-led administration when she ran for the White House in 2016.
Clinton won the popular vote but ultimately lost the election to President Donald Trump, who secured his victory through his win in the Electoral College.
Gaetz made the comments during an appearance on the Newsmax show, Finnerty, when asked about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s allegations that Obama directed the creation of a false intelligence assessment by James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, his CIA director, in January 2017 to try to delegitimize Trump's incoming presidency.
Gabbard has been criticized for acting as a “weapon of mass distraction” for the Trump administration, keen to change the news cycle, having been rattled by fury from supporters over its handling of the Epstein files and the renewed interest in Trump’s long-term friendship with the late sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
The director of national intelligence is accused of trying to get back into the president’s good books over their public disagreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program and had “concocted these theories to do so,” according to Democratic Rep. Jason Crow.
Nevertheless, Gabbard’s accusations of treason are red meat for the MAGA base, keen for any attack on Clinton and Obama, even if they are likely to amount to little.
“President Obama essentially ordered a hit on the American democracy. And if they're going to prosecute Donald Trump for bringing home some boxes, maybe they should prosecute Barack Obama for trying to bring home the presidency with him,” Gaetz told Rob Finnerty, referencing the Mar-a-Lago documents case brought against Trump.
“What they were trying to do was kneecap the new administration coming in. And you can only imagine how furious Obama must have been. They took away his third term in Hillary Clinton.”
Gaetz, who withdrew himself for consideration to be Trump’s attorney general when it became obvious his nomination would fail, continued, reiterating Gabbard’s allegations: “He assembles the team, and he makes the call. [Former FBI Director James] Comey executes it from the inside. Clapper and Brennan, they facilitate this corrupt relationship with the media, where they breathlessly say that there are all these assessments showing that Trump is an agent of the Russian government.”
He added: “And if there's no accountability on this, it will absolutely happen again. That's why I'm so excited that the great folks leading the Department of Justice right now have a strike team that they have assigned to this project, and I expect indictments.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi was left “blindsided and annoyed” by Gabbard’s sudden crusade against Obama, according to one news report, having been “given little warning” of her colleague’s actions, which have placed her “in a nearly untenable position.”
The DOJ has since formed a “strike force” to look at Gabbard’s findings. Trump has admitted that his push to have the Supreme Court rule on presidential immunity likely means Obama cannot be prosecuted, but Comey, Clapper, and Brennan have no such protection from charges.
“The real question is what Congress will do, because Gabbard and [CIA Director John] Ratcliffe have put on paper what witnesses have told them,” Gaetz said. “We don't know how those witnesses are going to perform in open court in front of Congress. But I think that getting more of this out into the open is the better path.
“When you try to hold it all back, that's where people lose confidence. They lose faith that anything is going to really happen. And so, I would be willing to put those witnesses up and answer questions.”
While Gaetz thinks Congress should issue subpoenas now, he admits that the Justice Department will likely tell them to hold off while they develop a case.
Part of the DOJ’s reticence to act quickly may stem from the reaction to Gabbard’s accusations and supposed evidence against the former president and his advisers.
Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, described Gabbard’s supposed findings as a “partisan, previously scuttled document” and told The Hill: “Releasing this so-called report is just another reckless act by a Director of National Intelligence so desperate to please Donald Trump that she is willing to risk classified sources, betray our allies, and politicize the very intelligence she has been entrusted to protect.”
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, slammed Gabbard’s report. A frequent Trump critic, Bolton said Gabbard’s findings were “exaggerated” and lacking in substance.
“She’s strung together a series of things that aren’t necessarily related, she’s exaggerated what actual congressional reports have said, she’s imagined evidence that doesn’t exist,” Bolton told NewsNation.
“So, if anybody really gets into it, it collapses pretty quickly. But as a campaign to save her job, I think it actually worked out pretty successfully for her,” he continued.
Susan Miller, a former CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment, said Gabbard was “lying.”
“We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected,” Miller told NBC News, adding that intelligence officials had briefed Trump on their findings and he had thanked them.
“At the same time, we found no two-way collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at that time,” she said.
Obama’s office issued a rare public statement denouncing Gabbard’s allegations, with a spokesperson saying: “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.”
Multiple assessments have supported the intelligence community’s original conclusion of a broad, one-way Russian influence operation that aimed to boost Trump through tactics like hacking Democratic party materials and spreading disinformation online, even though the Trump campaign itself was not shown to have collaborated on the effort.
Special counsels have examined both the underlying “Russiagate” claims and the origins of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign without discovering any deliberate “coup” by the Obama administration.
Indeed, a bipartisan 2020 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee — which now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio was leading at the time — concluded intelligence officials put together a “coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
During the 2024 election, Trump and allies promised to eliminate politicization from the federal government, especially intelligence and law enforcement. They claimed he was a victim of a partisan backlash, having faced two impeachments, multiple indictments, and criminal cases, including a felony conviction on 34 counts.
However, since taking office, Trump has been accused of increasing politicization by sanctioning law firms working with political opponents and calling for the criminal prosecution of critics.
