By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of "treason" on Tuesday, blaming him, without providing evidence, for leading an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign.
While Trump has frequently attacked Obama by name, the Republican president has not since returning to office in January gone this far in pointing the finger at his Democratic predecessor with allegations of criminal action.
A spokesperson for Obama did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During remarks in the Oval Office, Trump leaped on comments from his intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, on Friday in which she threatened to refer Obama administration officials to the Justice Department for prosecution over an intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
She declassified documents and said the information she was releasing showed a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 by top Obama administration officials to undermine Trump.
"It's there, he's guilty. This was treason," Trump said on Tuesday. "They tried to steal the election, they tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever imagined, even in other countries."
An assessment by the U.S. intelligence community in 2017 concluded that Russia, using social media disinformation, hacking and Russian bot farms, sought to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign and bolster Trump. The assessment determined that the actual impact was likely limited and showed no evidence that Moscow‘s efforts actually changed voting outcomes.
A 2020 bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee had found that Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort, the WikiLeaks website and others to try to influence the 2016 election to help Trump's campaign.
TRUMP UNDER PRESSURE
Trump has frequently denounced the assessments as a “hoax.” In recent days, Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a fake video showing Obama being arrested in handcuffs in the Oval Office.
Trump has been seeking to divert attention to other issues after coming under pressure from his conservative base to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Backers of conspiracy theories about Epstein have urged Trump, who socialized with the disgraced financier during the 1990s and early 2000s, to release investigative files related to the case.
Trump, asked in the Oval Office about Epstein, quickly pivoted into an attack on Obama and Clinton.
"The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold," Trump said. "What they did to this country, starting in 2016 but going up all the way to 2020 and the election, and they tried to rig the election, and they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that."
Trump suggested action would be taken against Obama and his former officials, calling the Russia investigation a treasonous act and the former president guilty of "trying to lead a coup."
"It's time to start, after what they did to me, and whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Obama has been caught directly," he said.
Democrats, responding to Gabbard last Friday, had called her accusations false and politically motivated.
Democratic Congressman Jim Himes posted on X in response to Trump's Oval Office allegations against Obama: "This is a lie. And if he's confused, the President should ask @SecRubio, who helped lead the bipartisan Senate investigation that unanimously concluded that there was no evidence of politicization in the intelligence community's behavior around the 2016 election."
Former Republican Senator Marco Rubio is now Trump's secretary of state.
Obama has long been a target of Trump. In 2011 he accused then-President Obama of not being born in the United States, prompting Obama to release a copy of his birth certificate.
(Reporting By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick Editing by Ross Colvin and Deepa Babington)
