Donald Trump would not say specifically what crime he was accusing Barack Obama of committing after tweeting over the weekend that the former president was behind the “biggest political crime in American history.”
As the Independent reported, Trump was pressed by a reporter at Monday’s press briefing on exactly what he meant with the allegation, though the president would not give specifics. Trump had taken aim at his predecessor in a series of tweets on Sunday as the president spoke out against the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and conviction of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
In one of Trump’s tweets, he replied to a conservative talk show host who claimed that “the outgoing president used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration.”
“The biggest political crime in American history, by far!” Trump replied to the tweet, not adding any details about what crime specifically he believed Obama may have committed.
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post pressed Trump about the tweet on Monday, asking him exactly what crime the former president had committed.
“Obamagate,” Trump replied.
“It’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened.”
After being further pressed to say more precisely what Obama had done, Trump again did not offer details.
“You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody,” Trump said.
“All you have to do is read the newspapers – except yours.”
Trump’s apparent claim of lawbreaking on the part of Obama came close to a day after a report that Obama had privately slammed the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the prosecution of Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contact with Russia. As The Inquisitr reported, leaked audio of a conference call with the Obama Alumni Association showed the former president saying there was no precedent for someone who had been charged with perjury “just getting off scot-free.” Obama warned the former members of his administration that the “rule of law is at risk.”
Others criticized the decision to drop the case against Flynn after his guilty plea, especially after Trump had publicly criticized the prosecution and floated the idea of issuing a pardon for Flynn. The former national security adviser’s prosecution had been one of the major developments of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.