[ad_1]
A few days ago, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has been promoting a new conspiracy theory that he called “Obamagate”, and that concerns his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump retweeted dozens of conspiracy stories that resumed his remarks and promoted Republican politicians who spoke on the matter, repeatedly reiterating that former President Obama would be guilty of “the most serious political crime in the history of the United States.”
Since the beginning of his political career, Trump has spread partial, forced or simply false information about his actions and his political enemies; For years, then, Trump has said he is convinced that Obama-appointed government officials who have remained in service are constantly trying to harm him, and that Obama himself has actively tried to embarrass him. Three years ago, she accused him of placing microphones in his office at the Trump Tower in New York, without providing any evidence.
The most recent allegations began between Saturday and Sunday, when some newspapers published excerpts from a conversation Obama had with about 3,000 of his former aides. During the conversation, Obama criticized the recent decision by the Trump administration to drop the charges against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, who was prosecuted for concealing his calls with some Russian government emissaries and for having worked as a lobbyist for revealed on behalf of the Turkish government. Flynn himself had pleaded guilty.
Obama had told his former aides that decisions like Flynn’s decision “are troubling” and cause fear that the rule of law in the United States “is at risk” (an opinion shared by many observers, who consider a decision to withdraw the charges against Flynn).
Since then, Trump has attacked Obama again, retweeted various conspiracy theories about him and accused him during a press conference packed with journalists. The charges culminated in a television interview given to Fox News in which Trump affirms that Obama is “corrupt” and that you deserve to end up in prison.
“If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everyone would have been in jail a long time ago, and I’m speaking with 50-year sentences … people should go to jail for these things … this was all Obama This was all Biden “: Trump suggests that Obama and Biden should be in prison pic.twitter.com/MOwPvpYRu4
– Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2020
Trump has never clarified exactly what Obamagate is: judging by his statements, which are always quite confusing and contradictory, he appears to be accusing Obama of organizing the investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on relations between the Trump election committee and the government. Russian, and more generally that he planned a campaign to harm him before and during his tenure.
CNN He writes that one of the elements most cited by Trump supporters and allies to corroborate this hypothesis is a meeting that took place on January 5, 2017 at the White House, approximately two weeks before the start of Trump’s term. The content of the meeting was obtained and partially disseminated by the lawyers defending Flynn.
According to these documents, Obama discussed with some of his aides, including then Vice President Joe Biden, now a Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential election, about Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 election campaign. Then-Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates He said that Flynn’s phone calls to the Russian government ambassador to the United States, which had not yet been made public, were also discussed during the meeting.
In the following weeks, the content of the calls was filmed by a government official in the Washington Post, who decided to publish them. Flynn was questioned by the FBI, whose director, James Comey, was present at the January 7 meeting with Obama, and lied about the content of his calls with the Russian ambassador. A few days later, he was fired by Trump due to the large case that had arisen. Trump himself said he had to fire Flynn as he lied to the FBI and then, in another conversation, to Vice President Mike Pence.
In short, the accusation by Trump supporters is that Flynn was the victim of a plot and that Obama, Comey and their collaborators created the case around them to harm Trump: that the Obama administration’s goal was not to investigate the interference. Russian in the elections, but look for any pretext to weaken Trump, and thus Flynn was induced to lie to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians. At the moment, however, there is no evidence of collaboration between the FBI and the Obama administration, and it seems much more likely that it never existed.
Aside from a meeting on January 5, among other things, Obama took no special action after learning that Russia had tried to help Trump during the election campaign – something for which he was criticized by both the left and a bipartisan relationship. three months. It does for the Senate. Several US officials also said Reuters that the FBI made no effort to question Flynn, and that the decision to drop the charges against him is aimed at protecting some of Trump’s associates, including Flynn.
Another accusation that Trump supporters make against Obama and his administration is having asked for Flynn’s name to be spelled out in some intelligence documents. During the monitoring of communications from foreign persons, in fact, the names and voices of American citizens may appear. The identities of these Americans are obscured before intelligence documents are distributed, but government officials may make a reasoned request to those who collected the data, be it the FBI, CIA, or other intelligence agencies, to explain the someone’s identity, if they consider it relevant for other investigations. CNN He notes that such requests have been much more common during the Trump administration than those of Obama.
Several US commentators and journalists have pointed out that Trump took out “Obamagate” in one of the most delicate moments of his presidency: the impression of most Americans is that Trump has handled the pandemic late, while only one in four believe that The country must completely reopen, as Trump has been asking for weeks. Joe Biden is also doing very well in the polls and, according to some, this may be the reason why several conservative newspapers and television stations are asking for his alleged participation in “Obamagate”.
[ad_2]
