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Donald Trump tweeted 126 tweets and retweeted the Mother’s Day storm on Sunday, the second most prolific day on the app during his presidency.
Amid the chaos, the President coined the term “OBAMAGAR,” which appears to be a repackaging of his belief that his predecessor, Barack Obama, was aware of, or directed, a large conspiracy among US intelligence officials. USA nascent by using the FBI to catch certain incoming Trump advisers, such as national security adviser Micahel Flynn.
By Monday, the term was trending on Twitter and had been tweeted more than 3.5 million times.
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Here are three things you should know about Obamagate’s theory of Trump and the effect it is having on Washington and the 2020 campaign cycle.
1. The “Obamagate” Theory Has Been Around For A Time, But Not By That Name
Even many of Trump’s harshest critics agree that he is a marketing expert, so it is not surprising that he has clung to the ordered phrase “Obamagate” as a trap for the web of beliefs in circles. Right that Obama was part of a vast network of conspirators who attempted to undermine his 2016 campaign and intentionally harassed the first two years of his presidency with a false investigation of Russia.
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Here’s why that was fresh on Trump’s mind this weekend: Thursday, under the direction of Trump’s attorney general The Justice Department’s William Barr dropped the felony charges he had been pursuing for years against Flynn for lying to law enforcement about the late 2016 meeting with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.
The lie Flynn allegedly told the FBI in the first week of Trump’s presidency, and which he pleaded guilty to twice before, was not “material” to the bureau’s contemporary investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. the Justice Department wrote Thursday. .
Recently declassified documents from the Flynn case show that Obama knew of Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak in December 2016 when he met on January 5, 2017 with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, the then Vice President Joe Biden, then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and then Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
There is no evidence, at this time, to suggest that Obama order the FBI to catch Flynn when officers questioned him on January 24, 2017 about his correspondence with Kislyak.
There is also no public evidence to suggest that Obama has an interest in following Russia’s threads of interference other than protecting American institutions from the undue influence of one of his main foreign adversaries.
Flynn’s saga is only one aspect of Trump’s broader Obamagate theory.
That theory holds that a corrupt clique of top Never-Trump US intelligence officials, such as Comey and FBI agent Peter Strzok, colluded with the international intelligence community, Ukraine, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and others to create a a pretext to investigate the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia by trapping former campaign aide George Papadopoulos in a sting operation, allegedly providing false Russian land on Hillary Clinton.
Later, the FBI obtained multiple orders from FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to intercept former campaign aide Carter Page in the belief that he had ties to Russia.
The theory also argues that Comey, the allegedly corrupt FBI director who was allegedly the leader of the conspiracy against Trump, wrote a letter to Congress just weeks before the 2016 election announcing the bureau’s ongoing investigation into the email server for Clinton as a false flag to remove people from the scent of their true intentions to harm Trump.
FiveThirtyEight guru Nate Silver and other election disabled have released data they say shows that Comey’s letter likely changed the election to Trump.
The grand theory also incorporates the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, and not Russia, that hacked into the DNC and Clinton campaign emails that Wikileaks released during the crucial weeks and months leading up to the 2016 election that they painted Democratic politics in negative tones and many I think contributed to Trump’s victory.
Does this all sound a bit confusing? Well it is. And up to that point …
2. Not even Trump seems to know what exactly Obamagate is
When asked by a Washington PosOn Monday, the reporter named and explained the crime committed by Obama and said if the Justice Department should prosecute the former president, Trump diverted him.
“Obamagate. It’s been happening for a long time. It’s been happening since before he was elected. … It’s a shame that it happened,” Trump said, predicting that more information would be made public “in the coming weeks.”
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the Washington Post The reporter again asked Trump to name the crime Obama committed.
“You know what the crime is. Crime is very obvious to everyone. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours, “said the president.
After the charges against Flynn were dropped last week, Trump accused DOJ and the Obama-era intelligence community of “treason,” a crime punishable by death, and said those who investigated Flynn’s correspondence with Kislyak were “crooked” and “dishonest.”
Since then, he has suggested that he wants to see people involved in the alleged Obamagate affair face legal consequences.
I hope you had fun researching me. Now it’s my turn, “says a meme that the Trump campaign posted on his Snapchat account Monday, with a photo of the president in the background.
3. Republicans in Congress are lining up to support Trump’s theory
Republicans in Congress have been saying for years that the FBI unfairly attacked campaign officials and the Trump administration in the course of its investigation in Russia, even though Special Adviser Robert Mueller discovered that many of them were they had met or corresponded with people affiliated with the Russian government during the campaign and the transition.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee last Congress, applauded Barr’s decision to let Flynn go and predicted “other shoes to fall off.”
“I was trapped,” Grassley said in an interview with Fox News last week.
“Entrapment is unconstitutional. It is a violation of his due process. Secondly, this would not be exposed if it had not been for Barr taking the bull by the horns and knowing that something was wrong and going in and knowing where things were wrong, how to straighten it out. We haven’t heard the end of Bill Barr’s good work because everything that is happening with the Durham investigation is another example of other shoes to drop, “Grassley said.
Grassley also suggested that “perhaps there should be people prosecuted” for the treatment of Flynn and others.
Republican lawmakers for years have accused leaders of the Russian FBI investigation of allowing political bias to influence their investigation, a position that was not supported by a report last year by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Mr. Horowitz’s report, however, highlights a number of problems with how officers conducted the investigation, including problems with their FISA order requests.
Barr, the head of the Justice Department, has charged federal prosecutor John Durham with investigating the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation and whether it was carried out legally.
That investigation began as an administrative review, but has since turned into a criminal investigation.
