Gloves comes off in presidential power plays

The simmering feud between Barack Obama and Donald Trump has exploded into an all-out war as the November election looms.

Then US president-elect Donald Trump and then-president Barack Obama arrive for Trump's inauguration ceremony at the Capitol in Washington on January 20, 2017. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump and Barack Obama have long shared a disdain for each other that transcends politics. Their feud is palpable and deeply personal, and it’s getting stronger by the day.

From Trump’s role in leading the “birther” movement that quer­ied Obama’s US citizenship, to Obama’s humiliation of Trump at the 2011 White House corre­spondents dinner, the two started sniping at each other long before Trump ran for president.

Trump’s victory in 2016 was a disaster for the Obama legacy, and Michelle Obama’s glum face on inauguration day spoke volumes about what her husband was ­feeling inside.

As President, Trump has clinically tried to dismantle or withdraw from what Obama saw as his greatest legacies: the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord and the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare.

Along the way, Trump has sent out a steady barrage of tweets ­attacking all aspects of Obama’s legacy. Obama has mostly kept his silence, but now with the election looming both men have taken off their gloves for a bare-knuckle brawl that will help define the ­November election.

Obama has begun taking public shots at Trump, using a call with former staff members earlier this month to label the White House’s response to the coronavirus “an ­absolute chaotic disaster”.

Last weekend, Obama went further in a speech, saying: “This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

Trump hit back this week, describing Obama as leading “the most incompetent and corrupt ­administration in US history”.

Scandal or fantasy?

But Trump is now going further in an attempt to make Obama a central target of his re-election campaign. He is accusing the former president of overseeing corrupt attempts to undermine his incoming administration in January 2017 over the Russia investigation. Trump’s main target is Obama’s former vice-president and now Trump’s Democratic presidential opponent, Joe Biden.

The President has dubbed the issue “Obamagate”, claiming it is “the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA”.

“Call it treason, call it whatever you want — they tried to take out a duly elected president of the United States,” he says.

The claims have divided the US media along partisan political lines. The liberal mainstream US media has touched on the issue only lightly, mostly to claim that it is a fantasy controversy whipped up by Trump to energise his base ahead of the election and divert attention from coronavirus deaths.

But the conservative media has run heavily on the issue as Trump has progressively ramped up his attacks.

So what exactly is “Obamagate”? Trump has long accused the FBI and the Mueller investigation of conducting a “witch-hunt” against him in prosecuting the Russia investigation, which eventually found there was no ­collusion between Trump and Russia in 2016.

The administration has since appointed a lawyer named John Durham to investigate whether the FBI acted appropriately in ­initiating the Russia probe and whether officials were trying to damage the Trump presidency.

Last week several declassified documents were released by the acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell. Trump says these documents show Obama officials were seeking to frame his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in January 2017 and, by extension, undermine the start of Trump’s presidency.

The documents show that several dozen people, including a raft of senior Obama officials and Biden, made requests in January 2017 to learn the identity of an unknown American who was named in intelligence reports as communicating by phone with the then Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, on ­December 29, 2016.

Unmasking Gen. Flynn

That American turned out to be Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Flynn.

It was a phone call that would trigger a three-year saga surrounding Flynn that Trump has always believed was orchestrated by the Obama administration and sympathetic FBI officials. Those who made requests to “unmask” Flynn’s identity included Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff at the time; James Clapper, then director of national intelligence; James Comey, then FBI chief; and the vice-president, Biden.

Intelligence officials had intercepted the telephone conversation on December 29 through their routine surveillance of Kislyak. On that same day, the Obama administration had announced sanctions against Russia in retaliation for Moscow’s interference with the US election.

During the intercepted conversation, Flynn urged the Russian ambassador not to retaliate against Obama’s sanctions.

Trump says that knowledge of this conversation within the Obama White House in the days before his own inauguration laid the ground for Flynn to be set up.

“This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were ­corrupt — the whole thing was corrupt — and we caught them,” Trump said. “People should be going to jail for this stuff.

“It’s a disgraceful thing,” he continued. “But we caught them in the act. It’s a beautiful thing. And every day we’re seeing more and more information come out.”

The role of Joe Biden

Says Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale: “Americans have a right to know the depth of Biden’s involvement in the set-up of ­General Flynn to further the ­Russia collusion hoax.”

The Biden campaign says Trump is trying to connect dots that don’t exist. It says requests to “unmask” the identities of Americans in intelligence reports are commonplace, with about 7000 such requests grants in 2017. It says there is a due process for such requests and that was followed in the case of Flynn’s unmasking. It says no one knew of Flynn’s identity when the requests were first made.

“These documents simply indicate the breadth and depth of ­concern across the American government, including among career officials, over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn’s attempts to undermine ongoing American ­national security policy through discussions with Russian officials or other foreign representatives,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates says.

“Importantly, none of these ­individuals could have known Flynn’s identity beforehand.”

But Trump’s suspicions of wrongdoing inside the Obama White House are fuelled by sub­sequent events involving Flynn that led to him being fired in February 2017, after less than a month as national security adviser. In mid-January 2017, a week before the inauguration, someone with knowledge of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador illegally leaked it to The Washington Post. Was that an Obama official, ­Republicans now are asking.

“Let’s be clear: a crime was committed in the Michael Flynn case. But that crime was committed not by the retired general but by someone who leaked the classified details of his conversations with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak,” American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Marc Thiessen says.

Those who believe Flynn was set up by the Obama administration say the FBI was complicit.

Only days after Flynn began his job as national security adviser, the FBI interviewed him about his conversation with Kislyak.

During that interview, Flynn bizarrely lied about talking about Russian sanctions with Kislyak, even though the FBI had the transcript that proved otherwise. Flynn told the same lie to Vice-President Mike Pence, a lie that eventually led to his sacking.

Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI and he initially pleaded guilty until he changed legal teams last year and instead argued that he was targeted wrongly for political purposes.

Then, in a bombshell decision this month, the Justice Department recommended that charges against Flynn be dropped because the FBI had no legitimate reason to interview him in February 2017.

The department, backed by ­Attorney-General Bill Barr, said the interview was invalid because the FBI had already earlier closed its counterintelligence inquiry into Flynn because it found no ­evidence he was conspiring with the Russians. Because the interview was invalid, the department said it was immaterial whether or not Flynn was telling the truth.

The call to drop the charges was described by Obama as a threat to the rule of law. Democrats argued that Barr was doing Trump’s bidding to protect Flynn.

The judge presiding over the Flynn case, Emmet Sullivan, may not accept the Justice Department’s recommendation to drop the charges and has appointed a prosecutor to argue against Barr’s recommendations.

But the saga has elevated Flynn to hero status among pro-Trump conservatives who say he was set up by the Obama White House and a pro-Obama FBI.

“They (FBI agents) weren’t after General Flynn. They wanted him to lie about me, make up a story,” says Trump. “If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago; and I’m talking with 50-year sentences.

“It is a disgrace what’s happened. No other president should have to go through (this) and I’ll tell you, General Flynn and others are heroes.”

A key election issue?

Biden so far has refused to engage Trump on these issues and says it is a ploy to divert attention from Trump’s handling of the corona­virus pandemic.

“This is all about diversion,” says Biden. “This is a game this guy plays all the time. The country is in crisis … he should stop trying to always divert attention from the real concerns of the American people.”

Trump is doing all he can to ­attack both Obama and Biden on the issue, repeatedly tweeting about it and discussing it in interviews. He is also likely to try to make it a key election issue.

But it is unclear what traction Trump will get with voters over “Obamagate”. The claims are murky and complex and not easily conveyed to ordinary voters, regardless of their merit. Even so, they will be a part of Trump’s push to portray Biden as a crooked Washington insider.

“From his involvement in the unmasking of General Flynn to his son Hunter Biden repeatedly landing lucrative foreign business deals while his father was vice-president, Joe Biden embodies the DC swamp,” Trump re-election campaign spokeswoman Sarah Matthews says.

Meanwhile, Trump has called on Republicans in congress to keep the issue alive.

“If I were a senator or congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama,” Trump tweeted last week. “He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC. Just do it. No more Mr Nice Guy. No more talk!”

Within hours, Republican senator and close Trump ally Lindsey Graham announced hearings into the Flynn case, although he ­refused to summon Obama, ­saying that would set an ­unwise precedent.

“We have the sitting President (Trump) accusing the former president (Obama) of being part of a treasonous conspiracy to undermine his presidency. We have the former president suggesting the current President is destroying the rule of law by dismissing the General Flynn case,” Graham said.

“To say we are living in unusual times is an understatement.”

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.