Trump falsely twists Obama-era assessment of Russian election interference as a ‘coup’

President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason following a report by Tulsi Gabbard, the current director of national intelligence, about the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump raised the topic when asked about deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a July 22 press conference.

"The witch hunt that you should be talking about is (that) they caught President Obama, absolutely cold," Trump said. 

Minutes later, Trump said Obama "was trying to lead a coup, and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people, but Obama headed it up." Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, lost to Trump in that election. 

On July 17, Gabbard declassified government emails and reports that she said showed Obama officials "manipulated and withheld" intelligence information. Gabbard’s office said July 18, "Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump."

Gabbard said she was turning over documents to the Justice Department for criminal referral. 

Trump — who has falsely referred to investigations into 2016 election interference as the Russia "hoax" — on July 20 shared a TikTok video generated by artificial intelligence showing FBI agents arresting Obama in the Oval Office as Trump laughs.

It’s unclear what, if anything, the Justice Department will do with Gabbard’s referral. But Trump’s comment about a "coup" grossly misleads about Obama’s actions regarding Russia and the 2016 election. The intelligence community concluded that Russia sought to interfere with the election.

A coup would have involved efforts to keep Trump from taking office in 2016. Obama did not do that.

"Nothing in her document even shows that Obama tried to put his finger on the scale on either the information leak conclusion or the ‘election infrastructure’ conclusion," University of Missouri law professor Frank O. Bowman III said. "And even if he had, that would not be a ‘coup.’ Or indeed a crime of any kind."

Gabbard twisted Obama-era officials’ statements to spin a dubious narrative that conflicts with multiple reviews that found evidence of Russian interference.

In a statement to PolitiFact, Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said, "Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio," who is now Trump’s secretary of state.

The White House referred PolitiFact to what Gabbard has said and released publicly.

Gabbard’s report misleads about Obama administration

Much of Gabbard’s declassified report consists of officials’ post-election discussions in emails and reports about whether Russia tried to discredit Clinton and interfere with the election.

Gabbard highlighted portions of those statements in a timeline showing that the intelligence community determined before the election that foreign adversaries likely were unable to execute widespread undetected cyberattacks on election infrastructure. After the election, the intelligence community concluded, "Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome." 

The gist of Gabbard’s argument is that the intelligence community had been describing Russia’s actions in one way and then Obama requested a new assessment that Gabbard said was meant to manipulate the findings.

 On Dec. 8, 2016, intelligence community officials discussed a draft intelligence report prepared for the president and top officials, called the President’s Daily Brief, saying that Russians did not influence election results via cyberattacks. Officials planned to issue the classified brief to Obama the next day but didn’t. National security and White House officials, not including Obama, met the next day, Dec. 9, to discuss actions against Russia.

Around that time, Obama asked for a comprehensive assessment about Russian meddling back to 2008, including an assessment of possible future risks. Although the documentation shows Obama seeking a more in-depth analysis, Gabbard painted the change from issuing the daily brief to drafting an assessment as nefarious.

The assessment Obama requested, produced in early January 2017, said Russia "probably was in a position to tamper with some voter registration databases" but did not flip votes.

"The types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying," the intelligence assessment stated. 

Larry Pfeiffer, who worked for 32 years in the U.S. intelligence community during Republican and Democratic administrations, told PolitiFact that withholding a President’s Daily Brief draft is not unusual.

"That happens all the time," he said.

The intelligence community was consistent in its findings about Russia, Pfeiffer said.

Officials "maintained throughout that Russia did not manipulate tabulated voting results, hack voting machines, or successfully attack election infrastructure," Pfeiffer said. 

It is well documented that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and that they used online trolling farms and bots to exploit social divisions and build support for Trump.

Rather than a conspiracy to undermine Trump’s election, Pfeiffer said, he sees the Dec. 9 meeting as "a president eager to memorialize in one assessment the (intelligence community’s) existing assessment on Russian interference in the election before he left office."

A Gabbard spokesperson said December 2016 news headlines showed how the intelligence community tried to build the narrative that Russia hacked the election.

But a timeline points to news articles that do not support her argument. For example, her timeline says in December 2016, intelligence community officials "again leak to the media, this time claiming" that they believe "with a high level of confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the "U.S. Election Hack." The timeline refers to an NBC news story; however, while the headline used the phrase "election hack," the article says Russia hacked material from the DNC — not voting machines.

Gabbard’s summary "hits on an issue that was not ultimately the focus of those analyses," said Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer in Washington, D.C. "No one has ever concluded the Russians flipped actual votes, and for good reason: There is no evidence of that."

Trump’s statements ignore that government investigations found that Russia interfered with the election, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee’s 2020 nearly 1,000-page report concluded that "the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."

Gabbard’s office told PolitiFact in a statement that the Senate committee’s report was based on information it had at the time, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has a right to examine intelligence gathering processes.

President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the White House’s Oval Office on Nov. 10, 2016. (AP)

Could Obama be prosecuted for "treason" or a "coup"?

Legal experts said Trump’s invocation of "treason" and "coup" are unjustified.

Treason has to occur in wartime, or during an armed rebellion against the government, by "levying war" against the U.S. or giving enemies of the U.S. "aid and comfort," according to the Constitution.

There is no evidence that Obama took steps that could be characterized as a coup.

"Even if Obama was spreading a false narrative, which is highly debatable, that’s not a coup," Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, said. Unlike Trump in the events leading to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Somin said, "Obama in 2016 acknowledged his party lost the election and facilitated rather than impeded the peaceful transition of power."

Prosecuting a former president like Obama would pose steep challenges, including statutes of limitations that have passed and the likelihood that the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision — sought by Trump — affirming presidential immunity for official actions could also protect Obama, said University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt.

Trump’s goal may not be an actual prosecution of Obama. "He wants the specter of charges, and the media cycles consumed by talk of an investigation," Moss said.

Our ruling

Trump said that in 2016, after he won the presidency but before he had taken office, Obama was "trying to lead a coup" with Clinton.

Trump distorted a review from Gabbard that does not support his point. Gabbard pointed to a decision in December 2016 to hold off on giving Obama a daily intelligence brief that Russian actors did not influence election results via cyberattacks. 

The records show Obama then sought assessment by the intelligence community about Russian interference in the 2016 election, with a look backward and ahead into Russia's capabilities. But that assessment after the election did not conclude that Russia flipped votes, and intelligence experts said there was nothing unusual or nefarious about Obama’s request.

In 2016 and early 2017, Obama acknowledged that his party lost the election and facilitated the transition to Trump’s presidency.

We rate this statement Pants on Fire!

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