President Donald Trump on Friday said that former President Barack Obama likely has immunity following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in light of a report that was declassified by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month.
Gabbard said the documents showed that Obama and his then-Cabinet members “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump,” which Obama denied in a statement earlier this week. Gabbard said in a Sunday interview that she referred some Obama-era officials for criminal prosecution to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI.
Trump on Friday was asked by a reporter during a press gaggle at the White House, “How do you think that the Supreme Court’s ruling that benefited you on presidential immunity would apply to former President Barack Obama and what you’re accusing him of doing?”
The question for Trump was referring to the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in 2024 that stated presidents have prosecutorial immunity for official acts within the executive presidential authority that Congress has no jurisdiction over.
“It probably helps him a lot,” Trump said in response, adding that the ruling “doesn’t help the people around him at all. But it probably helps him a lot.”
The president said he believed Obama had committed “criminal acts,” but that “he has Immunity,” which he said “probably helps him a lot.”
“Obama owes me big” for the Supreme Court ruling, Trump said.
Earlier this week, the president said that Obama officials “tried to rig the election, and they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that.”
Responding to accusations from Gabbard, a spokesperson for Obama reiterated the assertion that Russia attempted to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
“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,” the spokesperson said on July 22.
Obama’s spokesperson also pointed to a 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report, saying the committee affirmed that Russia worked to influence the election.
Earlier this week, Gabbard said, “There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.”
Among the documents declassified by the DNI is a House Intelligence report dated Sept. 18, 2020, which found that several intelligence reports that suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin aspired to help then-presidential candidate Trump in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election were “substandard.”
Specifically, three reports published internally by the CIA after the election contained information that was potentially biased, implausible, unclear, or of uncertain origin, the House Intelligence Committee said in the report that was released by Gabbard on Wednesday.
“One scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports constitutes the only classified information to suggest Putin ‘aspired’ to help Trump win,” the panel stated.
The reports were used as foundational sources for an intelligence community assessment made public in January 2017.
The intelligence community “ignored or selectively quoted reliable intelligence reports that challenged—and in some cases undermined—judgments that Putin sought to elect Trump” and failed to consider plausible alternative explanations, the House report stated.
The DOJ on July 23 announced that it was forming a task force following the declassification of the documents.
In a statement posted to X, the DOJ said that the task force would “assess the evidence publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and investigate potential next legal steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard’s disclosures.”
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
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