Trump Obama Coup Allegations False: Fact-Checkers Debunk Gabbard Claims

The Trump-Oba­ma coup alle­ga­tions have been rat­ed false by fact-check­ers who found the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s accu­sa­tions gross­ly mis­lead­ing about the 2016 elec­tion intel­li­gence assess­ment process. On 24 July 2025, Poli­ti­Fact gave Trump’s claims a “Pants on Fire” rat­ing after ana­lyz­ing Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Tul­si Gab­bard’s declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, con­clud­ing that Oba­ma acknowl­edged his par­ty’s elec­toral loss and facil­i­tat­ed the peace­ful tran­si­tion to Trump’s pres­i­den­cy rather than attempt­ing any coup. The arti­cle begins:

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.

          Read more: https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/were-obama-hillary-clinton-trying-lead-coup-trump/

Key Points

• Legal experts empha­sized that trea­son requires wartime or armed rebel­lion by “levy­ing war” against the U.S. or giv­ing ene­mies “aid and com­fort,” with no evi­dence Oba­ma took such steps
• Intel­li­gence offi­cials con­firmed that with­hold­ing Pres­i­den­t’s Dai­ly Brief drafts is rou­tine, and Oba­ma’s request for com­pre­hen­sive Russ­ian assess­ment was stan­dard practice
• The intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty remained con­sis­tent through­out that Rus­sia did not manip­u­late vote tal­lies or suc­cess­ful­ly attack elec­tion infra­struc­ture to change results
• An Oba­ma spokesper­son not­ed that mul­ti­ple reviews includ­ing the 2020 bipar­ti­san Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee report led by Mar­co Rubio affirmed Russ­ian inter­fer­ence findings

Trump, Russia & 2016 Election Interference

U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies con­clud­ed that Rus­sia exe­cut­ed a sweep­ing and sys­tem­at­ic inter­fer­ence cam­paign dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with the dual aims of harm­ing Hillary Clinton’s can­di­da­cy and aid­ing Don­ald Trump. This mul­ti­fac­eted oper­a­tion was part of a broad­er glob­al strat­e­gy to under­mine demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, for which Moscow secret­ly allo­cat­ed over $300 mil­lion since 2014 to influ­ence pol­i­tics in for­eign nations. The Krem­lin’s efforts were pri­mar­i­ly focused on exac­er­bat­ing exist­ing polit­i­cal and racial ten­sions to fos­ter domes­tic chaos and weak­en Amer­i­ca’s for­eign pol­i­cy coher­ence. While ini­tial tac­tics relied on troll farms and fake accounts, intel­li­gence offi­cials lat­er observed a strate­gic piv­ot toward using state-con­trolled media out­lets to push disinformation.

Despite polit­i­cal pres­sure and crit­i­cism from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, a sub­se­quent CIA review deter­mined that the fun­da­men­tal con­clu­sion of Russ­ian med­dling was sound and met rig­or­ous ana­lyt­i­cal stan­dards. How­ev­er, new reports from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence Tul­si Gab­bard, have attempt­ed to dis­cred­it the assess­ment that Rus­sia favored Trump’s elec­tion in 2016, with Gab­bard claim­ing a “trea­so­nous con­spir­a­cy” by Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials to harm Trump by alter­ing con­clu­sions about Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence. The episode reached new inten­si­ty when Trump post­ed an AI-gen­er­at­ed fake video show­ing Obama’s “arrest and impris­on­ment” on social media, draw­ing sharp con­dem­na­tion as a dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion of deep­fake dis­in­for­ma­tion inter­sect­ing with ongo­ing polit­i­cal acri­mo­ny over the Rus­sia probe.

Exter­nal References:

1. Report On The Inves­ti­ga­tion Into Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence In The 2016 U.S. Pres­i­den­tial Election

2. Bipar­ti­san Sen­ate Report Details Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence in 2016 Election

3. Trump posts AI video of Oba­ma being arrest­ed — The Independent

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.