President Donald Trump said that former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden knew that there was no evidence connecting Trump to Russia’s supposed interference in the 2016 election.
Newly released transcripts show the two knew that Trump was innocent, but pursued the allegations to damage Trump’s administration anyway, the president said Friday on “Fox & Friends.”
“What you’ve seen so far is incredible, especially as it relates to President Obama, because if anyone thinks that he and ‘sleepy Joe’ Biden didn’t know what was going on, they have another thing coming,” Trump said.
Former Obama officials and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff were aware of the lack of evidence connecting the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election, the newly released transcripts of Schiff’s closed-door Russia hearings indicate.
The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released the transcripts of 57 closed-door interviews with witnesses in Russia’s 2016 election interference campaign nearly two years after the investigation was concluded. The transcripts are more than 6,000 pages and include interviews with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.
While the House Intelligence Committee finished its investigation before Special Counsel Robert Mueller did, Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Additionally, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper testified in secret that he “never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”
Former Obama National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice also testified that she never saw evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy.
“I believe he and Biden [were] involved in this also very much, and other people around President Obama were totally involved. You’ll see more and more things come out,” Trump said.
Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 election campaign manager, said the FBI’s investigation “will go down as one of the greatest abuses of power by an administration in American history.”
“It’s time for Joe Biden to explain what really happened in that January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with [former FBI Director James] Comey, which occurred the day after [FBI agent Peter] Strzok intervened to keep the investigation into General Flynn from closing due to a lack of any evidence,” Parscale said. “The corrupt media will do its best to cover up this scandal, but the Obama-Biden officials responsible for these misdeeds must be held accountable.”
Trump added that he hopes former Obama administration officials will be held accountable.
“They made it a very, very dangerous situation,” Trump said. “These are dirty politicians and dirty cops, some horrible people. Hopefully they’re going to pay a big price someday in the not-too-distant future.”
This development comes off the back of the Justice Department dropping charges against former National Security advisor and Trump campaign advisor Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI during the Russian investigation, Reuters reported.
Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell also said that Flynn was “set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.”
“The government produced to Mr. Flynn stunning Brady evidence that proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI. It also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January 24, 2017 was material to any ‘investigation.’ The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution—knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn,” Powell wrote in a filing.
