On July 18, Tulsi Gabbard—Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI)—made the absurd claim that officials of the Obama administration, including the former president himself, should be prosecuted for “treasonous conspiracy.” A few days later, Trump himself posted an AI-generated graphic of Obama being arrested and taken to jail, and since then he has repeatedly stated that Obama committed “treason.” Both White House and DNI spokespeople have said they want accountability for these “criminal” activities … "to the full extent of the law”—which for treason can mean execution. 

WARNING: Do not underestimate this—for two reasons. One, because Trump could actually move forward on this, and if he can go after a former president on invented charges, think what he can do to an ordinary person. This is not in any way a joke—it is an extreme warning of the danger everyone faces. Two, because if Trump does go forward on this, that act could seriously intensify splits in core institutions of this system. Such splits, if there were mass upsurge from below demanding that the Trump regime be removed, could heighten the chances to actually succeed in that extremely crucial demand.

Gabbard’s Cooked-Up and Baseless Charge

According to Gabbard, the Obama administration manufactured intelligence to claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in support of Trump. Gabbard contrasts this with an intelligence report from that period saying that Russia had not hacked directly into voting machines or in other ways altered the vote count. Gabbard claims that this “deceit” then laid “the ground work for a years-long coup against President Trump.” 

There’s one little problem with Gabbard’s argument. The Obama administration never said that Russia hacked into voting machines. The Obama administration never accused Russia of interfering with the vote count. And Obama conceded that Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2016 election.

What the Obama administration did say was that a) the Russians did try to interfere on Trump’s behalf, and b) this interference took the form of hacking and releasing Hillary Clinton’s emails, and of funding pro-Trump bot centers. Prominent Republicans—including then-Senator Marco Rubio (now Trump’s Secretary of State)—signed off on these conclusions. 

Gabbard’s whole argument is completely baseless. It is a “straw man” argument—create an argument that your opponent never made and proceed to attack him for it… which in this case includes demanding that he be charged with treason, a crime carrying the death penalty. And now MAGA is full speed ahead on it.

Do NOT Shrug This Off

Many analysts are saying that the Trump regime is launching this attack on Obama as a “distraction” from the damaging Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And because there is no factual substance to the charge against Obama, many are downplaying the seriousness of what is happening. While there is no factual substance to this argument and while it may indeed be designed to draw attention away from the Epstein matter, you cannot get away from the fact that Trump has said this and set loose his hyenas on it. This has been amplified by a number of racist memes—for instance, Obama in an orange jump suit; or Obama in the white Bronco¹ being pursued by Trump and Vance in police costumes.

Others say that “well, this is not good, but the Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents have a lot of immunity for crimes they did in office, and that would apply to Obama.” But this fascist-packed Supreme Court, which bent the Constitution beyond recognition to come up with their ruling on immunity in order to suit fascist interests a year ago, might well have no hesitation whatsoever about twisting the Constitution in the opposite direction to suit fascist interests now. 

As CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin points out (in a New York Times op-ed), Trump is “the overseer of an unusually compliant Justice Department, and his offhand condemnation of his predecessor is as significant as it is chilling.” (See article elsewhere in this issue about Trump’s nomination of Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official, for federal court.) Already, Gabbard has submitted a “criminal referral” to the Department of Justice (DOJ)—the first step in prosecution. DOJ head Pam Bondi announced that a “strike force” would investigate the allegations. Republi-fascist senators Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn posted that they “urge Attorney General Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the extent to which former President Obama, his staff and administration officials manipulated the U.S. national security apparatus for a political outcome.” 

Trump is also the head of a large fascist movement. Social media outlets like Truth Social, Gab and Telegram have seen a spike in people calling Obama “treasonous” and saying he should be either jailed or executed. The possibility of fascist individuals or groups committing acts of violence is very real. And, again, memes like the ones described earlier stoke those racist flames.

Whatever does or does not become of this threat, we are heading into a time of extreme upheaval in which fascist threats against their rivals within the ruling class are intensifying and roiling the situation. That is the context in which this threat stands out.