CNN's Avlon roasts Trump's 'Obamagate' stunt: 'Rarely have we seen the smoking gun fizzle as fast'

CNN's John Avlon on Thursday mocked President Donald Trump for his failed attempts to create a phony scandal about former President Barack Obama.

In his latest "Reality Check" segment, Avlon roasted the president and his defenders for hyping up a newly leaked email written by former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice in which she emphasized that Obama wanted any investigations into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian agents to be done "by the book."

"Rarely have we seen the supposed smoking gun fizzle as fast as the Susan Rice emails," he said.

Avlon went on to explain that the email showed Obama and his national security team acting entirely properly in light of the Trump campaign's multiple contacts with Russian officials who had worked to help Trump win the election just months earlier.

"Instead of wrongdoing, Rice's email said that President Obama emphasized his continued commitment to ensuring every aspect was handled by intelligence and law enforcement communities by the book," he said. "According to Rice, President Obama stressed that he's not asking about initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective."

Avlon then said that this didn't stop Trump allies like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) from wildly misinterpreting the contents of the email.

"This effort to investigate the Obama administration is an attempt to distract and deflect from the Trump administration's own self-inflicted scandals," he concluded.

Watch the video below.