Is Trump's Obama attack really a stunning confession?

Earlier this week, when reporters asked him about Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump deflected with a planned story about former President Barack Obama's "criminality." His unhinged expose deserves a verbatim read:

“After what they did to me — and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly… What they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It’s criminal at the highest level. So that’s really the things you should be talking about (instead of Epstein) … Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question … This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”

Trump’s rant followed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that she uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that Obama’s administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” No doubt seeking to recover favor after she crossed Trump on Iran’s enriched uranium plans, Gabbard announced on social media that she was making a criminal referral of the case to the Justice Department.

Epstein won't go away

Trump’s well-photographed and documented relationship with Epstein, including regular appearances at social events in Palm Beach and New York, dates back to the 1980s. Their close friendship fell apart in the mid-2000s, according to the Washington Post, over a real estate deal.

Bondi informed Trump in May that he was named in the Epstein files, which Trump denied. In response to current demands to release the Epstein file in its entirety, Trump is now directing his AG to release “all credible” evidence from those files, meaning, whatever information Bondi, in her sole discretion, deems “credible.” If that directive isn’t code for “scrub my name off those files and accuse my critics,” nothing is.

It's painfully obvious that if Trump really wanted to release “all credible evidence,” including how many times he flew on the Lolita Express, he would simply release the files. Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home early to avoid a vote forcing the release of the files.

Trump does not want the public musing over how close he and Epstein actually were, so he’s dancing around it, creating a ruse about “credible evidence” and “grand jury testimony” that has absolutely nothing to do with Trump and Epstein’s decades-long, one- -on-one relationship built on “shared secrets.”

Another key witness

On Wednesday, Bondi also posted a statement from her Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, saying he was seeking access to Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors for Epstein, hopes for clemency to avoid spending the rest of her life in prison.

Hmm, what could be inappropriate here? How about the fact that Trump is trying to turn a convicted sexual predator into a pro-Trump character witness in the court of public opinion? How about the fact that Maxwell would likely say what Trump wants to hear only if there's something in it for her, like a presidential pardon or a commutation of her sentence?

Blanche announced that, “If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.” Never mind that Maxwell told the judge during her trial she had no other information to add. Trump wants his people to get to Maxwell first, to shape and tease out any additional “information” with implied incentives.

Maxwell’s obvious incentive to tell Trump what he wants to hear already makes her credibility suspect. Equally important, the DOJ previously named Maxwell a “pervasive liar.” In 2021, prosecutors told the judge overseeing her trial that Maxwell was willing to “brazenly lie under oath about her conduct.” They noted two prior perjury counts that showed “her willingness to flout the law in order to protect herself.”

Rabbits from the hat

Trump has been pulling every rabbit out of every purple hat to make Epstein go away. This past week, in a press statement with 25th Amendment incapacity written all over it, he said he was going to arrest President Obama and Hillary Clinton and the “many, many people” who worked under them. The batshit lunacy of his words should be savored verbatim.

Trump even inserted immigration and his universally debunked stolen election claims into the attack, adding, “And by the way, it morphed into the 2020 race, and the 2020 race was rigged, and it was, it was a rigged election. And because it was rigged, we have millions of people in our country, we have — we had inflation, we solved the inflation problem. But millions and millions of people came into our country because of that, and people that shouldn't have been, people from gangs and from jails and from mental institutions…”

Following Trump’s word salad breakdown, President Obama’s spokesperson responded with: “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the [Tulsi Gabbard] 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. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

Russia’s interference on Trump’s behalf was confirmed in a 950-page bipartisan Senate report: “The Committee’s bipartisan Report found that Russia’s goal in its unprecedented hack-and-leak operation against the United States in 2016, among other motives, was to assist the Trump Campaign. Candidate Trump and his Campaign responded to that threat by embracing, encouraging, and exploiting the Russian effort.”

Trump’s treason accusation is an obvious attempt to steer national headlines away from Epstein. It is absurd enough to be humorous. But given that Trump routinely projects his own crimes onto others, and consistently supports Putin over America’s interests, perhaps his “treason” allegation is, in fact, Trump’s confession.

• Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.