President Trump on Sunday repeatedly lashed out on Twitter at former President Obama, days after reports that Obama had expressed concern over the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Trump spent much of his Mother’s Day tweeting and retweeting various accounts, with many of the posts aimed at his predecessor. In one tweet he simply wrote “OBAMAGATE!” In another post, in which he retweeted a supporter’s declaration that Obama was “the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor,” Trump wrote, “He got caught, OBAMAGATE!”
Earlier on Sunday, Trump retweeted conservative commentator Buck Sexton, who claimed that “the outgoing president” — an apparent reference to Obama — “used his last weeks in office to target incoming officials and sabotage the new administration.” Trump in his retweet wrote, “The biggest political crime in American history, by far!” Sexton is a former employee of Hill.TV.
The president also retweeted multiple accounts that posted memes taking aim at Obama, including one account that posted a graphic of Obama over the words, “Watergate will look like a parking ticket.”
Trump’s Obama-related tweets were just some of the many comments he posted on Twitter Sunday, with others lashing out at figures including CNN’s Brian Stelter and NBC’s Chuck Todd.
His tweets came after his administration’s controversial move to drop charges against Flynn, who had been accused of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia before Trump took office. The decision, led by Attorney General William Barr, was met with swift condemnation by Trump’s critics.
Obama became ensnared in the unfolding drama after details of a private phone call between the former president and members of his administration were leaked to Yahoo News on Friday.
“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama reportedly said.
“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk,” he continued. “And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for further comment.