Donald Trump has been intensely targeted on Barack Obama in latest days, accusing his Democratic predecessor of “treason.” Now the present president is saying the former president “owes” him.
“He owes me, Obama owes me big,” Trump said July 25 while talking to reporters outside the White House before departing on a journey to Scotland.
Obama’s debt to Trump in the present president’s thoughts? The reality that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last yr that presidents have immunity from prison prosecution for official acts in workplace. The ruling came in a case involving Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcomes.
Struggling to shake off questions about his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, Trump has targeted recently on leveling allegations against Obama.
National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard alleged in a press briefing that the Obama administration promoted a “contrived narrative” that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump. Gabbard launched declassified paperwork she said support her claims of Obama’s “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Trump.
The Justice Department also announced the formation of a “Strike Force” that would “investigate potential next legal steps” stemming from Gabbard’s disclosures.
Russia tried to intrude in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump, according to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 last report and a 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee evaluation.
Obama’s workplace pointed to the Senate report in responding to Gabbard’s claims.
Former US President Barack Obama speaks with President-elect Donald Trump before the State Funeral Service for former US President Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, on January 9, 2025.
“Nothing in the 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,” Obama’s office said in a statement on July 22. “These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
Trump had long said the investigations into his first White House campaign and its connections with Moscow are a hoax. Before departing for Scotland, Trump claimed Obama committed “prison acts” but “he has immunity” from prosecution.
“It probably helps him a lot, probably helps him a lot the immunity ruling,” Trump said.
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One, as he departs for Scotland, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., July 25, 2025.
Trump has confronted intense backlash since the Department of Justice launched a memo July 7 trying to close the e-book on the Epstein case. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on expenses of intercourse trafficking minors. The memo supported the concept that Epstein died by suicide and said investigators did not discover a “client list,” dispelling conspiracy theories about the case.
Obama’s workplace said Trump’s focus on the former president is a “weak attempt at distraction.”
“Out of respect for the workplace of the presidency, our workplace does not usually dignify the fixed nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” Obama’s office said in the July 22 statement. “But these claims are outrageous enough to advantage one.”
Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi
This article initially appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump says Barack Obama ‘owes me, Obama owes me huge.’
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