Targeting Obama, Trump’s Retribution Campaign Takes Another Turn

This is what Washington thought retribution would look like.

When President Trump started his second term, there were deep fears among current and former Justice Department officials, legal experts and Democrats that Mr. Trump would follow through on his repeated promises to “lock up” or otherwise pursue charges against high-profile figures like Liz Cheney, James B. Comey and former President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump quickly went after perceived enemies — but not always the anticipated ones and often not in the anticipated ways.

Displaying a willingness to weaponize the federal government in ways that were as novel as they were audacious, he took on a wide variety of individuals and institutions — from law firms and universities to journalists and federal bureaucrats — that he felt had crossed him, failed to fall in line or embodied ideological values that he rejected.

But on Tuesday Mr. Trump reverted to earlier form, resurfacing — in a remarkably unfiltered and aggressive rant — his grievances against Mr. Obama, prominent figures in past administrations and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution dating back to the 2016 election.

Seeking to change the topic at a time when he is under bipartisan political pressure over his unwillingness to do more to release investigative files into Jeffrey Epstein, he said the time had come for his predecessors to face criminal charges.

“He’s guilty,” he said of Mr. Obama. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

But if his enemies list was familiar, his capacity to pursue retribution appears to be expanding.

Repeatedly in his first term, Mr. Trump accused his perceived enemies of treason and tried to push the F.B.I. and Justice Department to indict them. He told his chief of staff that he wanted to “get the I.R.S.” on those who crossed him.

Many of them were investigated, and two of them were the subjects of highly unusual and invasive audits, but none of them were ever charged.

The difference now is that Mr. Trump, much more so than during his first term, is surrounded by aides and cabinet members who often appear willing to follow through on his angriest and most authoritarian impulses.

The Justice Department, whose top ranks are populated by loyalists, including two of his own lawyers, has shown a willingness to carry out Mr. Trump’s personal agenda. The department has dismissed prosecutors involved not just in the criminal cases brought against him two years ago by a special counsel but also those who pursued Jan. 6 rioters. The department also dropped a prosecution against New York City’s mayor after he agreed to help Mr. Trump on immigration issues. And the administration also targeted first-term officials who became public critics of Mr. Trump, like Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs.

But now the efforts to target top officials from previous administrations appears to be gaining momentum.

The intelligence community under Mr. Trump is engaged in a campaign seeking to show that Mr. Obama and his aides wrongly sought to tie Mr. Trump to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor — and that some of Mr. Obama’s officials and perhaps Mr. Obama himself should be held criminally liable.

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, conducted a review that was deeply critical of the Obama administration and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan. Mr. Ratcliffe wrote on social media that the review had shown that the process was corrupt, and then he made a criminal referral to the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, issued another report last week including documents that she asserted showed that there was a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 by the Obama administration to harm Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Ms. Gabbard released more material: a 2017 House Intelligence Committee report that took issue with elements of the Obama administration’s assessment. Those House findings were at odds with a bipartisan series of Senate reports that later affirmed the work of the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies.

The Trump administration reports have so far provided little or no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Obama or his aides, but on Sunday, Mr. Trump posted a fake video of Mr. Obama being apprehended by F.B.I. agents in the Oval Office.

It is not yet clear whether even a compliant Justice Department will be willing to open criminal investigations into Mr. Obama or other prominent Democrats and Trump critics, or be able to find grounds to do so. Even if prosecutors lodged charges, prosecutions could be difficult. Mr. Obama, like Mr. Trump, presumably enjoys immunity from prosecution for any official acts while in office, based on the Supreme Court’s landmark presidential immunity ruling last year.

But Mr. Trump often seems intent on using the federal government to subject his foes to the same kinds of scrutiny he has undergone.

Infuriated by what he has sought to characterize as “witch hunt” investigations and legal proceedings against him that started with the investigation into the 2016 election and morphed into the obstruction of justice investigation into him, he has levied crippling executive orders against law firms that had even fleeting connections to those episodes. That process has pressured many of the firms into committing nearly a billion dollars in pro bono legal work to causes he favors.

Casting universities as breeding grounds for antisemitism and a brand of woke liberalism that he feels has opposed and denigrated him at every turn, his administration made an example of Harvard, using a whole-of-government approach to demand major changes. He pelted Harvard with major cuts to its research funding, tried to take visas away from its international students and launched a series of invasive and onerous investigations into the school.

Harvard is now negotiating a settlement with the White House, but the administration kept up the pressure by informing the school of a new investigation on Wednesday.

He took an ax to what he saw as pockets of “deep state” resistance inside his own government

He has sought to cow news organizations, barring The Associated Press from the White House press pool, extracting big financial settlements from the owners of ABC and CBS in disputes over their coverage and filing suit against The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

But, as his own supporters acknowledge, none of that is as important as putting one of his perceived enemies behind bars.

“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, posted on Sunday. “If not. The base will turn and there’s no going back. Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies. They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.”