TOPLINE
In a recorded private call to hundreds of former members of his administration obtained by Yahoo News, President Barack Obama criticized the Justice Department’s move to drop charges against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as the government’s response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
KEY FACTS
During the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference and possible collusion, Flynn plead guilty of lying to the agency in 2017 over conversations he held with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak among other false statements, but on Thursday, attorney general William Barr approved the decision to drop the case, with filings calling the interviews «untethered» to the investigation.
«There is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free,» Obama said, though, perjury is not the charge. «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.»
The New York Times independently verified the conversation, with one attendee saying Obama was in «quite the mood.»
Obama addressed the upcoming election—the president endorsed his former Vice President Joe Biden—saying «This election that’s coming up on every level is so important because…what we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided and seeing others as an enemy, that has become a stronger impulse in American life.»
He linked that sentiment to the response to the pandemic, saying «It would have been bad even with the best of governments, it has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else,’ when that mindset is operationalized in our government.»
While Trump used the Justice Department’s decision to further deride the FBI’s investigation, law experts questioned the decision, with Julie O’Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor and current Georgetown University professor, telling the Times«I’ve been practicing for more time than I care to admit and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
CRUCIAL QUOTE
Obama on the upcoming election: «That’s why I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.»
CHIEF CRITIC
President Trump. Following the Justice Department’s decision on Thursday, Trump hurled numerous insults towards Obama’s administration while hosting Texas Governor Greg Abbott at the White House. Calling Flynn «a hero» and the Obama administration «human scum,» he also said «It’s treason…the people should pay a big price.»
KEY BACKGROUND
While Obama has kept a low-profile during Trump’s presidency, he’s been more vocal during the pandemic. After the Environmental Protection Agency rolled back fuel economy standards instituted under his presidency, Obama took to Twitter to compare climate change denial to the delayed response to the pandemic, writing «We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic.» In a private letter sent to the National Archives in March in response to a request by two Republican senators to release documents related to Ukraine, Obama’s office called the effort a means «to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign.»
Trump, however, has not been shy in criticizing the Obama administration throughout his term and especially during the pandemic. In defending shortages of supplies, Trump often says the «cupboard was bare» despite being in the fourth year of his presidency and despite claims by Dr. Rick Bright, former federal agency head for funding medical treatments, vaccines and supplies, that warnings of shortages were ignored by the administration. Trump has also made the claim that he inherited «broken tests,» though tests wouldn’t have existed for a new virus.
The U.S. leads all countries in confirmed cases of the coronavirus with 1,291,100, nearly a third of all cases globally. It also leads in reported deaths with 77,489, over double the second-leading country in the United Kingdom.
