Barack Obama sat down with Stephen Colbert at the new Obama presidential center this month and delivered a polished sermon on the sacred independence of the Justice Department. The 44th president told his host that "the White House shouldn't be able to direct the attorney general to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants prosecuted" and warned that America "can't overcome the politicization of the criminal justice system."
It was a performance tailor-made for friendly applause. It also collides, head-on, with the documented record of Obama's own presidency, a record that includes public prejudgment of an active FBI investigation, a hand in shaping a disputed intelligence assessment, and an attorney general who cheerfully called himself the president's "wingman."
The gap between what Obama said on camera and what federal investigators, inspectors general, and special counsels have put on paper is wide enough to drive a grand jury through. And that, as the New York Post has reported, may be exactly what is happening: the Justice Department has reportedly opened a federal grand jury investigation into former Obama administration officials over their alleged roles in creating or fueling the Trump-Russia narrative.
Obama told Colbert he would "consult with Eric Holder, my attorney general, around broad policy issues. That's different than who do you charge, what case do you bring?" He described the attorney general as "the people's lawyer", not "the president's consigliere."
Holder saw it differently. In a public statement documented by Just the News, Obama's first attorney general declared: "I'm still the president's wingman, so I'm there with my boy." The House of Representatives voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress over his refusal to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. The Justice Department under Holder never carried out the contempt charges against its own boss.
Then there was Loretta Lynch. Obama's second attorney general met privately with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in June 2016, while the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton's private email server. Lynch refused to recuse herself but said she would accept whatever recommendation FBI Director James Comey made on charges.
That arrangement produced one of the more remarkable outcomes in modern law enforcement history.
Months before Comey announced his decision, Obama went on television and declared of Clinton's email arrangement: "I don't think it posed a national security problem." He added, "This is not a situation in which America's national security was endangered," and said, "we don't get an impression that here there was purposely efforts, on, in, to hide something or to squirrel away information."
The New York Times reported at the time that "those statements angered FBI agents who have been working for months to determine whether Mrs. Clinton's email setup did in fact put any of the nation's secrets at risk." To investigators, the Times noted, "it sounded as if Mr. Obama had already decided the answers to their questions and cleared anyone involved of wrongdoing."
Obama later softened his language slightly, saying Clinton had shown "carelessness" but insisting, "I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security." The president of the United States was publicly announcing his conclusions about an open criminal investigation, the very behavior he now warns against from the comfort of a late-night interview chair.
On July 5, 2016, Comey delivered his own verdict. He acknowledged "evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information" but said "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." He listed 110 emails in 52 chains that contained classified information at the time they were sent or received.
Obama has faced accusations of selective principle before, but the email episode stands apart because of what the paper trail reveals about his personal involvement.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz revealed in his 2018 report that Obama was one of 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account. Obama used a pseudonym for his username on his official government email account.
"FBI analysts and Prosecutor 2 told us that former President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account. Obama, like other high level government officials, used a pseudonym for his username on his official government email account."
The analysts told Horowitz they questioned whether Obama's email address, combined with salutations revealing the exchanges were with the president, or other information in the emails were classified. They sent the emails to relevant intelligence community agencies for classification review. Those agencies determined none contained classified information.
But an early draft of Comey's July 2016 remarks, later surfaced by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told a more pointed story. The draft stated that Clinton "used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including from the territory of sophisticated adversaries. That use included an email exchange with the President [Obama] while Secretary Clinton was on the territory of such an adversary."
In the final version Comey delivered publicly, "the President" was changed to "another senior government official." Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had previously revealed that the phrase "gross negligence", the statutory standard under 18 U.S. Code § 793, appeared in early drafts of Comey's remarks before it was softened.
A president who emails a secretary of state on her private, insecure server while she is on the soil of a hostile foreign power has a personal stake in the outcome of any investigation into that server. Obama never acknowledged that conflict. He simply told the country the case was no big deal, and the FBI director, weeks later, agreed.
The email investigation was only half the story. The other half involves what U.S. intelligence knew about the origins of the Russia-collusion narrative itself, and what Obama did with that knowledge.
Special Counsel John Durham's report described how "in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee."
Durham said CIA Director John Brennan's handwritten notes reflected that Brennan briefed Obama, Comey, Biden, and others in the summer of 2016 on this intelligence, that Clinton had allegedly approved a proposal on July 26 from one of her campaign advisers to tie Trump to Russia as a way "of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."
Obama has remained a dominant figure in Democratic politics, but these disclosures raise questions about whether his administration acted on the intelligence or buried it.
Durham noted the CIA sent a formal written referral memorandum, completed on September 7, 2016, to Comey and FBI agent Peter Strzok. The memo stated:
"Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date:... An exchange... discussing U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."
The FBI had launched Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016, citing as predication a tip from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer about Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos. That tip reached the U.S. government on the same day the Clinton Plan was allegedly approved.
After Trump's November 2016 victory, Obama directed the creation of a new Intelligence Community Assessment. The post-election January 2017 ICA was assembled by the CIA under Brennan, the FBI under Comey, and the NSA under Admiral Mike Rogers, with input from then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Obama endorsed the assessment's conclusion that Vladimir Putin's goal had been to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, speaking from the White House press briefing room, stated bluntly:
"There is irrefutable evidence that details how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false. They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true. It wasn't."
An Obama spokesperson pushed back, saying: "These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. 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." The spokesperson cited a 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.
But the legal trajectory has moved beyond press statements. The New York Post reported that the Justice Department is opening a federal grand jury investigation into former Obama administration officials, with Clapper, Brennan, and Comey potentially facing criminal scrutiny. Gabbard sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Pam Bondi. White House spokesman Harrison Fields said, "Following the compelling case outlined by DNI Tulsi Gabbard... the Administration remains committed to conducting a thorough investigation."
Obama's refusal to step back from public life means these questions follow him onto every stage and into every interview. Last summer, Gabbard declassified a House Intelligence Committee report bearing on the same matters.
Obama told Colbert that America needs to "codify" the norms separating the White House from law enforcement. He said he followed those norms even though "they weren't law." He warned against any president who "starts using that to go after their political enemies or reward their friends."
The documented record tells a different story. Obama publicly prejudged the FBI's investigation of his own former secretary of state, a woman whose private email server he had personally used. His attorney general called himself the president's wingman. His CIA director briefed him on intelligence suggesting Clinton's campaign had hatched a plan to frame Trump with a Russia scandal, and the FBI received a formal referral about it, yet the Crossfire Hurricane investigation barreled forward against Trump's associates. After the election, Obama ordered an intelligence assessment that Gabbard now calls fabricated.
Obama remains the most visible figure in his party, and he clearly intends to keep lecturing the country about institutional integrity. Whether a grand jury agrees with his version of events may determine how history remembers the lecture.
Preaching DOJ independence is easy on a late-night couch. The hard part is doing it when you're the one in the Oval Office, and the evidence suggests Obama didn't.