Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released a newly declassified report suggesting that former President Barack Obama engaged in a cover-up akin to the so-called “smoking gun” revealed in the Watergate investigation in the 1970s.
The Watergate scandal centered on the June 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., as then-President Richard Nixon sought re-election.
Five Republican operatives had been caught wire-tapping phones and stealing documents, according to History.com.
The issue at the outset was not that the burglary took place, but whether the Nixon White House or Nixon himself was implicated.
The saying, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” gained currency during the whole sordid affair. Nixon was never implicated in hatching the scheme, but he was in the cover-up.
And the “smoking gun” remark was made in a conversation that Nixon had with then-White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, recorded in the Oval Office days after the break-in occurred.
In it, the two discussed “the progress of the FBI’s investigation especially the tracing of the source of money found on the burglars,” and they proposed “having the CIA ask the FBI to halt their investigation of the Watergate break-in by claiming that the break-in was a national security operation,” according to the Nixon Presidential Library.
No such audio exists regarding Obama — presidents after Nixon probably learned their lesson about having incriminating recordings around — but information in a now-declassified 2018 report by then-Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, released by Grassley, indicated that Obama wanted the FBI to make a scandal go away.
DON’T MISS THIS: The Department of Justice just confirmed that President Obama ordered the FBI to shut down the Clinton email scandal. FBI Director James Comey followed orders and buried it.
This was a clear, high-level criminal cover-up worse than Watergate.
The declassified… pic.twitter.com/OEl0ukJX8N
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 21, 2025
Should Obama be prosecuted for obstructing justice?
The issue was 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private, unsecured email server while she was Obama’s secretary of state.
According to page six of the Horowitz report, the FBI Cyber Division obtained two Russian-language documents that were translated into English by the bureau.
“Both documents appear to be [redacted] reports discussing purported communications between Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was at the time the Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and two different individuals who worked for the Open Society Foundations, a family of offices and foundations created by George Soros,” Horowitz’s report read.
The source communications, assuming they existed, were likely obtained through a cyber intrusion of the left-leaning Atlantic Council think tank, the section of the report concluded.
The FBI was looking into possible corruption related to Clinton’s time at the State Department and the granting of preferences to the Clinton Foundation.
Recall the deletion of 30,000 Clinton emails under congressional subpoena using bleachbit and hammers.
“Obama is not in the mood to mar the very final segment of his presidency, his legacy, with a scandal around the leading nominee of the Democratic Party. To deal with this he is using Attorney General Loretta Lynch to mount a pressure campaign on FBI Director James Comey,” the report stated.
Recall Comey’s infamous July 5, 2016, announcement exonerating Clinton of criminal wrongdoing, despite having highly classified information on her server.
Lynch had met with former President Bill Clinton on her plane at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor less than two weeks before, so maybe she did not like the optics of exonerating Hillary on camera herself.
The second Russian report, found on page seven of Horowitz’s review, said, “By way of forming a consensus relative to the candidacy Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, leading the Democratic Party (DP), sanctioned the use of all the administrative levers to remove possibly negative effects of the FBI investigation of the business of the Clinton Foundation and the email correspondence of the State Department.”
Grassley’s release of the inspector general report, coupled with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s recent allegation and release of supporting documents, that Obama was directly involved in launching Russiagate to bring down or at least cripple President Donald Trump’s administration, paints the picture of the 44th president seeking to subvert the honest work of the FBI and the intelligence agencies.
That is what Nixon’s “smoking gun” conversation was about, too.
🧵 Americans will finally learn the truth about how in 2016, intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President @realDonaldTrump, subverting the… pic.twitter.com/UQKKZ5c4Op
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) July 18, 2025
So we do not have the smoking gun audio of Obama making unlawful orders, but what we have so far is getting closer to it.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
