Trump threatens to investigate Obama: ‘Let's subpoena all of his records’

He thinks the Democrats 'want to go fishing'

Donald Trump has threatened to investigate Barack Obama “the way they’ve looked into me”.

In statements given in the Oval Office, the president said the Democrats “want to investigate, they want to go fishing”, and suggested the attention given to his ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice, could apply to other presidents.

“We want to find out what happened with the last democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked at me from day one,” Mr Trump told reporters.

“They’ve looked into everything we’ve done. They could look into the book deal that president Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records.”

The president went to return to one of his common themes, Hillary Clinton.

“Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton, and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and with her foundation and everything else,” he said. “We could do that all day long.”

While the Clinton Foundation has been the subject of much discussion on both sides of the political spectrum, it isunclear what Mr Trump is talking about with regards to Mr Obama’s book deal.

The former president did break records with a highly lucrative book deal in 2017, but a deal itself is not uncommon. In fact, nearly every president in the modern era has released a memoir leaving office, for which they have been paid.

Mr Trump also continued to repeat the lie that Robert Mueller’s report cleared him of all wrongdoing, saying “the document says ‘no collusion’,” which it does not.

In the wake of Mr Mueller’s congressional hearings on Wednesday, the Trump administration and its supporters have latched onto the public opinion, largely curated by specific voices in both traditional and social media, that nothing new or explosive came out of the hearings. In fact, Mr Mueller stated that his report did not absolve the president, and outrightly warned of Russian interference in upcoming elections.

But the president, who Russia was found explicitly to favour in the report, is still mostly maintaining that investigating him at all is an inexcusable affront.

“Frankly, the Republicans were gentlemen. And women,” he told reporters. “When we had the majority in the house, they didn’t do subpoenas all day long, what these people have done. What they’re doing is a disgrace.”

Regardless, House Democrats announced on Friday that they were veering closer and closer to impeachment proceedings, with at least 100 members in favour of doing so.