Senator Lindsey Graham is calling for a special counsel to investigate former President Barack Obama after bombshell revelations suggest top Obama officials may have twisted intelligence to frame Donald Trump in the 2016 election. The South Carolina Republican issued his demand on NBC’s Meet the Press, citing newly declassified documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The documents reportedly show that in 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies initially found no evidence that Russia was trying to interfere in the presidential election. Yet, according to Graham, Obama pushed his officials to keep digging until they could support a different story—one that later became the foundation for the FBI’s now-discredited Crossfire Hurricane probe.
“This is new information,” Graham said Sunday. “In 2016, Obama was told there was no evidence Russia was trying to change the outcome of the election. But then suddenly, the analysis changed. Why?”
The shift in narrative, Graham argues, wasn’t just a routine reassessment. He suggested it may have been politically motivated, intended to create a cloud of suspicion around the Trump campaign and support Hillary Clinton’s effort to link her rival to Russian collusion. That allegation formed the backbone of the infamous Steele dossier—an opposition research file funded by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
“Was Obama unhappy with the original findings?” Graham asked rhetorically. “Did he tell people to keep looking until they could find something useful politically?”
While Graham stopped short of accusing Obama of treason, he emphasized that the American people deserve clarity and accountability.
“I’m not saying he committed a crime,” he said, “but if there’s credible evidence of wrongdoing, then we need a special counsel to investigate. That’s the only way to restore public trust.”
This new twist revives concerns about the politicization of intelligence under the Obama administration, particularly in the final months of his presidency. It also aligns with earlier claims made by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who has long argued that Clinton’s campaign strategy deliberately used false intelligence to damage Trump.
According to Durham’s 2023 report, which harshly criticized the FBI’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane, the Bureau failed to act with “appropriate caution” when using materials of partisan origin. Durham noted that intelligence pointing to a Clinton plot was not adequately shared with investigators and could have altered how they evaluated the Trump-Russia allegations.
Now, the focus is turning to whether Obama himself played a role in shifting that narrative.
“We need to find out if he instructed anyone to change their conclusions,” Graham said. “That’s a serious question. If it’s true, it would mean the Russia story was a fraud from the top down.”
Calls for a special counsel are growing louder as the Department of Justice considers whether to act on the declassified annex Ratcliffe forwarded weeks ago. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced a strike force to evaluate allegations from the Obama era, including whether intelligence was weaponized for political purposes.
Graham’s call could push that effort into the national spotlight—and possibly into Obama’s inner circle.