Fact Check: Is Obama in prison because of Donald Trump

Comprehensive coverage of President Donald Trump and his administration from The Washington Post, including the latest news and in-depth analysis.

Since the start of his second presidency in early 2025, Donald Trump and his administration have moved aggressively to carry out deportations, including invoking a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to remove Venezuelan migrants who officials accuse of being part of a terrorist gang.

Kathryn Ruemmler, the former White House counsel under Obama and chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs, arrives for her closed-doors interview. Photograph: Al Drago/Reuters ... Lawmakers dubious of answers from Kathryn Ruemmler, whose name appeared thousands of times in released files ... Democrats said Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel under Barack Obama, was not “completely truthful” with lawmakers during her Wednesday testimony before the House committee on oversight and reform about her ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Geo Group is a $4bn company that runs a vast network of private immigration detention centers and state prisons across the US.

“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mr. Mullin said. This is not the first time the Trump administration has threatened election administrators with jail time.

Russia conducted the most significant foreign influence operations during the 2016 presidential contest, according to former U.S. intelligence officials and the bipartisan conclusions of a multiyear investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee released in 2019 and 2020. Social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, and the Obama administration were caught flat-footed by the Russian playbook, which China, Iran and others have mimicked in more recent elections, including the 2020 and 2024 presidential races.

In response to a question about Epstein on Tuesday, Trump responded that "the witchhunt you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold." "It's there, he's guilty. This was treason," he said. Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for former President Barack Obama, said in a statement earlier this week that no released information "undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes".

By the end of his second and final ... Barack Obama had exercised his constitutional power to grant the executive clemency—that is, "pardon, commutation of sentence, remission of fine or restitution, and reprieve"—to 1,927 individuals convicted of federal crimes. Of the acts of clemency, 1,715 were commutations (including 504 life sentences) and 212 were pardons. Most individuals granted executive clemency by Obama had been convicted on drug charges, and had received ...

In an interview, Vallely stated ... status of Barack Obama." Following Vallely's announcement, Army Major General (retired) Jerry Curry and Air Force Lt. General (retired) Thomas G. McInerney also expressed public support for Lakin. On December 7, 2010, Lakin entered a guilty plea to the charges of disobeying ...