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On Monday, "President" Trump became the first president in modern U.S. history to accuse his predecessor of treason.

“It’s treason,” Trump said during a Monday interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “They were spying on my campaign, I told you that a long time ago. It turns out I was right.”

The Department of Justice inspector general found no evidence of what Trump has repeatedly claimed, that former president Barack Obama spied on his campaign via wiretaps in part of what Trump calls “Obamagate.”

Trump suggested five times in the month of May alone that individuals and entities may have committed treason against the United States. It’s a theme he has pushed over four dozen times in his term: That the “deep state” attempted a “treasonous” overthrow of his administration via the Russia investigation.

According to a Fix analysis, Trump has accused no fewer than 11 people and entities of treason over the past three years, even though fewer than 30 have been charged with the crime in U.S. history. You can watch Trump make many of those treason allegations in the video above.

No U.S. president has used the word “treason” in public remarks since Bill Clinton did so in 2000, according to the American Presidency Project. Lyndon B. Johnson was the last president known to suggest that someone had committed treason — when he accused Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential nominee, of treason during a private phone call in 1968.

Trump floated his first treason accusation in January 2018 against then-FBI agent Peter Strzok. Since then, Trump has floated treason allegations against:

● Former president Barack Obama

● Congressional Democrats (The White House later said Trump was “joking&rdquo.

● The news media.

● The author of an anonymous op-ed.

● Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

● Former FBI director James B. Comey.

● Former top FBI official Andrew McCabe.

● Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).

● The attorney for the Ukraine whistleblower.

● The Justice Department under the Obama administration.

More than half of Trump’s treason allegations have come since Attorney General William P. Barr tapped U.S. Attorney John H. Durham to investigate the origins of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“I’m not telling anybody what to do. It’s up to Bill Barr and Bull Durham,” Trump said on May 24, before criticizing those involved in the Russia investigation. “I can tell you, from my standpoint, they’re guilty on so many different things, but they’re really guilty — you could call it treason.”

The treason allegations also come as Trump tries to shift the focus of the November election away from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic by pushing baseless conspiracy theories. Trump has not sustained the polling bump he saw in the early days of the U.S. outbreak and trails former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in key swing states.

Last month Trump made a new pitch to voters, saying he has “a chance to break the deep state.” But 11 months prior, Trump inadvertently undercut his own theory about the “deep state” and treason.

Asked at the time by ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos why the Obama administration did not leak the investigation into alleged election coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump acknowledged could have sunk his candidacy, Trump did not dispute the premise.

“You know what, you’d have to ask them,” Trump said in June 2019. “… The newspapers would not print it. I cannot believe it.”

It was the same news organizations that he had accused of treason one year before.
JM Rieger is the video editor for The Fix, covering national politics. He joined The Washington Post in 2018. Previously, Rieger worked as a video producer covering national politics for HuffPost. He began his career as a video editor covering Congress for Roll Call.