Donald Trump launches furious new barrage of claims that his campaign was 'spied on' by the Obama administration - ignoring death toll approaching 100,000

President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning launched a new round of salvos at the Obama administration, claiming it 'spied' on his 2016 presidential campaign.

His litany of complaints came as the coronavirus death toll in the United States approached 100,000.  

'New papers make CLEAR that the Obama Administration SPIED, in an unprecedented manner, on the Trump Campaign and beyond, and even on the United States Senate. Nobody would ever have believed that this level of illegality and corruption would be taking place in our beautiful USA!,' he wrote on Twitter.

'OBAMAGATE MAKES WATERGATE LOOK LIKE SMALL POTATOES!,' he added. 

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President Donald Trump launched a new round of salvos at the Obama administration, claiming it 'spied' on his 2016 presidential campaign

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President Trump has pushed an 'Obamagate' conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama spied on his campaign and tried to keep him from being elected; during the 2016 election the FBI was monitoring Trump's campaign to see if any officials were colluding with Russian agents trying to influence the contest

It is unclear what new papers the president is referring to.

Richard Grenell, in one of his last acts as acting director of national intelligence, declassified more documents tied to the origins of the Russia investigation into Trump.

A senior intelligence official told Fox News the documents were 'very significant in understanding how intelligence was manipulated to support launching the Russia investigation.' 

But the decision on releasing those documents will be made by Grenell's successor, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn into office Wednesday morning in a ceremony in the Oval Office.

Democrats have accused Grenell of using his position to play politics and only release documents that fuel Trump's beliefs and benefit his administration. 

Grenell declassified several documents during his short tenure at DNI that fueled the 'Obamagate' conspiracy theory, including an email from Susan Rice, who served as Barack Obama's national security adviser, revealing her concerns about her successor in that position, Michael Flynn. 

Rice sent to herself the email on President Trump's Inauguration Day, documenting a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with President Obama and others, during which Obama offered guidance on how law enforcement needed to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race.

The declassified email revealed that then-FBI Director James Comey suggested to Obama that the National Security Council might not want to pass 'sensitive information related to Russia' to Flynn, due to the fact that he had been 'speaking frequently' with then-Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

Grenell also declassified documents that showed which Obama administration officials asked to have Flynn 'unmasked,'  which is when an anonymous name in an intelligence report is revealed. That list included Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. 

Unmasking is a common practice used by officials to help them understand intelligence reports better. It is not illegal.  

The latest round of documents Grenell declassified also is believed to include transcripts of calls Flynn had with Russian officials.  

Flynn's calls with Kislyak got picked up by U.S. intelligence intercepts during the transition process, and became part of the Russia probe.

Trump said Tuesday he'd like to see the transcripts of Flynn's call with Kislyak. 

'Yeah, I'd like to hear it too,' he said.

Flynn would later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his undisclosed Russia contacts – although the Justice Department took the extraordinary move of seeking to drop the case. A federal judge is awaiting 'friend of the court' documents relating to the controversial case. 

President Trump - as part of his 'Obamagate' conspiracy theory - has accused former President Barack Obama of 'spying' on his 2016 campaign. The FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Trump's campaign to see anyone in that effort was coordinating, wittingly or unwittingly, with Russian officials trying to influence the election. 

He has seized on the documents declassified by Grenell and praised his former ambassador to Germany for his work.

'I think Ric Grenell has done an incredible job,' Trump said Tuesday.' And things are happening now that - I always knew this was the answer. This was  an attempted coup by a bunch of dirty cops and others.'

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Richard Grenell, in one of his last acts as acting director of national intelligence, declassified more documents tied to the origins of the Russia investigation into President Trump

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President Trump has complained about law enforcement's treatment of his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn

Trump's fretting about a 'deep state' working against him ultimately led to his firing then-FBI director James Comey, a move that would result in Robert Mueller being appointed special prosecutor.

Muller ultimately cleared the Trump campaign of any collusion with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign but left open the question of whether Trump tried to obstruct Mueller's investigation.

President Trump has been invested in the theory that there is a 'deep state' at work in the government bureaucracy - particularly the Justice Department - that tried to keep him from winning the 2016 election and then tried to remove him from office.

In an interview with Sheryl Attkisson on Sunday, he hit out at some of the officials he has accused of being part of such an effort, particularly Comey, who Trump again called a 'dirty cop'; and former FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, whose exchanged anti-Trump texts during the 2016 election.

'I have a chance to break the deep state. It's a vicious group of people. It's very bad for our country,' Trump said in the interview.

'They never thought I was going to win and then I won. And then they tried to get me out,' he added. 

But his conspiracy theory has - not yet anyway - panned out. There have been no arrests and internal Justice Department investigations found no evidence of wrong doing on the part of any person on Trump's list. 

And Attorney General William Barr said earlier this month he does not expect a Justice Department probe examining the origins of the inquiry into Russian investigation will result in criminal probes of either Obama or Biden. 

'There's a difference between an abuse of power and a federal crime. Not every abuse of power — no matter how outrageous — is necessarily a federal crime,' Barr said.