'You know what the crime is. It's very obvious to everybody!' Donald Trump is put on the spot about 'Obamagate' as he is asked exactly what 'crime' his predecessor committed (9 Pics)

Donald Trump claimed 'everybody' knows what crime Barack Obama committed against him as he was asked Monday 'exactly' what he was accusing his predecessor of doing when he tweeted 'Obamagate!'

Trump had spent much of Sunday and Monday morning unleashing a series of tweets, which appeared to have been prompted by Obama slamming his 'chaotic' coronavirus response in a leaked conference call.

He claimed in a retweet that 'Obamagate makes Watergate look small time' and that his predecessor had 'got caught.'

But on Monday afternoon, during a press conference in the Rose Garden, he offered no definition of what he was actually alleging. 

He was asked by a Washington Post reporter: 'In one of your Mother's Day tweets you appear to accuse President Obama of the biggest crime in American history by far - those were your words.

What crime is it? Donald Trump was put on the spot about what he means when he tweets 'Obamagate' by a reporter asking him to define his allegation against his predecessor 

'What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing and do you believed the Justice Department should prosecute him?'

Trump responded 'Obamagate,' then added: 'It's being going on a long time. It's being going on from before I even got elected and it's a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what's gone on and if you look at now, at all this information that's been released, and from what I understand that's only the beginning, terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.

Trump retweeted this image Sunday night, writing: 'OBAMAGATE'

'And you'll be seeing what going on over the next, over the coming weeks and I wish you'd write honestly about it, but unfortunately you choose not to do so.'

Notably his explanation offered no more precision on what he was alleging - or a specific crime and the reporter pressed him: 'What is the crime exactly that you're accusing him of?'

'You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody,' Trump replied.

'All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.'

The Monday tweets were a continuation of a stream of more than 120 tweets on Sunday, many of them accusing Obama of being part of a conspiracy to bring Trump down. 

Several of Trump's tweets claimed that Obama knew the details of a call between former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak in 2016 - at the center of what Trump calls the 'Impeachment Scam.'

Flynn's prosecution for lying to the FBI about that call was effectively dropped last week, spurring Obama to tell his alums on Friday that the U.S. 'rule of law' is at risk. 

Trump appears to have been spurred into attacking Obama by a recording of the former president's half-hour web call with the Obama Alumni Association leaking on Friday, during which he called Trump's response to the COVID-19 crisis an 'absolute chaotic disaster' - and more pointedly slammed the decision to withdraw support for prosecuting Flynn as a threat to the rule of law. 

In response, Trump re-tweeted Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) who said: 'Obama's FBI targeted President Trump and his allies before the 2016 election. Scary!' Trump added: '...And we caught them and their illegal activities!'

Trump followed that on Sunday and Monday morning with a string of tweets and retweets about 'Obamagate.' 

The contours of the  'Obamagate' claim are not entirely clear, but appear linked to Trump's decision of those who prosecuted Flynn as 'human scum' last week as AG Bill Barr's Justice Department withdrew support for his prosecution. 

A federal judge will have to decide whether to clear Flynn, who has pleaded guilty under oath to lying to the FBI.

Trump appears to be suggesting that Obama in some way instructed the FBI to conceal its investigation of Flynn from the incoming administration as part of an attempt to have Trump removed from office once he was inaugurated. 

Monday morning salvo: Donald Trump launched a fresh tweet storm about his predecessor after tweeting repeatedly on Sunday

He also tweeted a link to an article in The Federalist - the conservative website founded by Meghan McCain's husband Ben Domenech - which claimed that Obama had told James Comey not to brief Trump on fears Flynn was a Russian asset even after Obama had left office.

And he is continuing his claim that intelligence agencies illegally surveilled him and his campaign in the run-up to the election.

That claim centers on the eavesdropping warrant the FBI obtained to monitor Carter Page, using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FSA), which allows a special court to permit spying on a U.S. citizen.

Page had been under surveillance before  

By the time it was issued Page was a former campaign aide but a subsequent review found major shortcomings in the applications for renewal of the warrant, including that it used the Christopher Steele dossier, including the notorious 'pee tape' allegation, without telling the court that it had not been substantiated and parts of it had been discredited by the FBI itself.

Trump also appears to link 'Obamagate' to the establishment of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation, which was put in place by his own, politically-appointed, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein after Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself.

Trump was also keen in the two-day tweet storm to highlight how his administration had dealt with Beijing compared to Obama's relationship with President Xi Jinping which had 'allowed China 'to grow to the dominant dictatorship superpower that it is.'

Trump has called Xi his friend and made him a guest at Mar-a-Lago but now claims he is tough on China.  

'We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA,' Trump tweeted.

'Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls - didn't have a clue!'

About one year after Obama took office, the H1N1 pandemic hit the U.S. – and in October 2009 he declared the outbreak a national emergency. 

Obama last week blamed Trump for exacerbating 'tribal' tensions around the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, which he says has hampered the effort to reduce the total number of cases nationwide. 

Replying to one tweet claiming that Obama 'is the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor,' Trump wrote: 'He got caught, OBAMAGATE!'

Donald Trump bashed former President Barack Obama for his response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 after his predecessor criticized the current response to the coronavirus crisis

Trump also targeted Obama in a few other tweets and reposts for issues unrelated to pandemic responses

Audio of the web call where Obama made the comments was obtained by Yahoo News, who then released a report of the details of the call Friday.

'What we're fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy - that has become a stronger impulse in American life,' the former president said.

'And by the way, we're seeing that internationally as well,' Obama continued. 'It's part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty.'

'It would have been bad even with the best of governments,' he claimed. 'It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset - of 'what's in it for me' and 'to heck with everybody else' - when that mindset is operationalized in our government.'

He also re-asserted his endorsement for his former vice president, and the presumed Democratic nominee: 'That's why, I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.'

There's currently more than 1.3 million cases of coronavirus and 78,000 deaths in the U.S. – and several state and local governments have begun reopening and ending lockdown and stay-at-home orders after months of economic downturn.

Trump boasted Sunday in one of his tweets, 'So great to see our Country starting to open up again!,' including an image of his Los Angeles club reopening for golfers.

Excluding campaign speeches during the 2018 midterm elections, Obama has largely been quiet since Trump took office and replaced him after defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 – he has especially steered clear of directly criticizing the current president by name.

Obama's comments on the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic were a much sharper attack on his successor than he has issued in the past. 

Last month, Obama offered veiled criticism of Trump over the COVID-19 crisis, claiming that there was no 'coherent national plan' to address the outbreak.

'While we continue to wait for a coherent national plan to navigate this pandemic, states like Massachusetts are beginning to adopt their own public health plans to combat this virus––before it's too late,' the former president tweeted.

Obama used the tweet to issue an attack on the president, but also praised Massachusetts for its response to the pandemic with a New Yorker article titled: It's Not Too Late to Go on Offense Against the Coronavirus.

As several states continue to lament that they do not have the supplies to administer enough testing, some have taken matters into their own hands.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker launched a plan for full-scale, statewide testing, which will be used to implement effective quarantine and treatment systems.

The state was able to increase the number of tests administered from just 41 on March 9 to more than eight thousand by April 17.

Obama also attacked his successor at the end of March as Trump signed the CARES Act to provide $2.2 trillion in economic stimulus and relief for Americans and small businesses.

'We've seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic,' the two-term Democrat tweeted last month.

'We can't afford any more consequences of climate denial. All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall,' he continued at the time.

This election year has been upended by the pandemic. With no vaccine in sight and the number of cases climbing, some states have started to gradually reopen their economies while others have maintained a lockdown.

The Trump administration has been scrutinized for its response to the pandemic.

Reports in several media outlets indicated that Trump played down the severity of the coronavirus even while his own experts were urging him to take it seriously.

Top Trump administration officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and trade adviser Peter Navarro reportedly sounded the alarm about a pandemic reaching American shores as early as late January, but the president failed to heed the warnings.

Critics said the valuable time that was lost could have been used to ramp up testing as well as provide medical professionals adequate supplies of personal protective equipment in order to better deal with the pandemic.

Trump has also been criticized for mixed messaging - touting social distancing and preventative measures on the one hand but then urging his supporters to 'liberate' states through mass demonstrations on the other. 

The president has also made comments that have prompted mockery and scorn from the public, including his suggestion that cleaning disinfectants could be ingested into the body in order to treat COVID-19. 

Trump, for his part, has claimed that his decision to shut down travel from China saved lives, though the administration has allowed flights from China carrying American citizens and legal residents to continue landing in the country. 

The record unemployment rate reported on Friday captured the pain of a nation where tens of millions of jobs suddenly vanished, devastating the economy and forcing Trump to overcome historic headwinds to win a second term.

Just a few short months ago, Trump planned to campaign for re-election on the back of a robust economy – but with an unemployment rate of 14.7 per cent, the highest since the Great Depression, some states crucial to Trump's victory are suffering financially.  

The president is now tasked with convincing voters that the catastrophic jobs losses were the result of the pandemic - not his management of the public health crisis.  

Meanwhile, 11 members of the United States Secret Service have recently tested positive for COVID-19 while 23 others have recovered from the illness.. 

Some 60 employees of the agency charged with protecting President Trump and other senior government officials are currently in quarantine due to the outbreak, according to Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by Yahoo News.  

Meanwhile, Mike Pence's press secretary, Katie Miller, tested positive for the virus on Friday. She had been in recent contact with the vice president. Miller is married Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser.

The positive test for Katie Miller came one day after White House officials confirmed that a member of the military serving as one of Trump´s valets had tested positive for COVID-19. 

Trump's valet's case marked the first known instance where a person who has come in close proximity to the president has tested positive since several people present at his private Florida club were diagnosed with COVID-19 in early March. 

The valet tested positive Wednesday.

The White House was moving to shore up its protection protocols to protect the nation's political leaders.

Trump said some staffers who interact with him closely would now be tested daily.

Pence told reporters Thursday that both he and Trump would now be tested daily as well.