Obama's Questionable Legacy: Lawbreaker Or Misunderstood?

There have been various claims about former US President Barack Obama breaking the law, including a hoax claim that he broke federal law in an attempt to reclaim the presidency from Donald Trump. However, these accusations are false and have been debunked by fact-checking organisations. While there were disputes between Obama and House Republicans regarding his alleged lawlessness, the issue was not solely about the number of executive orders issued but rather the appropriate range of executive discretion. Obama's legacy is complex, with historians and commentators debating his effectiveness as a politician and the impact of his policies.

Fast and Furious

Operation Fast and Furious was a high-profile scandal that involved former President Barack Obama's Justice Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and ex-Attorney General Eric Holder.

The operation was a sting intended to track and arrest high-ranking leaders of Mexican drug cartels. Between 2006 and 2011, the ATF allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to follow the guns to the cartel leaders and arrest them. However, the operation failed, and the guns were instead used to facilitate crimes along the US-Mexico border.

The scandal came to light in 2011, when two firearms involved in the sting were found at a crime scene where a US Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed.

In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting member of the US Cabinet to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena. President Obama also asserted executive privilege for the first time in his presidency to withhold these documents.

In 2025, the ATF announced its decision to destroy the firearms associated with the scandal, sparking a rebuke from the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, who argued that the scandal was still a matter of public concern.

IRS illegally targeted conservative groups

In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), under the Obama administration, revealed that it had selected certain political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This scrutiny was applied to groups with terms such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project" in their names, as well as groups that advocated for conservative causes such as criticising how the country was being run, advocating for smaller government, or challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often referred to as "Obamacare"). This led to widespread condemnation of the IRS and triggered several investigations, including a criminal probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, and while an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny from 2004 to 2013, it was also concluded that conservative groups were subjected to greater scrutiny compared to liberal-leaning groups. This was supported by the findings of the House Oversight Committee, which stated that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, it did not amount to targeting when compared to the scrutiny received by conservative groups.

The controversy resulted in the resignation of several high-ranking IRS officials, including Acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue and Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement, Steven T. Miller, and Lois Lerner, who ran the IRS's section on tax-exempt organisations. In addition, the Trump administration agreed to settle lawsuits filed by conservative groups, including one on behalf of 428 groups and another on behalf of 41 groups, with payments totalling $3.5 million, an apology, and an admission of wrongdoing from the IRS.

The IRS's actions were widely criticised by the press and lawmakers from both political parties. Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, demanded accountability, asking, "My question isn't about who's going to resign, my question is who's going to jail over this scandal?". Several conservative commentators also expressed outrage, with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough declaring, "This is tyranny," and NBC's Chuck Todd stating, "It didn't seem like they had a sense of urgency about it, a real sense of outrage...This is outrageous no matter what political party you are."

Secretly obtained phone records from Associated Press journalists

In May 2013, it was revealed that the Obama administration had secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors working for the Associated Press (AP) news agency. The records covered all of April and May 2012 and were seized by the Department of Justice (DoJ) earlier that year. The records listed outgoing calls for both the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, as well as the general phone lines for AP bureaus in New York, Washington, Hartford, and the House of Representatives.

The AP said it did not know if the records also included incoming calls and information about the duration of each call. The news agency also did not know how many journalists had used the bureau phone lines during that period, but more than 100 AP journalists are known to routinely use some of the numbers that were covered under the subpoena.

The AP discovered the surveillance when the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, Jr. in the District of Columbia sent a letter to AP's general counsel informing her that his office had obtained the records. The letter did not state why the records were sought, but the AP noted that Machen's office was reportedly conducting a criminal investigation to uncover the source of information for an AP story published on May 7, 2012, about a foiled terror plot. The story, written by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman with contributions by Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan, and Alan Fram, provided details of a CIA operation in Yemen that halted an al-Qaida plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed to the U.S.

In an angry letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP CEO Gary Pruitt called the seizure of phone records a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into the AP's newsgathering activities. He wrote that there could be "no possible justification" for such a broad collection of telephone communications and that it potentially revealed communications with confidential sources, providing a "road map" to the AP's newsgathering operations. Pruitt also criticised the Justice Department for not providing advance notice of the subpoena, as is usually done, so that the news agency could have negotiated or challenged the request.

The Justice Department's actions were criticised by Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, who said that " [o]btaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power." He added that " [f]reedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources."

Supports unconditional, warrantless wiretapping

The Obama administration continued to defend the warrantless wiretapping program in court, arguing that a ruling on the merits would reveal state secrets. In April 2009, officials acknowledged that the NSA had engaged in the "overcollection" of domestic communications, but claimed that these acts were unintentional and had since been rectified.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) regulates government agencies' physical searches and electronic surveillance, where a significant purpose is to gather foreign intelligence information. FISA requires the Justice Department to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before or up to 72 hours after the beginning of the surveillance. However, FISA also permits the President or their delegate to authorize warrantless surveillance if "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party".

The Obama administration adopted the same position as its predecessor when it urged Judge Walker to set aside a ruling in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation et al. v. Obama, et al. They sided with the Bush administration in its legal defence of July 2008 legislation that immunized telecommunications companies from lawsuits accusing them of complicity in the program.

The Obama administration further claimed that Title II of the USA PATRIOT Act, entitled Enhanced Surveillance Procedures, also allowed the program. Obama stated that Americans' civil liberties were protected and that purely domestic wiretapping was conducted only pursuant to warrants.

In 2008, the ACLU challenged the FISA Amendments Act, which gave the NSA unprecedented power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans' international communications. The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to review the case.

Lied about Benghazi attack

On September 11, 2012, members of the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia carried out a coordinated attack on two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans: Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA operatives, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs.

Initial reports indicated that the attack was a spontaneous response to a video, Innocence of Muslims, which had sparked violent incidents at several U.S. diplomatic facilities. However, subsequent investigations revealed that the attack was premeditated.

Despite persistent accusations, ten investigations—six by Republican-controlled Congressional Committees—did not find that President Obama, Hillary Clinton, or any other high-ranking Obama administration officials had acted improperly.

One of the accusations levelled at the Obama administration was that they lied about the nature of the Benghazi attack. Specifically, it was alleged that they knew the attack was premeditated and carried out by Islamic extremists, but claimed publicly that it was a spontaneous response to the Innocence of Muslims video.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory. Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, inaccurately asserted that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. However, it was later determined that Rice and other Obama administration officials were provided with an early assessment by intelligence analysts, which they repeated to the media. As further intelligence was gathered, this assessment was revised, and it was determined that there was no protest before the attack.

While the Obama administration's initial assessment proved to be incorrect, there is no evidence that they lied about the Benghazi attack. The talking points provided to Rice by the CIA stated that the assessment may change as additional information was collected and analysed. Additionally, none of the ten investigations into the Benghazi attack found that any senior Obama administration officials, including Rice, had acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

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