The next thing you know former President Barack Obama will be calling a press conference to announce, Richard Nixon like, that he is not a traitor.

Only in President Nixon’s case, he had to announce that he was not a crook.

Modern American presidents have called their domestic political opponents, or enemies, many things over the years, but never a traitor. Until now.

In an unheard-of development in modern American politics, President Donald Trump said that Obama was guilty of treason for manipulating high level intelligence to frame him as a Russian stooge.

“It’s there,” Trump said of “evidence” turned over to the Justice Department by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

It charges that Obama and his team “manufactured” intelligence to falsely claim that Russia helped Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and used the misinformation to sabotage his first presidency.

“He’s guilty,” Trump said.

He called Obama the “ringleader” of a group of intelligence officials– including former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper– of colluding and then leaking doctored intelligence reports to tie Trump to Russia in 2016 and thereafter.

The doctored intelligence was allegedly designed to imply that Russians were behind Trump in 2016 when he defeated Hillary Clinton and then used to help Democrats wreck Trump’s presidency in the following four years, which they did.

While he beat Clinton, the Russian collusion narrative, pushed by Democrats and the establishment media, damaged his presidency and contributed to his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden in 2020.

“This was treason,” Trump said. “They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody’s ever imagined, even in other countries.”

Gabbard, who has unearthed and released previously buried incriminating intelligence, said that Obama orchestrated a “years long coup” to keep Trump out of the White House in 2020. She said it was “treasonous.”

Obama did not, of course, call a press conference to directly deny that he was a traitor. The former president is way too smart for that.

That would have been like Nixon 52 years ago when, under pressure that he had obstructed justice over Watergate as well as profiting illicitly from his presidency, called a press conference to deny both charges.

“The people ought to know whether or not their president is a crook,” he said. “Well, I am not a crook.”

Four months later he resigned in disgrace as president and received a full pardon from President Gerald Ford, his successor.

Perhaps if Obama held a similar press conference to say, “I am not a traitor,” Trump would issue him a full pardon as well

But Obama wisely took a different but safer route. Instead of answering Trump’s comments directly, Obama issued a statement through his spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush. It said Trump’s “outrageous” comments were a bunch of “nonsense.”

“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Rodenbush said, apparently referring to the furor over demands for the release of the Epstein files.

The establishment media, which was a willing partner in spreading the phony, Obama-inspired Russian/Trump collusion story, was quick to accuse Gabbard of distracting attention away from the Epstein files controversy, as though the two were if the same importance.

They are not. The Epstein story is a sex scandal.

The Obama story is about a president allegedly doctoring classified intelligence to destroy Trump, his presidential successor.

Obama needs to do more than hide behind a statement issued through a spokesperson.

He ought to stand up at a press conference like Nixon did. He owes the country an answer.

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at:  peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

White House Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard talks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room last week at the White House. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)