Angling to move beyond the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, President Donald Trump has escalated his push to enact revenge on political foes with unfounded allegations of intelligence tampering against Barack Obama and top members of the 44th president’s administration — triggering new alarms from Democrats.

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters on Wednesday criticized Trump and his team for a deploying a strategy that he said “breeds conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

“Our Republican colleagues are failing to conduct independent oversight of the administration,” added Peters, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who is retiring next year.

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Judiciary Committee member, said the administration has been evasive since announcing earlier this month that it would not release documents related to Epstein, the deceased and convicted sex offender.

Trump’s team has been “stonewalling and stalling and concealing, and the American people are rightly asking, ‘What do they have to hide?’” the Democrat said.

As his MAGA base boiled over the Epstein documents decision, Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker who later left the party, alleged that Obama and some in his inner circle altered intelligence to hurt Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump even described Obama’s alleged actions as treasonous.

An Obama spokesman called the allegations “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement.

Before the House left early for recess last week, California Rep. Pete Aguilar, the chamber’s No. 3 Democrat, called the Obama allegations “an effort by Donald Trump to distract from the issues of the day.”

“I’m confident that the American people see through this. If a judge rules in a position that Donald Trump disagrees with, they are corrupt. They are terrible. If they rule in a way that he likes, then it is the best decision ever,” Aguilar said on July 23. “And his default is blame President Obama, blame Secretary (Hillary) Clinton, blame President (Joe) Biden.”

Though no senior Obama administration officials have been charged with wrongdoing, the allegations marked a stark escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to seek revenge on political foes — or at least to create the illusion of it in a nod to base voters.

To that end, Trump’s social media accounts on Sunday shared a meme of the president behind the wheel of a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser, chasing Obama, who was driving a white Ford Bronco — an apparent re-creation of the 1994 pursuit of O.J. Simpson.

The meme seemed like another attempt to distract from the Epstein scandal and suggest Obama deserved some level of retribution. While the president’s social media posts did not include a caption, his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., replied with three laughing-and-crying emojis.

On Friday morning, as he left the White House for a trip to Scotland that he completed Tuesday, the president was asked about the Epstein scandal — and he quickly pivoted to Obama.

“They should focus on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup, or they should focus on the fact that Larry Summers from Harvard, that Bill Clinton, who you know very well, and lots of other friends, really close friends of Jeffrey (Epstein) should be spoken about because Jeffrey Epstein should be spoken about, and they should speak about them because they don’t talk about them,” Trump said.

“They talk about me. I have nothing to do with the guy,” he added.

Asked if the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that sitting and former presidents possess legal immunity for official acts would apply to Obama in the face of Trump’s accusations, the president sent a warning to officials in his predecessor’s administration.

“It probably helped him a lot … but it doesn’t help the people around him at all,” Trump said Friday. “He’s done criminal acts, there’s no question about it. But he has immunity, and it probably helped him a lot.”

“Obama owes me big,” he said.

Those comments came two days after Gabbard made a surprise appearance at a White House news briefing, during which she displayed a chart alleging that officials such as former DNI James Clapper, former FBI Director James B. Comey and former CIA Director John O. Brennan, among others, were involved in what Trump and his allies call the “Russia hoax.”

“It’s been nine and a half years since Barack Obama was in the White House and … only as a distraction to more Jeffrey Epstein questions does Tulsi Gabbard throw a bone to Donald Trump,” Aguilar said last week. “That’s all this is about.”

‘Only antidote’

Other influential Democratic figures also have raised worries about Trump’s latest moves in what they see as a second-term revenge tour.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a past and future potential Democratic presidential contender, recently warned against “the politics of fear.” He told NPR that a fear of political retribution “is more real than at any point in my lifetime.”

Since returning to office, Trump has targeted large universities in deep-blue areas, including Harvard in Massachusetts and Columbia in New York City, over what he and his aides call their radical curriculum and over-enrollments of foreign students.

By targeting the federal funding for those institutions of higher learning as retribution against their approaches and embrace of diversity initiatives, Trump “is already impacting who gets invited to speak at a university or who gets hired at a law firm,” Buttigieg said. “The thing about the politics of fear is the more you give into it, the worse it gets. The only antidote to a politics of fear is a politics of courage.”

Trump’s attempts to implicate prominent Democrats continued Monday in Scotland.

“For years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help, and I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He stole people that work for me,” the president said. “I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non grata.”

He then denied visiting Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, saying he “never had the privilege” of going there, but he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the island multiple times — a charge Clinton has denied, according to The New York Times.

It’s not just Democrats who’ve noticed Trump’s attempt to pivot from the Epstein scandal.

“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of the people,” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, wrote earlier this month on social media. “If not. The base will turn and there’s no going back. Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies. They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.”

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