President Trump suggested Friday that Congress should investigate former President Obama with the same level of scrutiny that lawmakers have directed at him, saying Republicans treated his predecessor more gently.

“Lets look into Obama the way that they looked into me,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “From Day One, they’ve looked into everything that we’ve done. We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president. They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records.”

The president was responding with exasperation to House Democrats’ latest move, with Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler announcing he’ll go to court to obtain grand jury records from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Mr. Trump said Republicans were nicer to Mr. Obama than Democrats are treating him.

“The Republicans were gentlemen and women when we had the majority in the House,” he said. “They didn’t do subpoenas all day long. Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton, and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation, and everything else. We could do that all day long.”

Congressional Republicans waged more than a dozen House and Senate investigations of the Obama administration, including probes of the extremist attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya; the IRS targeting; the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation and the Solyndra solar energy subsidies. None of those probes targeted Mr. Obama personally.

Mr. Trump predicted the Democrats’ zeal for investigations will backfire on them in the elections next year.

“What they’re doing is a disgrace, so destructive to our country,” he said. “And I think that’s why we’re going to take back the House. That’s why we’re easily going to hold the presidency, and we’re going to continue to hold the Senate.”

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