![]() Intelligence was classified at the lowest possible levels to ensure a wide readership. In the administration’s last days, it disseminated intelligence throughout the government, including the White House, Capitol Hill, and the intelligence community (IC). Any criticism of Obama’s response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. “The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack.”īut the administration wasn’t retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election the action was directed at Trump. “The punishment did not fit the crime,” said Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russia. And now Obama was responding only on his way out.Įven Obama partisans thought it was weak. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening.”Īfter refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. Obama said that he’d “delivered a clear and forceful message” to the Russian president about “meddling with elections. The outgoing president was in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss everything from NATO to Vladimir Putin. He said he hoped “that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia.” Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump’s illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. Now the Obama White House was in the clear-sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to.” Boxing Trump in on Russia They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. “To any rational person,” says Nunes, “it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card-for the president and anyone else in the White House. During the conversation, the outgoing president instructed his top aides to collect information (“ascertain”) regarding the incoming administration’s relationship with Russia. The conversation was about the FBI’s investigation of the man who was about to move into the White House-an investigation from which Obama was careful to distance himself. It commemorated a conversation from two weeks before. The repetition of “by the book” gave away the game-for there was nothing normal about any of it. The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.įrom a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.” The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. Vice President Biden and I were also present. On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. ![]() She wrote to memorialize a meeting in the White House two weeks before. His national security advisor, Susan Rice, commemorated it with an email to herself on January 20, moments before Trump’s inauguration. Obama was working against Trump until the hour he left office. ![]() Hillary Clinton’s communications team decided within twenty-four hours of her concession speech to message that the election was illegitimate, that Russia had interfered to help Trump. ![]()
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