Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Well, Democrats Agree With Trump On Something: Obama Should Have Done More On Russian Meddling  Matt Vespa   Posted: Jun 26, 2017

Well, Democrats Agree With Trump On Something: Obama Should Have Done More On Russian Meddling

There’s a lot of buzz from The Washington Post’s in-depth piece about the Obama White House’s tortured process they undertook in responding to the Russian meddling during the 2016 election. It seems as if they dropped the ball, especially concerning whether or not to tell the American people that Russia was running an interference campaign. There was no election hack, however, with Department of Homeland Security officials, including former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, saying that vote tallies were not impacted during the 2016 election. The interference campaign didn’t impact the election either; fake news stories did not play a pivotal role.   
In May, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell said that the Obama administration appeared to have done nothing in the face of this maneuver by Russia. Now, he says that they did somewhat okay responding to the crisis. Obama and then-CIA Director John Brennan warned Russia over the attack and worked with states to better secure their voting systems; Morell gave them high marks for that. For sitting on the information about the interference, the former intelligence chief said the Obama White House ceded the playing field to Vladimir Putin. For future deterrence—booting some Russians, closing some compounds, and ineffective sanctions—he said this was an abject failure. Putin sees this as nothing more than a slap on a wrist.

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