Former Obama Official Says Obama Team "Sort Of Choked" Letting Putin Mess With The Election
The Washington Post published a long ass piece today all about how the Obama Administration received, from the CIA, intel that Putin himself was directly ordering Russian hackers to manipulate our election by conducting efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances. The report details how they responded to that information.
Like I said, it’s long, so you probably won’t read it. Enter Riggsy; this is why I exist. I shall break it down into terms we can all understand. If you’re a diehard Trump supporter, you will dismiss all of this as a witch hunt and get mad online at anyone who talks about it. If you’re a diehard Trump hater, you will scream “IMPEACHMENT” and go on and on and on about how evil he is.
I don’t really give a shit about any of that. I just like to follow good reporters who do good work and publish good things. This one by the Post’s Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Adam Entous is damn good work in my opinion. It’s a FASCINATING story.
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It starts by describing how the CIA delivered an “eyes only” envelope to the White House early last August. This means the contents are meant only for Obama and three top aides. That envelope revealed that Russian hackers and operatives were strategically focusing their efforts to hurt Hillary and help Trump, and that Putin was directly involved in the order.
The main aim of the piece is how the Obama administration handled and responded to this information. Some officials defend their actions, while others have been very critical. As is tradition, they cite Trump’s favorite type of person, “a former senior Obama administration official,” who feels the Obama team blew it.
“It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” the former senior Obama administration official told the Post. “I feel like we sort of choked.”
After receiving the info, the Obama team immediately began deliberations on what exactly to do. They weighed dozens of different options, from aggressively punishing Putin for his actions to more softly, subtly, “symbolically” punishing him.
They went with the latter option. Obama expelled some Russian diplomats (funny to think about the public reaction to this at the time; it was pretty big, out of left field news), shutdown a couple Russian compounds, and imposed economic sanctions that weren’t really that big of a deal.
And then Trump won. CNN reminds us that many Democratic lawmakers have discussed how they believe the Russians meddled, including using thousands of trolls to drive fake internet stories.
“[Senator] Merkley and other Democratic lawmakers said Russia used extensive methods in the cyber campaign, including 1,000 trolls, hacking and bots to generate fake messages on social media.”
Many folks strongly disapprove of how everything was handled.
“The punishment did not fit the crime,” said Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia for the Obama administration from 2012 to 2014. “Russia violated our sovereignty, meddling in one of our most sacred acts as a democracy — electing our president. The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack. And U.S. policymakers now — both in the White House and Congress — should consider new actions to deter future Russian interventions.”
Imagine how sick to their stomach Obama and co. were when Trump actually won? Holy shit. Deductive reasoning makes me think Obama CLEARLY chose not to go all in on punishing Putin’s efforts simply because all polls showed Hillary was going to win, and win easily. Had they more accurately predicted what was going to happen, would Obama have changed course? Would he have been more aggressive? Would he have done anything and everything to ensure Putin wasn’t successful? Would he have just told the public everything he knew?
If so, would it even have helped? Or was Trump so damn impervious to damaging reports that this would’ve just rallied pro-Trumpers even more?
So many questions. Impossible to know what happens if “x” person would’ve conducted “y” action. What I do know is Trump won, people have some serious regrets about it, and I thoroughly enjoy reading all about it.
Geopolitical drama on the highest stage. What’s not to like? Honestly, if you’ve got some time, give it a read.