WEAKNESS: Obama Admin Refused to Stop Russian Interference Over Retaliation Fears

The U.S.’s standings as a superpower suffered greatly under the Obama years. The previous administration drew various ‘red lines’ and issued strongly worded threats – yet still, our enemies moved onward. A new report by POLITICO says the Obama administration refused to respond to alleged Russian interference because it feared retaliation. 

Washington Free Beacon reports:

U.S. intelligence officials were frustrated with the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s cyber espionage and disinformation campaigns to disrupt Western democracies, arguing the administration’s reluctance to respond more forcefully stemmed from fear of Russian retaliation.

More than a dozen current and former national security officials from across the government told Politico how ineffective the White House and key agencies were in authorizing counter measures against Russian interference. Those officials said that responses such as shutting down suspected Russian intelligence sites or taking counter-intelligence action never went anywhere due to administrative roadblocks.

“[Intelligence officials] had a list of things they could never get the signoffs on,” one official said. “The truth is, nobody wanted to piss off the Russians.”

Wanting to counter suspected Russian interference in American politics, these officials said that the Obama administration was aware of Russia’s activities but did not want to retaliate forcefully. As it became clear that Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, officials recommended expelling diplomats or striking back through cyber measures but were denied.

Some outside the White House blamed the National Security Council’s micromanagement, but NSC officials pointed the finger at the State and Defense Departments. Those agencies were reportedly afraid of Russian retaliation.

“The frustrations [about lack of forceful action] are justified and, frankly, were shared by the White House,” a former official told Politico. “The options were being discussed. They weren’t being implemented.”

TIME magazine’s Massimo Calabresi posted an article on July 20, 2017, entitled: Exclusive: Read the Previously Undisclosed Plan to Counter Russian Hacking on Election Day.  Calabresi wrote:

The plan reflects how thoroughly the Russian effort to undermine public confidence in the U.S. electoral system had succeeded. The U.S. intelligence community had concluded the primary and abiding goal of the Russian operation was “to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process.”

By Election Day, with widespread coverage of Russian hacking and then-candidate Donald Trump’s assertions that the vote would be rigged against him, Gallup found that only 30% of Americans had faith in the honesty of elections, while 69% did not.

Americans do agree that President Trump was concerned about voter fraud and he even stated this in one of the debates.

The President was put on the spot by FOX News’ Chris Wallace and asked if he would support the results of the election. He said that the results were rigged, the press was piling on him unfairly and millions of people are on voter registration rolls that are not eligible to vote. (Trump was right.)

Then-candidate Trump said this about his opponent Hillary Clinton:

She should not be allowed to run and just in that respect I say the election is rigged.  Because, Chris, she should never have been allowed to run for the Presidency based on what she did with emails and so many other things.

Hillary responded by claiming her innocence in the various scandals surrounding her campaign and shamed then-candidate Trump for not respecting the Constitution. The Hillary-supporting media piled on Donald Trump over his remarks.

Since the election we know that over 7 million cases have been identified of voter registrations being duplicated in multiple states.

And we still have no evidence of Russia hacking the election and impacting a single vote.

Calabresi states that Americans were concerned about Russian interference in the election. This is not true. Very little had been said about Russian hacking into the election before election day.

Calabresi provides a copy of the plan he obtained for his post and states that, “The plan reflects how thoroughly the Russian effort to undermine public confidence in the U.S. electoral system had succeeded.”  But this too is not true.  The “plan” provided by TIME in their report does not mention Russia – not once.  There is absolutely no indication that the plan was created as a response to Russian hacking as Calabresi implies. 

Further review of the plan provided by TIME indicates a business as usual document rather than a plan created in response to Russia hacking the election.  The plan states that it is in response to a policy directive which also has not mention of ‘Russia’ – not even once.

The plan does mention that the Department of Defense (DOD) will be ready to assist on election day but it also notes that Federal Law restricts certain activities by military personnel at polling sites.  Calabresi indicates that Obama was ready to do this in response to Russian hacking but obviously this too is a lie.

To summarize, the plan provided by TIME indicated numerous activities by numerous entities in response to election day incidents related to cyber risk, but there is no indication whatsoever that this document was created in response to Russian hacking. It appears this too was all just made up to support the ‘fake news’ Russia story that the MSM and Democrats promote nonstop to prevent and postpone any investigations into the many Clinton and Obama scandals – some noted by President Trump above.

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