Obama gets called out for letting Russia off the hook

Trump, key Democrat agree former president should have done more to stop meddling

WASHINGTON— Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and U.S. President Donald Trump don’t agree on much about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, but they agree on this: President Barack Obama should have done more to stop Moscow from interfering.

Obama made a “very serious mistake” in not doing more about Russia’s intervention in the presidential election campaign, Schiff, the topranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday.

“The administration needed to call out Russia earlier, and needed to act to deter and punish Russia earlier,” Schiff said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think the Obama administration should have done more when it became clear that not only was Russia intervening, but it was being directed at the highest levels of the Kremlin.” Obama did announce in December a series of sanctions against Russia for its attempts to influence the November election, including the expulsion from the U.S. of 35 suspected intelligence operatives.

Schiff said the sanctions should have come sooner and been stronger.

Obama also should have let voters know about Russia’s actions while the campaign was still going on, he said.

“What I urged at the time was he should have spoken out to the American people and said, ‘This is what Russia is doing,’ ” Schiff said.

Trump also questioned why Obama administration officials took no action on Russia before the election.

“Since the Obama administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!” he said in a Twitter posting to his 32.8 million followers.

Trump said on Fox News that if Obama had the information about Russian meddling, “why didn’t he do something about it? He should have done something about it. But you don’t read that. It’s quite sad.”

Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning, Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the president, struck a combative tone, saying: “It’s the Obama administration that was responsible for doing absolutely nothing from August to January with the knowledge that Russia was hacking into our election.”

Then, referring to a Washington Post story last week, she said: “I have a hacking question for the Obama administration: Why did you, quote, choke, in the name of one of their senior administration officials? Why did you do nothing? Why didn’t you inform candidate Trump?”

Conway was referring to a quotation in the article by a former senior Obama administration official involved in the Russia discussions who said the Obama White House’s handling of the Russia hacking was “the hardest thing” for him to defend from his time in government, and added, “I feel like we sort of choked.”