Trump aide says Obama at fault in Russia threat
WASHINGTON — The White House blamed President Barack Obama’s administration Sunday for failing to tackle Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, sticking with a new strategy to fault President Donald Trump’s predecessor for an issue currently facing the president.
Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said Sunday that there was no evidence that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign, adding that because “the never-ending Russia discussion” had shifted to hacking, the fault lay with the Obama administration.
“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,” Conway said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. “They did absolutely nothing. They’re responsible for this.”
Then, referring to a Washington Post article last week that chronicled the debate
within the Obama White House on how to handle the mounting threat posed by Russia, Conway 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.”
Conway’s comments echoed a tweet sent Friday by Trump, who called on the media to shift their focus from him to the previous White House. “Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action?” he wrote.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also argued that Obama should have done more.
“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 expelling 35 suspected intelligence operatives from the U.S.
Schiff said the sanctions should have come sooner and been stronger.
“What I urged at the time [of the campaign] was he should have spoken out to the American people and said, ‘This is what Russia is doing,’” Schiff said.
Trump had predicted during the campaign that the election would be rigged. The Post article said Obama officials feared that if they came forward with more information about Russia’s hacking, it could support Trump’s claims and help Russia’s efforts to discredit what the administration believed would be a Hillary Clinton presidency.
“I know you thought Hillary would win, but how could you not reveal important information about Russia hacking?” Conway said. “When the president found out about it in January, as president, he said it was
a disgrace. He believes Russia was behind it, but he thinks other people hacked, too.”
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the Democratic minority leader, rejected Conway’s remarks in an interview immediately after hers on the show, noting the Obama administration is “no longer in charge” and calling on the White House to support a bipartisan Senate bill that imposes additional sanctions on Russia and Iran. The White House is lobbying against the bill.
“Now, Donald Trump seems to be opposing that,” Schumer said. “The American people are scratching their heads. Knowing his relationship with Putin, they’re saying ‘why the heck is he opposing strengthening sanctions?’”
Schumer said he hopes House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will help push the bill through, and he added that if the president vetoes it, he believes Democrats and Republicans will override the veto.
“So the bottom line is if Donald Trump wants to do something about Russia and Russian meddling, better than just saying Obama didn’t do enough, support our sanction bill,” Schumer said.
Appearing Sunday on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Trump said 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.”
Schiff said he had to contest Trump’s comments, given that the president had “openly egged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.”
“Donald Trump is in no position to complain here,” the California Democrat said.
Conway also said Sunday that the president’s commission on electoral integrity, which Vice President Mike Pence is chairing, is part of the administration’s efforts to respond to the Russia threat.
“He signed very early on a cybersecurity executive order and has an entire task force … and it’s headed up by his homeland security adviser, taking into account what foreign governments may be doing,” she said. “That goes for Russia or anybody else who wants to interfere in our democracy.”
Pence’s electoral integrity commission, Conway added, has 10 members and plans to issue a report addressing “everything from voter fraud here domestically to possible hacking by foreign governments.”
“[Trump] takes very seriously integrity at the ballot box in all of its forms,” she said.