Obama blew it on Russian file years ago

‘Ifeel like we sort of choked.” That is the killer quote in an extraordinary Washington Post investigation into how Barack Obama responded to intelligence last year that Russia was running a sophisticated influence operation against the 2016 elections.

It’s attributed to a former senior Obama administration official, but it captures the view of many Democrats and now many opportunistic Republicans. President Donald Trump got in on the action Monday morning when he tweeted, “The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling.”

It’s tempting to grant Trump this point, despite Trump’s own insistence during his campaign that there was no evidence Russia meddled in the election at all. Obama was the commander-in-chief when Moscow hatched this operation. It was his duty to defend our election.

But this isn’t entirely fair. To start, by the time the CIA gathered the intelligence in August about how Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to elect Trump over Hillary Clinton, the servers of the Democratic National Committee and other leading Democrats were already breached. Obama’s government did inform state election officials about the prospect of hacking of voter rolls and helped make them more resilient.

In the end, the Russians spread fake news and distributed the messages they hacked. They had the good fortune of a Republican candidate willing to amplify the pilfered emails. But there is no evidence Russia changed the vote tallies or took voters off the registration rolls.

What’s more, Trump had in the final weeks of the election suggested the vote would be rigged. Had Obama been more public in warning about the Russian influence operation, he would risk undermining the legitimacy of the election in the eyes of Trump’s supporters, essentially aiding Russia’s plan to undermine it before any votes were cast.

Rather than asking why Obama didn’t do more to stop Russian meddling, the better question is why President Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with this interference. In every respect, the U.S. is more powerful than Russia. It has a much larger economy. Its military is superior. Its cyber capabilities are greater. Its diplomatic position is stronger.

So why did Putin believe he could treat America like it was Estonia?

The answer is Obama spent the first six years of his presidency turning a blind eye to Russian aggression. In his first term, Obama pursued a policy of “reset” with Moscow, even though he took office only five months after Russia annexed two Georgian provinces in the summer of 2008. In the 2012 election, Obama mocked his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, for saying Russia posed a significant threat to U.S. interests.

Throughout his presidency, Obama’s administration failed to respond to Russian cheating on arms-control agreements. His diplomacy to reach an agreement to temporarily suspend progress on Iran’s nuclear program made the U.S. reliant on Russian co-operation for Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.

Russian spies targeted Americans abroad. As I reported in 2011 for the Washington Times, Russia’s intelligence services stepped up this campaign of harassment