White House refuses to push back on aggressive Kremlin spying
How the Obama administration mishandled clandestine Russian interference in last year’s election has become the talk of the town and social media thanks to a new, detailed report by the Washington Post. That piece portrays a White House in disarray through 2016, unable to decide what to do about Kremlin meddling, despite high-grade intelligence confirming that Vladimir Putin had ordered his spy services to create electoral mayhem in America.
Of course, I told you that months ago, and Barack Obama’s reputation for diffidence and indecision – particularly regarding Russia, which was by no means confined to 2016 – will mar his administration’s legacy, deservedly so. Obama’s fateful lack of pushback against the Kremlin will hang over last year’s election as the preeminent what-if for future historians to unravel.
Nevertheless, President Obama’s mistakes on Russia are now confined to the past, while his successor keeps making them in real time. Donald Trump’s recent tweets have only added to the mystery of his relationship with Moscow, which is the subject of no less than four major Washington investigations: by the FBI, by both houses of Congress, and by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
After months of protesting that the issue of Russian interference in last year’s election was wholly fake, conjured by liberals and journalists, the president at last conceded (or at least strongly seemed to) that Moscow had, in fact, done something nefarious in 2016. Trump subsequently opined that the real collusion with the Kremlin had been done by Obama – without adding any details – and that the current White House resident is therefore owed an apology by the media!
It’s difficult to know what to make of all this. All that can be stated for certain at present is that widely reported efforts by the president’s lawyers to get their client to stop sending inflammatory tweets which might be used against Trump by investigators and prosecutors have wholly failed.
Read the rest at The Observer …
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