Democrats’ all-out assault on Donald Trump regarding the Russia investigation has taken many turns. All dead ends…except for those that lead to Democrat misconduct.
Their fervor to make something stick to the teflon Donald has unearthed dirt they wanted to stay buried.
Now their recklessness has created blowback for Barack Obama.
It’s become clear Obama’s administration knew about Russia’s meddling efforts, and did little to stop it.
This has caused Democrats to take Obama and his administration to task.
From Townhall.com:
It seems as if [the Obama administration] dropped the ball, especially concerning whether or not to tell the American people that Russia was running an interference campaign. There was no election hack, however, with Department of Homeland Security officials, including former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, saying that vote tallies were not impacted during the 2016 election. The interference campaign didn’t impact the election either; fake news stories did not play a pivotal role.
In May, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell said that the Obama administration appeared to have done nothing in the face of this maneuver by Russia. Now, he says that they did somewhat okay responding to the crisis. Obama and then-CIA Director John Brennan warned Russia over the attack and worked with states to better secure their voting systems; Morell gave them high marks for that. For sitting on the information about the interference, the former intelligence chief said the Obama White House ceded the playing field to Vladimir Putin. For future deterrence—booting some Russians, closing some compounds, and ineffective sanctions—he said this was an abject failure. Putin sees this as nothing more than a slap on a wrist.
David Ignatius added that while Republicans may have been a contributing factor to the Obama administration putting their Russian intelligence in a dark filing cabinet for the remainder of the 2016 election, he did note that they were scared about what the Russians would do. This administration was scared of the Russians.
The debate over this will rage on for weeks, especially within Democratic circles where some are agreeing with President Trump: Obama should have done more in his reaction to the Russian meddling (via Newsweek):
{The president encouraged greater scrutiny of the Obama administration, tweeting Thursday: “By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn’t they stop them?”
Trump’s Democrat rivals also criticized the former president Friday, after the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence briefed Obama in August that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered a campaign of interference to help elect Trump.
Democrat Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, criticized Obama for being excessively cautious.
“[The response] was inadequate. I think [the administration] could have done a better job informing the American people of the extent of the attack,” he said.
Others accused Obama for failing to sufficiently sanction Russia once the election was over and the Trump administration was preparing to take power.}
Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was also critical of Obama.
From the Los Angeles Times:
“I think the [Obama] administration needed to call out Russia earlier, needed to act to deter and punish Russia earlier,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Failure to do so, he said, had been “a very serious mistake.”
Not long ago, Schiff postured that he was close to finding evidence of collusion with Russia. He quickly had to back off that claim, and now he’s been forced to chide Obama for his inaction.
More from Townhall.com:
Let’s also circle back to where the Russia story really leads us to, or at least where Democrats really want it to end up: Trump and his associates colluding with Russian intelligence operatives to sink Clinton to win an election.
I mean it’s a great political thriller in the vein of the Manchurian Candidate, or a film by Sydney Pollack or Alan J. Pakula (Parallax View)—but there’s no evidence. None. Zip. Just gross speculation and Democrats yearning to classify Russia as an enemy nation, which is irresponsible in the extreme.
Even The New York Times’ David Brooks, the supposed conservative on their op-ed page, says that there’s no evidence, this isn’t as bad a Watergate, and the politics of scandal over this hysteria is starting to worry him.
[…]
…Hillary Clinton is reportedly more upset with Obama than with Russia or former FBI Director James Comey for not speaking out on the Russian meddling sooner.
If the Democrats hadn’t whipped up such a frenzy over the Russia story, perhaps they would’ve spared themselves the embarrassing backlash.
It appears the #Resistance is fighting a two-front war: the Republicans on one side, and the Democrats who are ready to return to actual policy debates on the other.