Thread by @usacsmret

Why Did The Obama Administration Ignore Reports Of Russian Meddling? thefederalist.com/2019/06/04/oba…

The AG is probing a second scandal of the Obama administration related to the 2016 presidential election. Or it would be regarded as a second scandal if it garnered more attention: Why the Obama administration failed to forcefully respond to Russian interference in our elections.

DOJ has an increasingly robust program that is focusing on foreign influence in our election process, with the FBI obviously taking the lead,” Barr told Crawford. But not enough was done in 2016, Barr acknowledged.

“Bob Mueller did some impressive work in his investigation, you know, identifying some of the Russian hackers and their influence campaign and you sort of wonder if that kind of work had been done starting in 2016, things could have been a lot different,” he said.

Crawford replied, “It’s just hard to understand why it wasn’t taken more seriously.” Barr agreed, saying he had no idea why it wasn’t. “That’s one of the things I’m interested in looking at as part of my review of the Russia collusion investigation,” Barr stressed.

With people warned as early as April 2016, “I’m wondering what, exactly, was the response to it if they were alarmed. Surely the response should have been more than just, you know, dangling a confidential informant in front of a peripheral player in the Trump campaign,” he said

Friday’s interview is not the only time the AG raised the issue of the Obama administration’s failure to launch a robust response to Russian attempts to interfere in our election. Barr also raised the issue last month when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

During those hearings Sen Cornyn noted that Mueller’s report “accumulated evidence indicating that the Russian government—through intelligence agencies and internet research organizations —began as early as 2014 to undermine and sew dissension in the 2016 presidential elections.”

When considered in tandem with several aspects of the Spygate investigation, it suggests the Obama administration habitually ignored Russia’s efforts to affect the election, opting instead to target Trump and the Trump campaign, transition team, and administration.

Barr confirmed his understanding that the Obama administration had failed to provide Trump a defensive briefing before January 2017, to inform him of “what the Russians were trying to do and [to] advise him to tell people affiliated with his campaign to be on their guard

I can’t fathom why it did not happen, if you’re concerned about interference in the election,” Barr told the senators. With three former U.S. attorneys involved in the campaign, “I don’t understand why the bureau would not have given a defensive briefing,” the AG testified.

Last week, Rep. John Ratcliffe added more texture to the attorney general’s testimony, telling Fox News that during an August 17, 2016 defensive briefing of candidate Trump, “He wasn’t warned about a Russia investigation that Peter Strzok had opened 18 days earlier.”

Catherine Herridge revealed the campaign was not specifically warned about Russian outreach to the Trump team during the August 2016 briefing, “nor did the FBI warn him that two campaign aides, Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos, were already under FBI investigation.”

The since-fired Strzok also served in dual roles at this time, Herridge reported—both as “a central coordinator for the FBI on the defensive briefing” about Russian activities and as the lead investigator of “Russian outreach to Trump campaign aides.”

The Obama administration’s failure to brief Trump on the investigation into individuals connected to his campaign for suspected collusion with Russia is but a part of the problem.

The FBI also failed to promptly interview George Papadopoulos and His supposed Russian connection, Joseph Mifsud, even though the FBI claims it launched the investigation into the Trump campaign in July based on Papadopoulos’s foreknowledge of the WikiLeaks hack of the DNC server

The FBI first interviewed Papadopoulos in Jan 2017, and Mifsud the following month—6 months after the start of Crossfire Hurricane.

To paraphrase Barr: I don’t understand why the bureau would not have expeditiously questioned, at a minimum, Papadopoulos if they were so alarmed by his contact with a supposed Russian agent.

Why Such a Lax Response?
Testimony by former National Security Council Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel provides further evidence of the Obama administration’s lax response to Russian interference. During questioning by the Senate Intelligence Committee

Daniel admitted to telling his team during a morning staff meeting that they had been told “to stand down,” from their planned response to the Russian hacking and that his directive drew a terse response: “Why the h-ll are we standing down?”