Donald Trump has hit out at Barack Obama following claims the former President had knowledge of Russia trying to hack the US election but allegedly failed to do anything about it.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the CIA had top-level intelligence last August that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered an operation to help Trump win the US presidential race.
Trump has now spoken out about the claims and questioned why Obama refused to act in an interview that is set to air Sunday on Fox & Friends Weekend.
‘Well I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it,’ he told FOX News contributor Pete Hegseth.
‘But nobody wants to talk about that. The CIA gave him information on Russia a long time before the election.
‘And I hardly see it. It’s an amazing thing. To me, in other words, the question is, if he had the information, 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.’
Trump appeared to be referring to the Post story about the Obama administration’s attempts to address Russia’s influence attempts.
Obama ordered a review of Russia’s actions and imposed new sanctions after the election.
Trump has acknowledged that Russia likely tried to interfere in the election, but has denounced investigations into possible Russian collusion with his campaign as a ‘witch hunt.’
Leakers have claimed Obama knew that Putin had ordered election hacks, but he failed to act because he thought Hillary Clinton would win anyway.
The intelligence shocked the White House and put US security chiefs on a top secret crisis footing to figure out how to react, according to the Post.
But amid confidence that Clinton still had the election in the bag and worries over Obama himself being seen as manipulating the election, the administration delivered warnings to Moscow but left countermeasures until after the vote.
One official told the newspaper that Obama’s failure to respond to Putin amounted to ‘choking’.
The ex-Obama administration official told the paper: ‘It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend. I feel like we sort of choked.’
After Trump’s shock victory, there were strong regrets among administration officials that they had shied from tough action.
‘From national security people there was a sense of immediate introspection, of, ‘Wow, did we mishandle this,’ a former administration official told the newspaper.
The Post said that as soon as the intelligence on Putin came in, the White House viewed it as a deep national security threat. A secret intelligence task force was created to firm up the information and come up with possible responses.
They couldn’t do anything about embarrassing WikiLeaks revelations from hacked Clinton emails. The focus turned to whether Moscow could disrupt the November 8 vote itself by hacking voter registration lists or voting machines, undermining confidence in the vote tally itself.
Worried about making the situation worse, the administration put off retaliating, and instead delivered stiff warnings directly to the Russians not to go farther.
At least four direct warnings – Obama to Putin, spy chief to spy chief, and via top diplomatic channels – appeared to have an impact, officials told the Post. They believe that Moscow pulled back on any possible plans to sabotage U. S. voting operations.
‘We made the judgment that we had ample time after the election, regardless of outcome, for punitive measures,’ a senior administration official told the Post.
Options to retaliate were on the table early: more crippling sanctions on the Russian economy, leaking information that would embarrass Putin diplomatically, and launching cyber attacks on Russian infrastructure were high on the list.
Obama took modest measures at the end of December, expelling 35 Russians and adding to existing sanctions. He also, according to the Post, authorized a plan to place cyberattack implants in the systems of critical Russian infrastructure. But it remains unclear, the Post said, whether Trump has followed through with that.
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