FLASHBACK: Obama Allowed Russia to Interfere in 2016 Elections

Matt Margolis | 2:14 PM on December 18, 2019

President Barack Obama talks with National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice aboard Marine One en route to Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England following the NATO Summit in Wales, Sept. 5, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

A key theme in the Democrats’ push to impeach President Trump has been that Trump was soliciting foreign interference into the 2020 election. It’s an absurd suggestion, of course. All presidents have the power and right to seek assistance from foreign governments in investigations. Still, when it comes to foreign interference in elections, Democrats pretend to be patriots wanting to protect the country, but in reality, they’re just trying to perpetuate conspiracy theories that Republicans and Trump, in particular, can’t win an election without foreign interference—as if to say that Russia succeeded in getting Trump elected in 2016 (I guess because of a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads or something) even though the Mueller report should have put that tall tale to bed already.

In the hopes of stirring up their base, they’ve played the “foreign interference” card a lot during this impeachment process, claiming Trump has undermined our democracy, yada-yada-yada, and is trying to do so again, blah-blah-blah.

Maybe, if Democrats cared so much about foreign interference in our elections, they should ask why Barack Obama deliberately chose to allow it to happen.

That’s right, their idol, their messiah, Barack Obama, was not only aware that Russia was trying to interfere, but actually prevented U.S. cybersecurity from responding to it. Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice literally gave a “stand-down” order to Obama’s cybersecurity czar, Michael Daniel. This was first revealed in the book, Russian Roulette, by left-wing authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

The Obama administration basically let Russia do what they did. Why would they do that? Russia may not have changed any votes, but they damaged America’s faith in the integrity of our elections. Did the Obama administration think Russia wanted Hillary to win? If so, why not turn a blind eye to what was going on? There was plenty of reason to believe Russia would want Hillary: Donations to the Clinton Foundation, Hillary’s involvement in the infamous “Russian reset,” and the Obama administration being generally very interested in improving relations with Russia. Obama himself was clearly prepared to give them a lot of leeway on missile defense.

Regardless, Obama and his team ordered a “stand-down” on counter-attacks to Russia, and then deliberately took a lax approach toward the problem. The question we need to be asking, even now, is “Why?”