Top Democrat Schiff criticizes Obama over reaction to Russian hacks
Congressman likens Trump complaint on White House inaction to ‘knowingly receiving stolen property [and] blaming police for not stopping the theft’
The Obama adminstration “should have done a lot more” to combat Russian interference in the 2016 US election before the result was known, a top congressional Democrat said on Sunday.
Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, also said Donald Trump’s complaints about White House inaction, tweeted after the Washington Post reported that Barack Obama knew about Russian interference as far back as August 2016, were like “knowingly receiving stolen property [and] blaming police for not stopping the theft”.
“I think the Obama administration should have done a lot more when it became clear that not only was Russia intervening but it was being directed at the highest levels of the Kremlin,” Schiff said.
“And indeed Senator [Dianne] Feinstein and I were repeatedly trying to make that case to the administration initially when they didn’t want to make attribution, to talk publicly about Russia’s role, and later when we issued our own statement and they did attribute the conduct to Russia,” he said, referring to the California Democrat.
“I was urging that they begin then the process of sanctioning Russia, the administration talking more forcefully about what the Russians had done. I think that was a mistake.”
Schiff’s comments were echoed by Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee who told CBS’s Face the Nation that once knowledge of Russian interference had been “verified and cross-checked [it] should have been made public”.
On Friday, Trump responded to the Washington Post report with a tweet in which he appeared to say Russia did interfere in the election, as US intelligence agencies believe.
The president, whose aides are under congressional and FBI investigation for links to Russian agents and who is reportedly himself under investigation for potential obstruction of justice, has contended that the hack of Democratic party emails and other actions could have been directed by other national actors or individuals.
“Just out,” he wrote, making a charge he repeated in a Fox and Friends interview broadcast on Sunday. “The Obama administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?”
On Saturday, he added: “Since the Obama administration was told way before the 2016 election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T[rump]!”
During the election, Trump greeted the release of Democratic party emails by WikiLeaks and invited Russia to find and release emails from the private server Clinton used while secretary of state. The Post reported this week that US intelligence captured “direct instructions” from Russian president Vladimir Putin “in the operation to damage Clinton’s chances of winning and help elect Trump”.
Schiff said: “I have to contest what President Trump is saying because for Donald Trump, who openly egged on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and celebrated every release of these stolen documents to criticise Obama now is a bit like someone knowingly receiving stolen property blaming the police for not stopping the theft.
“Donald Trump is in no position to complain here.”
Another Trump tweet on Saturday referred to reported Obama White House concerns that any action on Russian interference before the election would be seen as to favour the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
“Obama administration official said they ‘choked’ when it came to acting on Russian meddling of election,” Trump wrote. “They didn’t want to hurt Hillary?”
Schiff, who was speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, said such concern “was a factor and it should not have been the most weighty factor”.
“I think they were concerned about being perceived as having interfered in the election and trying to tip the scales for Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I think they were also concerned about not wanting to play into the narrative that Donald Trump was telling, that the election was going to be rigged, even though Donald Trump was talking about a completely different kind of rigging than foreign intervention.”
Trump repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that large-scale voter fraud would cost him the election. In the event Trump won the electoral college while Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.5m ballots. Trump has since continued to make such spurious claims and has appointed a panel to investigate so-called mass voter fraud.
On Sunday, Trump returned to the subject of rigging in a tweet about the Democratic 2016 primary, using a loaded word in the context of the Russia investigations: “collude”.
“Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic Party in order to beat Crazy Bernie Sanders,” the president wrote. “Is she allowed to so collude? Unfair to Bernie!”
