White House press secretary Sean Spicer accused former President Barack Obama and his administration of being hypocritical for sounding the alarm on the dangers of Russia’s interference in the election, despite taking no action and knowing about the Kremlin’s role months before Election Day.
“I don’t have all the understanding of what (the Obama administration) knew and when they knew it, but there does seem to be a bit of hypocrisy in terms of what they didn’t clearly do if they truly believed all of this was happening,” Spicer said during Monday’s press briefing.
Spicer was referencing a Washington Post article published Friday that detailed when Obama and his top intelligence officials discovered Russia was attempting to interfere in the 2016 election and the actions that took place after.
Obama was notified of the intelligence showing Russia was attempting to meddle in the election in August, and his administration told the public months later.
The article further outlined the different options presented to Obama for punishing Russia, though the former president ultimately decided to go with what was described as a “modest package.”
President Trump responded to the Washington Post’s article in a series of tweets Monday morning and accused Obama of colluding to help Hillary Clinton win the election.
“The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is what he expected Clinton would win … and did not want to ‘rock the boat.’ He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good,” Trump said. “The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia … under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given an apology!”
Since the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election was revealed, many Democrats have warned the Kremlin’s efforts are a threat to democracy.
But Trump has expressed skepticism as to the role Russia played and has called the investigation into ties between his campaign associates and the Kremlin a “witch hunt” and “fake news” meant to distract from Clinton’s loss.
Spicer told reporters Monday the president believes Russia “probably was involved,” but said, “some other countries as well could have been equally involved.”
While Trump criticized Obama for not acting against Russia when he found out about the efforts to interfere in the election, Spicer said the president has taken his own steps to prevent any future meddling.
“He signed an executive order on cybersecurity to strengthen our ability to combat anybody from interfering not just in our elections, but in a lot of our key cyber infrastructure,” Spicer said. “And secondly, he’s got a commission that will continue to have more activities this month looking holistically at the election process, making sure we’re taking all the steps to protect the integrity of our voting systems.”
