The Department of Justice laid down the hammer today, right? They’ve indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers. Oh, we’re closing in on President Trump’s inner circle, right? Nope. These twelve people will never be in a courtroom. The charges lobbed against them will never be fleshed out or argued before a judge. Once again, the DOJ reiterated that no American in these indictments committed a crime, or that any of these actions altered the vote counts during the 2016 elections. Was there interference? Yes. I think that’s not up for debate, but was our 2016 election hacked (i.e. vote count totals being changed by infiltrating voting machines)? No, that never happened, though a lot of Democrats think so.
And because there is basically no chance that any of the named defendants here will ever be in a US courtroom, none of the assertions will ever have to be proven, and thus no evidence presented for them. But the demands that the assertions be accepted on faith will be very high: https://t.co/k5ceRAU5FX
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 13, 2018
Conveniently, the new Mueller indictment is once again heavy on assertion, light on tangible evidence. And because the indictees are mysterious foreign adversaries, the purported evidence can be concealed in perpetuity on "national security" grounds
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 13, 2018
Russian interference occurred during the Obama administration—and they might have well have done nothing concerning retribution. CNN’s Jake Tapper even mentioned that given what we know now, the Obama White House was a “little asleep at the switch” (via Mediaite):There is no allegation in the indictment that any American citizen committed a crime or that any of the actions changed the vote count, Rosenstein says.
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 13, 2018
CNN’s Jake Tapper got the impression from Friday’s set of indictments in the Mueller investigation that President Barack Obama‘s administration wasn’t the best at deterring or sussing out Russian hackers.
Speaking to former Obama WH official Samantha Vinograd about the indictments, Tapper said: “It’s unfair to hold you responsible for the entire Obama administration, but you read this indictment and you think, ‘Boy, the Obama administration, they really kind of missed the ball on this.”
“I mean, yes, they issued that report, but President Obama said… he told Putin to cut it out or knock it off, it wasn’t particularly strong, and then there was all this hesitation about warning the American people for fear of looking partisan,” he continued. “In retrospect, doesn’t it seem to you that the Obama administration was at least to a degree asleep at the switch?”
“Well, I’m not here to be an apologist for the Obama administration,” Vinograd replied. “I was gone when this happened.
In June of 2017, The Washington Post had a lengthy story about the Obama White House confronting the interference, where one could ask if the Obama administration dropped the ball. It appears that they did; even Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, said Obama choked.
What’s so remarkable about Vinograd’s response is that she heavily criticized the Trump White House reactions to the indictments, as somehow a win for Putin (via Free Beacon):Vinograd served as a senior adviser to National Security Adviser Tom Donilon in the Obama administration, in addition to working on the National Security Council. On Friday, she ripped the Trump administration for its response to special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian nationals for hacking the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign.
White House officials did not address the fact that Russians attacked the country in their statements, she said.
"The president went to Brussels. He refused to call the Russians an enemy," Vinograd told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "He called them a competitor."
She added her suspicion that Trump would not confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia's election interference in their Helsinki summit on Monday, but would rather apologize to him.
In the Democrat world, anything Trump does is a win for Putin, but never forget that it was Democrats who mocked Mitt Romney, who said Russia is our biggest geopolitical foe in 2012. Since Hillary lost, the quasi-Russophobia that’s engulfing the Democratic Party is more than just entertaining. It’s downright hilarious. Anything related to Russia is part of the larger collusion theory that Democrats have regarded as fact, despite zero evidence showing that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. Russia has nuclear weapons. Of course, they’re a geopolitical foe. That was never in dispute to those of us who, you know, voted for Romney.
The Left bashes Trump on Russia, but they’re the ones who thought they weren’t so bad. And when they decided to engage in electoral interference, well, the Obama White House might as well have done nothing because their retaliatory measures were laughable. Enter former CIA Director Michael Morell from CBS’ Face The Nation’s June 25, 2017 broadcast. He gives the Obama Administration credit for beefing up election systems security, but no so much after that [emphasis mine]:
I think they get a high grade, because I think they prevented this from being worse than it would have been otherwise. That's first thing.
The second thing is the decision not to share fully with the American people what was happening. So, the Obama administration did not tell the American people that Putin was behind this and did not tell the American people what Putin was trying to do, hurt Hillary Clinton, support Donald Trump. That's a big, big decision.
You know, the White House, I think, was exactly where David [Ignatius, WaPo columnist] said they were, which is they didn't want to make this worse. But by not entering the playing field, they ceded it to Vladimir Putin. So, I give them a C on that, and I think historians are going to debate this for a long time.
The third issue is how to deter the Russians in the future from doing this again, and here I think they failed miserably. I give them an F, because the package they put together, the kicking the diplomats out, intelligence officers out, closing down a couple of compounds, putting limited sanctions on in no way -- it was a slap on the wrist to Vladimir Putin. He sees it that way. It will not deter him in the future.
Wait—Obama ceded ground to Putin? He’s part of the conspiracy! He failed, folks—end of story. So, while the Obamaites and the Democrats bash Trump on this subject, let’s not forget that a) the Democrats were wrong about Russia; and b) their guy failed to protect America when they engaged in electoral interference. So, continue to throw a tantrum. We’ll always remember how you guys fumbled the ball.
Remember this:
Romney, who calls Russia our "No. 1 geopolitical foe," doesn't seem to realize it's the 21st century. #RomneyNotReady http://t.co/xcvhOAFS
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) October 22, 2012