'We sort of choked': Obama official says it's hard to defend the administration's response to Russian hackers in the 2016 election

pulse

June 23, 2017 6:02 PM

A senior Obama administration official said that his team "sort of choked" when evaluating the risk that hackers posed to the November election.

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A senior Obama administration official said that his team "sort of choked" when responding to reports that Russian-linked hackers had tried to influence to the November election.

The Washington Post reported on how, even though Barack Obama learned about the influence of hackers with ties to the Kremlin months before the election, the administration chose not take strong action in part due to assumptions that Hillary Clinton would win.

Here is how the Obama administration handled reports of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election according to the Washington Post:

In the months leading up to the election, Obama's administration would routinely discuss the hacking situation but tried to keep the intelligence as quiet as possible — even Vice President Joe Biden was not informed until much later.
planting cyber weapons
As the time drew closer to the election, news of hacking activities became more difficult to conceal. Senators released statements on reports of hacking activity but, due in part from fear of Putin's retaliation, did not implicate Russia in the reports.
On Oct. 7, the Obama administration released its first statement saying that Russia had taken "active measures" to influence the outcome of the US election. By that time, Wikileaks had already shared thousands of emails from the Democratic Party's networks with the public.
By election day, there were no signs of voting infrastructure breakdowns, altered vote counts or any voter-related fraud. That said, considerable damage had been done to the DNC and Clinton's candidacy.
Obama's administration was "mortified and shocked" by the outcome that led to Trump's election. "Wow, did we mishandle this," one senior official told The Washington Post.

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