It wasn’t just Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who turned down the Obama administration’s request for help as Russia attacked the United States in its attempt to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election, a stunning exclusive in The Washington Post details.
Republican governors also refused to secure voting systems, with one Republican calling it an assault on “state’s rights.”
“Johnson, the homeland-security secretary, was responsible for finding out whether the government could quickly shore up the security of the nation’s archaic patchwork of voting systems. He floated the idea of designating state mechanisms “critical infrastructure,†a label that would have entitled states to receive priority in federal cybersecurity assistance, putting them on a par with U.S. defense contractors and financial networks,” an exclusive by The Washington Post’s security team tells us.
“On Aug. 15, Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials, hoping to enlist their support. He ran into a wall of resistance. The reaction ‘ranged from neutral to negative,’ Johnson said in congressional testimony Wednesday,” Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous reported.
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“Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. ‘I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration,’ Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. ‘I don’t necessarily believe that,’ he said.”
The Post describes the White House’s reaction as “stung”, saying they then turned to Congress for help, where they were also turned down by Republicans.
Republicans, including President Trump, keep pulling a two-for-one quick step dance to avoid being blamed for their enabling of Russia’s attack on the U.S., which continues to this day. First they deny the Russians were behind the attack, then they ask why President Obama didn’t do more. So the attack never happened but if it did, it’s Obama’s fault is their argument. Yet this report shows that they refused to help President Obama.
President Obama “approved a previously undisclosed covert measure that authorized planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow.”
It is up to President Trump to decide to deploy this measure. So far, he has denied the reality that the Russians attacked the election.
President Obama could have done more, certainly in retrospect this seems like a fair observation, but as The Post exclusive lays out, within the context of the time frame this unraveled, it appeared that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election and Obama knew Republicans would claim he was politicizing it if he did more, which they did when he asked them to get help to lock down the voting systems.
It should be noted though, this top secret intel was kept secret by the Obama administration as they asked for help from various Republicans – a feat that the Trump administration, the Leaking Administration, has yet to accomplish.
But also, Obama did try to protect the country. He was turned down by Republicans. Even when McConnell was forced into writing a statement urging states to be careful, he emphasized that their rejection of the federal government’s help with such force, it begs the question why McConnell didn’t want the help only the federal government can give when it comes to national security.
The question to ask now is why hasn’t Donald Trump shown any interest in using the system President Obama put into place to retaliate against the Russians, let alone shown any interest in the Russian attack on the U.S..
For that matter, why did Congressional Republicans and Governors enable the Russian attack and why are they to this day refusing to even admit that this happened and is still happening.
Why won’t Republicans take action to protect their country?
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