A new report claims Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed a hacking campaign targeting the U.S. presidential election to help elect Donald Trump.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that former president Barack Obama received “an intelligence bombshell” from the CIA last August warning that Putin was attempting to “disrupt and discredit” the U.S. presidential race.
The report outlined “Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives – defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.”
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Based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former senior U.S. officials, the Post report raises more questions about Russia’s meddling in the election and details how the Obama administration struggled to respond to Putin’s apparent attack against the U.S.
U.S. intelligence agencies were able to gather the information based on sources deep inside the Russian government that captured Putin’s direct role in the operation.
The Post report also details how the administration debated over the next five months several ways to respond, from possible cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure to publishing potentially embarrassing material against Putin to economic sanctions.
Following Trump’s election win in November, the report said Obama settled on “a modest package” combining measures that had been drawn up to punish Russia for other issues with economic sanctions “so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic.”
Former White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said the Obama administration regarded Russia’s interference as an attack on the “heart of our system.”
“We set out from a first-order principle that required us to defend the integrity of the vote,” McDonough told the Post. “Importantly, we did that. It’s also important to establish what happened and what they attempted to do so as to ensure that we take the steps necessary to stop it from happening again.”
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However, an anonymous former Obama official said the administration “sort of choked” when it came to the Russia response.
“It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” the former senior administration official told the Post. “I feel like we sort of choked.”
Trump’s alleged ties to Russia have received widespread attention and are currently the focus of several investigations, including a special counsel and two congressional committees. The president has repeatedly called the investigations a “witch hunt” designed to discredit his presidency.
Trump questioned why the former administration hadn’t prevented Russian interference.
“By the way,” the president tweeted on Thursday, “if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn’t they stop them?”
Trump this week
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Trump says he doesn’t have any tapes on Comey -
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The 45th president had a relatively quiet week for an administration that appears to be in constant chaos.
After more than 40 days of raising the possibility that he recorded conversations with former FBI director James Comey, Trump says there are no tapes.
“I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to a tweet from May 12 where he said “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations.”
“When he found out that I, you know, that there may be tapes out there, whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows, I think his story may have changed,” Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends.
However, Trump’s initial Twitter outburst about the possibility of tapes triggered a series of consequences that have become a headache for the White House.
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During his public testimony, Comey said the tweet prompted him to leak damaging information to The New York Times. The following news reports built pressure on a top Justice Department official to appoint an independent prosecutor to oversee the Russia investigation. That special counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller, is now reportedly investigating Trump’s own actions in a probe that could dog his presidency.
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Also Thursday, Senate Republicans unveiled their health-care bill that would slash taxes on the wealthy and businesses, reduce federal funding for Medicaid and limit the tax credits available to help people buy insurance.
Four GOP senators said they would not support the bill, putting it in jeopardy.
The Congressional Budget Office said it would release its analysis of the Senate bill’s impact early next week. Earlier the office found the House version of the bill would leave 23 million more people uninsured over the next decade.
*With files from the Associated Press
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