Trump’s First Response on Indictments Is To Blame Obama

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While Democrats demanded that President Donald Trump take action against Russia and cancel Monday’s summit with Vladimir Putin, Trump’s response was to attack President Barack Obama instead.

In his first public comment about the indictments of 12 Russian military intelligence officers Trump tweeted from Scotland:

“The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?”

Of course, President Obama did do “something about it” as his administration imposed sanctions against Russia when the U.S. intelligence community informed him about Russian interference during the 2016 election campaign. At that time he also expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the United States and ordered two Russian government facilities in Maryland to be closed.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is conducting a massive investigation into Russia interference with U.S. elections, as well as collusion between the Russians and Trump’s presidential campaign. The most recent action coming out of his 14-month long probe was the announcement of 12 indictments on Friday by the Justice Department. The Russian intelligence officers have now been charged with hacking Democratic National Committee officials and disseminating the stolen documents online.

President Trump and people in his administration have continually maintained that the indictments do not indicate any collusion by anyone in the Trump campaign.

Still, for Trump to now blame President Obama for a lack of action is outrageous, and it is also a typical Trump move to try to deflect the public’s attention away from himself.

In addition to attacking Obama, Trump also tweeted a question suggesting there was a Deep State conspiracy involving the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the FBI.

“….Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?”

Apparently he is suggesting that the DNC server was kept hidden by the “Deep State.”

The Deep State of course is Trump and other Republican’s favorite conspiracy theory that suggests that high-level officials run a shadow government out of Washington, working against Trump. The president has suggested in the past that there was a conspiracy around the computer servers at the DNC that Russians hacked during the election. None of this makes any sense but that doesn’t matter to Trump and his supporters.

The FBI reportedly has not directly assessed the hacked DNC server during the agency investigation while primarily using information from a private security firm.

The Palmer Report made an interesting point in response to Trump’s tweets:

“Thank you for explaining that the Russians hacked the election for you while you were running, not after you were running. Also the sky is blue, water is wet, and you’re a traitor.”

It’s very interesting that Donald Trump is not denying that there was hacking by officers of the Russian military, who were probably spies operating under the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although he tried to deflect blame with his tweets blaming Obama and the Deep State, they actually confirmed that he knows Russia was to blame, and makes it even more imperative that he confront Putin about the hacking when they have their summit meeting on Monday.

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Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.