The White House was on the defensive Wednesday, explaining why it didn’t respond more quickly to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. election while critics accused President Obama of hypocrisy.
Talk host Laura Ingraham, who has been discussed as a possible press secretary in the new Trump administration, told WND that Obama didn’t seem to have been worried about foreign hacking during his previous nearly eight years in office.
“China hacked millions of sensitive background checks of U.S. government employees and President Obama said nary a word,” Ingraham said. “The selective moral outrage is glaring.”
In July 2015, U.S. officials announced two major breaches occurred the previous year of U.S. government databases holding personnel records and security-clearance files of at least 22.1 million people, including current and retired federal employees.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday at the daily press briefing that the White House didn’t respond more quickly to Russian hacking because the high-tech U.S. is more vulnerable to an escalating cyber-war than Russia, and he claimed President Obama faced resistance from Republican congressional leaders.
Earnest refused to disclose whether the U.S. has retaliated against the Russians for the attacks.
Fox News host Sean Hannity said Obama “pretends to be morally outraged over Russian hacking and influence, but he’s done next to nothing on cybersecurity in the entire eight years he’s been president.”
“During his time in office, we have seen hacks of NASA, the Department of Energy, the FEC commission networks, the U.S. Postal Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the IRS, the Office of Personnel Management and the White House itself,” Hannity said.
“If the White House ever addresses cybersecurity, it’ll be under the Trump administration. This president had his chance, and he failed to act.”
The Washington Post reported Friday, citing anonymous sources, that the CIA concluded Russia interfered in the election to help Trump win, including providing WikiLeaks with the more than 50,000 emails from the account of Hillary Clinton’a campaign chairman, John Podesta.
But House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in a letter Monday that the director of national intelligence, James Clapper told, told his committee on Nov. 17 that the intelligence community had no strong evidence that Russia to the WikiLeaks emails.
The FBI also has not supported the charge.
Seeking to clear up the discrepancy, Nunes has asked for a closed, classified briefing Thursday for committee Republican and Democratic members from the FBI, CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Agency, Fox News reported.
Trump won 306 electoral votes, and his opponents would need to convince 37 Republican electors to defect.
Hear Laura Ingraham chastise Obama:
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President Obama has instructed U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the charges of Russian interference, but veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon contends any intelligence review of foreign hacking “should coincide with a companion investigation by Congress into why the president and his White House advisers for the past eight years rejected numerous calls from military, intelligence, and national security advisers to take aggressive action against states like Russia and China – action that could have prevented the kind of covert cyber warfare now being linked to Moscow.”
He said Obama “repeatedly downplayed the nature and scope of cyber attacks against the United States during his administration, dismissing attacks like North Korea’s hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment as cyber vandalism.”
Obama on Monday renewed his claim that Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election. In an interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” he said Russia “trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.”
But now the Obama administration is being blamed for hacking, with Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp on Wednesday asking Trump to investigate an alleged attempt by the Department of Homeland Security’s to hack his office’s computer system.
Kemp said his office detected what he called a “large attack on our system” in November that his staff traced to the Department of Homeland Security.
Bloodless coup?
Meanwhile, Trump critics continue to seize on the Russian-hacking charge.
Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker tweeted: “We are in an unprecedented situation: a president that 54% of voters opposed elected with the help of a Russian intelligence operation.”
Republican strategist John Weaver said the country has been hit by “cyber 9/11” and Russia “committed a Pearl Harbor cyber attack” to put Trump in the White House.
Joy Behar of “The View” said Trump “has to step down before the inauguration before they give him the nuclear codes.”
“We are at risk when the president is fighting with the CIA,” she said.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said the American people “are the victims of a bloodless coup.”
“We are at war with Russia, or perhaps more correctly we have lost a war with Russia without battle. We are no longer a sovereign nation, we are no longer a democracy, we are no longer a free people, we are the victims of a bloodless coup – so far a bloodless coup.”
