President Donald Trump’s personal attorney asserted Wednesday that former President Barack Obama’s response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election should itself be the subject of a special counsel investigation.
The attorney, Jay Sekulow, was echoing arguments made by Trump himself since Friday last week, when a Washington Post report detailed the decision-making process behind the Obama administration’s response to the election meddling.
“Now we have a special counsel investigating the so-called Russian probe and the Russian hijacking of the election, and the Russian hacking into the election, when we know the administration previously had all the information and did nothing about it,” Sekulow argued in an appearance on Fox News.
“So here is my question that I’d ask John Podesta and I’d ask anybody else: Why do we have a special counsel dealing with the Russia hacking when [the Obama administration] had that evidence and did nothing?” he continued. “Why don’t we have a special counsel reviewing why President Obama did nothing after he assured the American people — he gets intelligence briefings, but then assures the American people that Russia did not interfere with the election. He does that in October.”
On Oct. 7, the Obama administration formally accused the Russian government of compromising the emails of “U.S. persons and institutions,” and asserted “that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
The accusation, in a joint press release from the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security, added: “The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion.”
According to the Post’s report Friday, Obama also told Russian President Vladimir Putin in October “that the United States had detected malicious activity, originating from servers in Russia, targeting U.S. election systems and warned that meddling would be regarded as unacceptable interference.”
The Obama administration eventually expelled 35 Russian diplomats and seized two diplomatic compounds from the country, in addition to imposing new limited sanctions.
Sekulow went on to say, referring to the investigations into potential collusion between Trump or his associates and Russia, that “this process, as it continues, is bordering on the absurd.”
“There is no evidence right now — nothing! — on Russia collusion with the Trump campaign,” he asserted.
President Obama, Sekulow said, “was fully aware of what was going on, briefed by intel officials, did nothing because he made a decision to, quote, not get involved in the election, which really meant, we knew, in his view, that Hillary Clinton was going to win.”
