Likely Worse Than We Imagine

I have thought for some time that we still have little grasp of the gravity and unprecedented nature of the challenge President Obama and his team faced during the interregnum between the 2016 election and President Trump’s inauguration on January 20th, 2017. The President had to manage a smooth transition and hand off of authority to the new President. Given Obama’s deep-seated institutionalism, doing this right was clearly an important personal commitment. At the same time, he and his top national security and intelligence advisors believed they had to be careful about whether information they shared with the President’s incoming team might be going to agents of Russia. Our system simply has no mechanism to grapple with such a situation. I want to refer back to this remarkable ‘note to file’ email from Susan Rice.