These are some very interesting statements and accounting of events that you may not have been aware of. Let’s take a look.
According to Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, “The Obama White House’s chief cyber official testified Wednesday that proposals he was developing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. presidential election were ‘put on a back burner’ after he was ordered to ‘stand down’ his efforts in the summer of 2016.”
“The comments by Michael Daniel, who served as The White House “cyber security coordinator” between 2012 and 2016 (President Obama’s second term), provided his first public confirmation of a much-discussed passage in the book, ‘Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,’ co-written by this reporter and David Corn, that detailed his thwarted efforts to respond to the Russian attack.”
(Ok, it’s all clear to me now. This reporter co-wrote a book chronicling this whole episode. That’s the only reason that we are hearing about any of this. On Amazon, this book is describe as, “The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the U.S. election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency. RUSSIAN ROULETTE is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no “third-rate burglary.” It was far more sophisticated and sinister, a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump’s strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle, including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, and Russia. RUSSIAN ROULETTE chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country’s political process and gain influence in Washington?” Little did these guys know that they completely missed, or ignored, the biggest and most scandalous parts of the overall story!)
“They (the comments) came during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing into how the Obama administration dealt with Russian cyber and information warfare attacks in 2016, an issue that has become one of the more politically sensitive subjects in the panel’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election and any links to the Trump campaign.”
“The view that the Obama administration failed to adequately piece together intelligence about the Russian campaign and develop a forceful response has clearly gained traction with the intelligence committee. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the panel, said in an opening statement that “we were caught flat-footed at the outset and our collective response was inadequate to meet Russia’s escalation.”
(That’s apparently the way the Democrats want to play this, that they (the Obama administration) “were caught flat-footed at the outset and our collective response was inadequate to meet Russia’s escalation.” It sure seems like they know an awful lot about something they claim to be surprised by.)
“That conclusion was reinforced Wednesday by another witness, Victoria Nuland, who served as assistant secretary of state for Europe during the Obama administration. She told the panel that she had been briefed as early as December 2015 (a whole year before the election) about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, long before senior DNC officials were aware of it, and that the intrusion had all the hallmarks of a Russian operation.”
“As she and other State Department officials became ‘more alarmed’ about what the Russians were up to in the spring of 2016, they were authorized by then Secretary of State John Kerry to develop proposals for ways to deter the Russians. But most of those steps were never taken, in part because officials assumed they would be taken up by the next administration.”
(What? So they assumed the next administration would address it after the fact? That makes no sense…, unless you were assuming Hillary Clinton would win the election, and would cover up all of these sins appropriately.)
“’I believe there were deterrence measures we could have taken and should have taken,’ Nuland testified.”
“As intelligence came in during the late spring and early summer of that year about the Russian attacks, Daniel instructed his staff on the NSC (National Security Council) to begin developing options for aggressive countermeasures to deter the Kremlin’s efforts, including mounting U.S. ‘denial of service’ attacks on Russian news sites and other actions targeting Russian cyber actors.”
“Daniel declined to discuss the details of those options during Wednesday’s open hearing, saying he would share them with the panel during a classified session later in the day. But he described his proposals as ‘the full range of potential actions’ that the U.S. government could use in the cyber arena ‘to impose costs on the Russians, both openly to demonstrate that we could do it as a deterrent and also clandestinely to disrupt their operations as well.’”
(Ok…, here comes the good part!)
“Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, asked about a passage from the ‘RUSSIAN ROULETTE’ book in which one of Daniel’s staff members, Daniel Prieto, recounted a staff meeting shortly after the cyber coordinator was ordered by Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, to stop his efforts and “stand down.” This order was in part because Rice feared the options would leak and ‘box the president in.’”
(Ok…, so WHO is telling our old friend, Susan “the puppet” Rice, to have these people stop their efforts and to “stand down?” I’ll give you a clue…, his initials are BO, and yes he does stink! Also, a quick translation of that last sentence, “This order was in part because Rice feared the options would leak and ‘box the president in.’” What that meant was that BO didn’t want anyone poking around and asking questions that may hinder or bring to light the illegal spying of the trump campaign that was going on.)
“’I was incredulous and in disbelief,’ Prieto is quoted as saying in the book. ‘It took me a moment to process. In my head, I was like, did I hear that correctly?’ Prieto told the authors he then spoke up, asking Daniel: ‘Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?’”
“Daniel has confirmed that the account was ‘an accurate rendering of what happened’ in his staff meeting.”
“He said his bosses at the NSC, he did not specifically mention Rice in his testimony, had concerns about ‘how many people were working on the options,’ so the ‘decision’ from his superiors at the Obama White House was to ‘neck down the number of people that were involved in developing our ongoing response options.’”
“Daniel added that “it’s not accurate to say that all activity ceased at that point.” He and his staff “shifted our focus” to assisting state governments to protect against Russian cyberattacks against state and local election systems.”
(Really? I would be interested to learn exactly how they did that.)
“But as for his work on developing cyber deterrence measures, ‘those actions were put on a back burner and that was not the focus of our activity during that time period.’”
(Ok, hold on…, I thought they said they were, “assisting state governments to protect against Russian cyberattacks against state and local election systems.” Now they’re saying, “But as for his work on developing cyber deterrence measures, ‘those actions were put on a back burner and that was not the focus of our activity during that time period.’” Which one is it? Do “cyber deterrence measures” not mean the same thing as “”protecting against Russian cyberattacks?” If not, then what other “cyber deterrence measures” are you talking about? Again, I believe what that meant was that BO didn’t want anyone poking around and asking questions that may hinder or bring to light the illegal spying of the trump campaign that was going on.)
“Instead, Obama officials chose another course of action (this means BO chose another course of action) after becoming frustrated that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill would not endorse a bipartisan statement condemning Russian interference and fearful that any unilateral action by them would feed then candidate Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged.”
(Translation: BO feared it would come out that the election really was rigged, just like Donald Trump was claiming.)
“They chose a private ‘stern’ warning (Ooooh, those “stern” warnings are sooo scary!) by Obama to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in China in early September 2016 to stop his country’s campaign to disrupt the U.S. election.”
“Obama officials were also worried that a vigorous cyber response along the lines Daniel had proposed could escalate into a full scale cyber war. And, they have since argued, they believed that the president’s warning had some impact, noting, as Daniel did in his testimony, that they saw some tamping down in Russian probing of state election data systems after Obama’s private talk with Putin.”
(Wow. For not being able to deter all of this, so called, Russian activity, they sure seem to know it when they see it, and have the ability to even analyze it.)
“After the November 2016 election, in which Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Obama did impose new sanctions on Russia’s intelligence services and expelled diplomats.”
(Now BO really had to look like he was taking real action, to help promote the false narrative that they were planning on unleashing against, now, President-elect Trump. Which was the Russians tampered with the election, and President-elect Trump colluded with them in order to win the election.)
“But Nuland testified that most in the administration saw that as only a beginning of what needed to be done. “It’s fair to say that all of us in the process assumed what was done in December and January would be a starting point for what the incoming administration would then build on.”
(Of course. You know what happens when you assume don’t you?)
“The Wednesday hearing by the intelligence panel did not touch steps the Trump administration has taken, or in many cases, failed to take, to respond to the Russian election attack.”
(Ha! Oh yes, please, let’s now talk about steps the Trump administration has “failed to take!” These people are unbelievable!)
Oh what a tangled web BO and his friends had to weave, and continue to weave. The Clintons are much better at these kinds of things.
Again, stay thirsty my friends, but remember…, don’t drink the Kool-Aid!
Mr. Erickson Rules! 
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