Eli Lake, Columnist

Obama Choked on Russia Long Before the 2016 Election

It's no wonder Putin thought he could meddle in the U.S. He had gotten away with everything else he tried.

June 27, 2017 at 3:00 PM UTC

Corrected

June 27, 2017 at 6:58 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

A bit too friendly.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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"I feel like we sort of choked." That is the killer quote in an extraordinary Washington Post investigation into how Barack Obama responded to intelligence last year that Russia was running a sophisticated influence operation against the 2016 elections.

It's attributed to a former senior Obama administration official, but it captures the view of many Democrats and now many opportunistic Republicans. President Donald Trump got in on the action on Monday morning when he tweeted: "The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling."