On Friday, CNN contributor and former assistant to President George W. Bush, Scott Jennings, called out former President Barack Obama. In an op-ed, Jennings stated that the Mueller report makes Obama look “just plain bad.” The Mueller report, which was released last Thursday, provided the details of the results of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the interference from Russia during the presidential election in 2016.
In the op-ed, Jennings wrote: “The Mueller report flatly states that Russia began interfering in American democracy in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the effort blossomed into a robust attempt to interfere in our 2016 presidential election.”
Jennings also pointed out that the Obama administration seemed to completely overlook the Russian interference. “In 2016, Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice told her staff to ‘stand down’ and ‘knock it off’ as they drew up plans to ‘strike back’ against the Russians,” said Jennings. “Democrats would be on infinitely stronger ground arguing this out if just one of them would go on a media program and admit that Russia interfered under Obama, and the previous administration’s failures must be corrected in the future,” continued Jennings.
According to Jennings, the reason why Obama went “soft” on Russia was that he didn’t want to make Russian President Vladimir Putin upset, which could have risked the negotiations that were happening at the time regarding Iran’s nuclear plan. “He arguably chose to prioritize his relationship with Putin vis-à-vis Iran over pushing back against Russian election interference that had been going on for at least two years,” wrote Jennings. On Obama’s end, that resulted in a “disastrous policy decision.”
According to Jennings, the Obama administration put up a “smokescreen” to avoid having the blame put entirely on them. They also hoped that it would encourage others to point aim at a different target: presidential candidate, Donald Trump.
While pointing out that the Obama administration was trying to point fingers at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Jennings said: “I guess if I had failed to stop Russia from marching into Crimea, making a mess in Syria, and hacking our democracy I’d be looking to blame someone else, too.”
Those that support Obama have claimed that necessary measures were taken and Obama had established sanctions against Russia in an effort to punish them for interfering in the election. Jennings said that this was nothing more than a “toothless response to a serious incursion.”
Even Obama’s own people knew that something wasn’t right with this so-called “punishment.” According to The Guardian, Obama’s ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, even said that “the punishment” for the sanctions “did not fit the crime.”
Jennings believes that there should be an investigation into whether or not the Obama administrations made up the whole Russian collusion narrative in order to hide their own mistakes.“If you consider Russian election interference a crisis for our democracy, then you cannot read the Mueller report, adding it to the available public evidence, and conclude anything other than Barack Obama spectacularly failed America,” said Jennings.
Apparently, according to a column in the Thursday edition of USA Today, Jennings had already made a call for action after Mueller’s redacted report was released. In the column, Jennings wrote: “Donald Trump, use Mueller report as election security roadmap; Democrats, drop impeachment and work on 2020.”
