Operation 45, a pro-government transparency organization, has released a set of documents indicating that former President Barack Obama was repeatedly urged by his fellow Democratic senators to take an action against Russia, for their hand in 2016 elections.
It was during late 2016, that Democratic Sens. Diane Feinstein (Calif.) and Ben Cardin (Md.) wrote a letter to Obama, the letter stated: “We are writing to urge a direct and proportionate response to the Russian Federation’s state-sponsored cyberattacks on the United States’ democratic institutions and the 2016 electoral process. Such attacks cannot be tolerated and the United States must take immediate measures to ensure that those responsible are held to account.”
“A cyberattack on our electoral process or any part of our critical political, economic, or military infrastructure is a hostile action that must be countered,” they further wrote.
And that, “The United States should make clear that there are costs to engaging in these sorts of cyberattacks, whether by Russia or any other actor.”
The two requested the president to completely freeze the assets of all those suspected to be involved in the cyber-attack. They urged that the president “should consider taking proportional cyber responses beyond sanctions that would shine a direct spotlight on those responsible for the cyberattacks.”
In response to Cardin and Feinstein’s letter, the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, Julia Frifield, wrote a response letter on behalf of president Obama.
“As we have made clear to the Russian government and others, we will not tolerate attempts to interfere with the U.S. Democratic process, and we will take action to protect our interests, including in cyberspace, and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing,” Frifield wrote.
However, it wasn’t until months that the then-president Obama requested an investigation into Russia’s interference with the elections, that too when the media had taken on to criticize then-President-elect Trump for their ties with Russia.
