Sen. Paul: Congress Should Ask Obama What He Knew About Russia Investigation
With President Trump now exonerated on allegations that he colluded with the Russians in 2016, thoughts turn to what President Obama knew and when he knew it.
Add Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to the growing list of high-profile Republicans who want to know what President Obama himself knew at the time about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
In a tweet posted Wednesday morning, Paul said:
I agree with @kimguilfoyle Time for Congress to investigate. What did President Obama know and when? How did this hoax go on for so long unabated? https://t.co/fgJZaqR6cI
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 27, 2019
In previous postings, he stopped short of calling for an investigation of Obama directly. For instance, on Monday he tweeted that Obama administration officials “who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax” must be investigated:
Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 25, 2019
Back in December, Paul speculated that information gleaned from these officials during a future investigation could ultimately make the fake Russian collusion scandal “WORSE than Watergate”:
Time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 21, 2017
President Obama was aware of the FBI investigation in 2016. As to why he never said anything publicly prior to December, Vice President Joe Biden said Obama was asked not to by Sen. Mitch McConnell:
Obama reportedly was informed by the FBI in 2016 that the bureau was investigating Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, but, according to former Vice President Biden’s telling, Obama was warned against going public with the investigation by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Obama, during his tenure, said he confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin about Russian interference in the 2016 election. The former president, according to The New York Times, said he told Putin “to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he did not.”
The timing of Obama’s remarks was both convenient and suspicious: They were made in December after the election was over and when the presidential transition was underway. What better way to begin the process of undermining the incoming administration than to plant the first official seeds of doubt as to its legitimacy just weeks before Trump was sworn in?
McConnell, for his part, is pushing back on repeated attempts by Obama-era officials like Biden and others who have said it’s his fault the American people were kept in the dark about the investigation until after the election was over:
[On Monday] McConnell said [Attorney General William] Barr concluded Russia had carried out online disinformation campaigns and computer hacking efforts aimed at sowing discord and influencing the 2016 election, but the senator blamed the Obama administration for not doing more to counter those efforts.
“It is deeply disturbing that the Obama administration was apparently insufficiently prepared to anticipate and counter these Russian threats,” McConnell said in a Senate floor speech. “It was hardly a secret prior to November 2016 that Putin’s Russia was not and is not our friend. And yet, for years, the previous administration ignored, excused and failed to confront Putin’s malign activities, both at home and abroad.”
He also said the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election should continue.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) agrees – but has been even more specific in his remarks about what he’d like to see:
But Graham also said he would soon ask Barr to appoint a special counsel to determine whether the Obama administration’s Department of Justice unlawfully obtained a warrant to spy on a Trump associate as a way to help bolster Clinton, Trump’s 2016 Democratic challenger. That special counsel, Graham said, might also look into the Obama-era FBI’s handling of an investigation into Clinton’s use of private emails.
Graham signaled he was prepared to hold Judiciary Committee hearings on these topics, too.
Here’s video of Graham talking about this on Monday:
https://twitter.com/ChatByCC/status/1110208729356619776
It goes without saying that the timing of the investigations would be seriously inconvenient for Joe Biden’s (upcoming) presidential run, and the findings from it could potentially derail the left’s hopes of taking back the White House altogether.
Look for Democrats, especially those running for president, to play up the political angle of Paul, Graham, and others calling for an investigation into Obama-era officials at a time when the 2020 election cycle is kicking into high gear. But considering what they tried to do for the last two years – and what they will continue to try to do, Democrats really have no room to talk.
–Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter.–
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Comments
I would love to see Obama held accountable.
Obana is the Spider, in the middle of the web.
Obama knows EVERYTHING about this TREASON!!!!!!!!!!!!
Evidently the debacle in Chicago this week is all about Michelle’s run for President in 2020 – according to wiser ones than me. Food for Thought anyways.
Obamas’ Chicago Fixer Tina Tchen
How did hate crime huckster Jussie Smollett get away with it? All crooked roads in Chicago lead back to the Obamas.
Michelle Malkin
https://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2019/03/27/crony-state-obamas-chicago-fixer-tina-tchen-n2543804
Ibib.
–Tchen and Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, joined together in March 2018 at South by Southwest in Austin to proclaim that “There Is No Time’s Up Without Women Of Color.”
–In May 2018, Tchen and Smollett-Bell took the stage together again — hand-in-hand, glued at the hip — at the United State of Women Summit in Los Angeles (where Tchen’s former boss and gal pal, Michelle Obama, also appeared).
–Smollett-Bell and another sister, Jazz Smollett-Warwell, worked for the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and volunteered as tireless surrogates.
–My search of White House visitor logs shows Jurnee Smollett-Bell paying at least one personal visit to “POTUS/FLOTUS” at their residence in March 2013 while Tchen was serving as a top strategist to both Obamas.
To minimize Tchen’s role in the Obamas’ political lives as merely an “aide” is journalistic malpractice.
Let me repeat Michelle Malkin, “…Obama crony pal and deep-pocketed campaign finance mega-bundler Tina Tchen had inserted herself in the investigation…..:
MICHELLE IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020 –
unless she’s in prison??????
Hmmmmmmmmmmm…… ibib.
–Tchen served as special assistant to President Obama, and then took over as chief of staff in the East Wing for Mrs. Obama.
–Tchen headed up the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, spearheaded by longtime Chicago pal and fellow corporate lawyer/bundler Valerie Jarrett.
–Tchen coordinated Hollywood celebrities to promote Obama’s domestic policy agenda through the taxpayer-subsidized National Endowment for the Arts.
–Tchen was listed in 2009 White House visitor logs I reviewed as having met there with radical left-wing billionaire George Soros.
I bet that Obama is thick with Soros.
Hell hath nor fury like a double-crossed Donald Trump.
Odumbo: payback is coming. Hard.
Too many people are pretending that the question is—what did Obama know about Russian attempts to pervert the election. But of course the real question is—what did Obama know about American attempts to pervert the election. Various actors in the Obama administration used American law enforcement and intelligence agencies to spy on, and even sabotage, a rival political campaign. How high up did the malfeasance go? Is there any reason at all to believe that it might not have gone all the way to the top? That would make 2016 a super-Watergate. And there’s no way to blame Vlad for it.
Amen!!!
It went all the way to Obama’s top IMO!!!!
Remember Hillary’s statement: “…we’re all going to hang together if Trump wins…”
Ask Obama anything you want. He will lie just to keep in practice.
He heard about on CNN.
I disagree. It’s WAY PAST time to investigate!
It’s time for indictments.
Sigh. I can dream.
And the SPLC purging Deese? And Smollett getting off the hook? Come to find out it’s Team Obama’s staffer.
Q. “thoughts turn to (a) what President Obama knew and (b) when he knew it”
A. (a) He knew all about it; (b) he knew at all times.
lisa page should have shed some light on what obama knew. When this all comes out, it’s going to be a sh!+ show going back decades. Many of these people rubbed shoulders in various law firms and lower level government agencies. For example, Uranium One was a swamp special, orchestrated by all the same players. It didn’t matter if they called themself a democrat or republican. They didn’t care about blue or red, only green, as in $$$.
LOL! As if Obama would cooperate at all.
If he did agree to testify, it would be an epic tap dance for the ages!
“I, ahhh, ummm. There are those who would say…”
Agree that leverage is needed. If Hillary was facing major jail time maybe a deal could be cut to spill the beans on Obama. However, I think a whole bunch of “Seth Rich” outcomes could block that. This is for keeps and I am certain the Democrat Party would, at all costs, be putting a damper on their misdeeds. With their collective mindset, the loss of a few for the benefit of the Party is fine.
Not that I mind the Senator asking, but Obama has zero obligation to reply and they can’t make him based on separation of powers doctrine, I take it?
I am going to sound a discordant note and say that Obama is not the problem here. He may have legal responsibility (he was President, after all) but he and the rest of the Democrat Party are nothing more than figureheads.
The real culprit (morally if not legally) is the media. Had it not been for decades of media disinformation and blood libels against all opposition the Democrat Party (in its current communist form) would not exist. Think of the media as the Hydra, and Obama, Clinton, Pelost, etc as the heads. Chop off one, and the media simply grows another in the space of one news cycle.
In a free society it is not possible to ban the media entirely, any more than any other nutty or unpopular group could be eliminated. But a free society that values its freedom would to well to shun the media as far as possible. Treat CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, the NYT, WaPo and the rest of the Joseph Goebbels wannabes as pariahs and keep your freedom.
You are right that obama was a puppet, but he is still as culpable as any wheel man in a robbery.
Burn him.
Obama learned about it on the TV news, just like we did……
Obama will lie anyway.
Its permissible for a Muslim to lie as long as the lie benefits the Caliphate, and Obama worked assiduously for the Caliphate for 8 long years.
If you pin Obama down with irrefutable evidence, thats when the civil war will begin.
Rand Paul is now irrelevant. He wants to add more illegals to the government’s teet. You know, to save the Constitution and all.
Paul is what you call a principled Libertarian. They’re always on the verge of irrelevancy.