[Washington Examiner] The Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report on Thursday, criticizing the Obama administration for being unprepared to combat Russia’s election interference in 2016 and for fumbling the response.The committee’s 54-page heavily redacted report, the third installment in the committee’s investigation into the Kremlin’s foreign influence campaign in 2016, "found the U.S. government was not well-postured to counter Russian election interference activity with a full range of readily-available policy options."
The report said that, while high-level warnings were delivered to Russian officials, "those warnings may or may not have tempered Moscow’s activity" and "Russia continued disseminating stolen emails, conducting social media-based influence operations, and working to access state voting infrastructure through Election Day 2016."
Republican Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina said, "After discovering the existence, if not the full scope, of Russia’s election interference efforts in late-2016, the Obama administration struggled to determine the appropriate response. Frozen by ’paralysis of analysis,’ hamstrung by constraints both real and perceived, Obama officials debated courses of action without truly taking one."
Added Democratic Vice Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia: "There were many flaws with the U.S. response to the 2016 attack, but it’s worth noting that many of those were due to problems with our own system ‐ problems that can and should be corrected."
"Systems problems and errors"...Non unlike the DOJ inspector general finding 17 'significant errors or omissions' in Carter Page FISA applications Ok, I get it now.
The report found that the Obama administration "was constrained in its response by a number of external and internal concerns," including that "public warnings would themselves undermine confidence in the election."
The Obama administration treated cyber and geopolitical aspects of the Russian active measures campaign as separate issues, the committee said. "This bifurcated approach may have prevented the Administration from understanding the full extent of the threat Russia posed, limiting its ability to respond."