U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama, for failing to take action on Russian interference in the 2016 election, despite Obama having implemented sanctions against Russia over its meddling.
“Obama was President up to, and beyond, the 2016 Election. So why didn’t he do something about Russian meddling?” tweeted Trump.
The tweet comes three days after special counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections.
The charges allege that the Russians created false U.S. personas and stole the identities of real U.S. people in order to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, an assessment previously reached by U.S. intelligence agencies.
While the indictment says that the goal of the entities and people indicted was to support Trump's campaign and to hurt his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said while announcing the indictments there is no allegation that Americans had any knowledge of the operation.
While some Democrats have claimed there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, Trump noted last Friday, shortly after the indictments were announced, “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong - no collusion!”
In fact, a controversial dossier against Trump that was compiled ahead of the 2016 election and which suggested he colluded with the Russian government was produced at the behest of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The Republican party recently released a previously classified memo showing that the Department of Justice inappropriately used this dossier to obtain surveillance warrants on transition team members as part of the federal investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.