Tammy Bruce: Tracking the real collusion -- Obama knew foreign entities were interfering; he did nothing

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Trump accuses Obama of inaction over Russia

President blames his predecessor for not doing enough on Russian election meddling; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

There is a lot of noise lately, and less signal, about the now debunked “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative. After special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians for trolling Americans during the 2016 election, Democrats and various malcontents are in a tizzy to move their narrative goalposts.

“Well,” they insist, “Trump said the whole Russian thing was a hoax. Now it’s proven it wasn’t,” or some such nonsense.

President Trump, in fact, never argued that Russian meddling was a hoax, but the accusation that he and his team colluded with the Russians was the fraud, and now we know, it was.

Through the election candidate Trump repeatedly expressed his concern about the security of the election process; ranging from voter fraud to meddling, the presidential aspirant made it clear we needed to be cognizant of forces that might impact the election.

Cyberattacks and hacking major federal government agencies ranging from the Office of Personnel Management to the State Department had become all the rage. The White House itself had been hacked, as well as the Obamacare website, among many other intrusions. Intelligence services identified various nations involved in assorted actions against us including Russia, China and North Korea.

With this environment, any reasonable person would know to be concerned about the security of the election process. Yet with everything President Obama knew about foreign interests and meddling, less than one month before the election, he felt compelled to mock and ridicule Mr. Trump and his concerns.

During a Rose Garden press conference on Oct. 18, 2016, with the visiting Italian prime minister, Politico reported this about Mr. Obama’s comments, “‘There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved,’ Obama said. ‘There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time,’ he continued. ‘And so, I’d advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.’ “

With everything we now know, these comments take on an even more remarkable importance, and serve as that additional proof that the Democrats, including Mr. Obama, while fully aware of the nature of foreign entities interfering in our nation in a variety of ways, preferred to say and do nothing lest it cast a shadow on Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential victory.

This makes sense considering Mr. Obama’s obsequious behavior toward the Russians. Who can forget the Obama and then out-going Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cuddle during the 2012 nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea?

Reuters reported, “As he was leaning toward Medvedev in Seoul, Obama was overheard asking for time — ‘particularly with missile defense’ — until he is in a better position politically to resolve such issues. ‘I understand your message about space,’ replied Medvedev, who will hand over the presidency to Putin in May. ‘This is my last election. … After my election I have more flexibility,’ Obama said …”

And then there’s the awkwardness of Mr. Obama’s administration interfering in the Israeli election at about the same time some of the Mueller-indicted Russians were entering the United States ostensibly to interfere in our election.

CNS reported in December 2016 that a bipartisan inquiry determined Mr. Obama’s State Department used taxpayer dollars to help fund an organization that was seeking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ouster during their March 2015 election.

“According to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the State Department gave $349,276 in U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to a political group in Israel to build a campaign operation, which subsequently was used to try to influence Israelis to vote against conservative Benjamin Netanyahu in the March 2015 election for prime minister,” CNS reported.

Further, the subcommittee report detailed, “Within weeks [of new Israeli parliamentary elections being called], an international organization known as the OneVoice Movement absorbed and funded an Israeli group named Victory15 or ‘V15’ and launched a multimillion-dollar grassroots campaign in Israel. The campaign’s goal was to elect ‘anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]’ by mobilizing center-left voters …”

And who was the adviser to V15? None other than Jeremy Bird, a man about whom The New York Times noted at the time “[is] the architect of the grass-roots and online organizing efforts that powered President Obama’s presidential campaigns from Chicago, is advising a similar operation in Tel Aviv. But this time it is focused on ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.”

At the end of December 2016, in the last weeks of his presidency and with Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Obama suddenly decided the Russians were of interest, issued sanctions and expelled 35 Russians for “efforts to interfere with the U.S. presidential election,” according to the Guardian. In retrospect, actions that conveniently shoehorned with what we now know as the Democrats’ now debunked “Trump colluded with the Russians” narrative.

The Washington Times reported on Tuesday that “Rep. Devin Nunes is trying to determine the breadth and reach of the unverified Russia-Trump dossier inside the U.S. government, especially among senior leaders in the Barack Obama administration during the 2016 election.”

That’s good news. It’s about time for us to uncover the actual collusion that marred the 2016 election and continues to be used to divide us.

This column originally appeared in The Washington Times.