Rep. Adam Schiff said Wednesday that he implored the Obama administration to do more against Russia after its interference in the 2016 election was made known.
“I think what they should’ve done — and [California Sen. Dianne Feinstein] and I were making this case in real time so this isn’t simply a Monday morning quarterbacking — we were urging the president to come out and make attribution early, to declassify as much as he could about the Russia intervention and to pursue sanctions then, instead of after the election,” Mr. Schiff, California Democrat, said on MSNBC.
But Mr. Schiff said that when the Obama administration refused to act, he and Ms. Feinstein decided to go public with the information they had. He said, however, that it was too late to communicate the severity the situation.
“As it turned out, Sen. Feinstein and I had to do our own attribution because we couldn’t successfully persuade the administration to do it. When they did the following month in October the month before the election, it really wasn’t enough to impress upon the public the seriousness of what Russia was going. And I think they did that for perhaps understandable reasons,” he said.
Mr. Schiff said he worried that by not acting, the U.S. was sanctioning the actions of the Russians and showing that it would be tolerated.
“In an absence of a more forceful response, in the absence of attribution, they were really giving a green light to continued Russian intervention,” he said.
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
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