Tag: Victoria Nuland

Victoria Nuland, former NATO ambassador and undersecretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, talks with Rachel Maddow about the importance of NATO and what Vladimir Putin is likely to try to get out of Donald Trump when they meet…

A former senior U.S. official from the Obama administration is warning that Russian efforts to influence U.S. politics have been so successful that other U.S. adversaries like China are beginning to emulate them. Nuland had a front-row seat to the Russian effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, serving as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2013 until the end of the Obama administration. Michael Daniel, cybersecurity coordinator at the National Security Council during the Obama administration including the time period of the 2016 campaign, joined Nuland before the Senate panel. Last month, for example, Australia news outlets reported on a classified government report that revealed efforts by the Chinese government to influence politics in their country. The Senate intelligence committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, held a hearing to examine how the Obama administration reacted as the Kremlin-linked operation was underway. They did not anticipate that Russia would actively try to interfere in the election process by trying to influence and disrupt the presidential campaign, Daniel said. The Obama administration warned the Kremlin and the Russian government on multiple occasions to stop interfering with the campaign while it was ongoing, but this proved to be of little to no use. Then-CIA Director John Brennan warned his Russian intelligence counterpart in August 2016; the United States contacted Russia using a 'cyber-hotline' that was set up to defuse tensions; and President Obama himself gave a warning to President Putin in the fall of 2016. Daniel said that the Obama administration came up with a whole range of public and covert options to respond, but the White House decided that it would not actively take measures to deter the Russians while the campaign was underway. Nuland herself is believed to have been the target of Russian political interference in in the West in 2014, when a phone call in which she spoke disparagingly about European allies was leaked in the middle of the political crisis in Ukraine between the former Moscow-backed government and the pro-Western opposition.