Obama: US Will Take Action Against Russia for Hacking
December 19, 2016 
Economic News
December 19, 2016
Editors Comment: Utter nonsense regarding Russia hacking the US Election. However, what Obama and company fail to mention is that if Russia can hack our electronic voting machines then so can they and they would have known about the hacking while the election was taking place.
President Barack Obama says the U.S. must and will take action against Russia in response to cyber interference with the election.
Obama tells NPR News the U.S. will respond at a “time and place of our choosing.” His comments are the clearest indication to date that whatever response the U.S. is planning has not yet occurred.
Obama says some of the response may be explicit and publicized and some of it may not.
“Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it,” Obama told NPR.
“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action,” he said. “And we will at a time and place of our own choosing.”
Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the matter and give him a full report before he leaves office on January 20.
“When I receive a final report, you know, we’ll be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations,” he told NPR. “But that does not in any way, I think, detract from the basic point that everyone during the election perceived accurately – that in fact what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign.”
The Obama administration suggested earlier Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized the hacking of Democratic officials’ email accounts in the run-up to the presidential election and said it was “fact” that such actions helped Donald Trump’s campaign. The White House also assailed Trump himself, saying he must have known of Russia’s interference.
No proof was offered for any of the accusations, the latest to unsettle America’s uneasy transition from eight years under Democratic President Barack Obama to a new Republican administration led by Trump. The claims of Russian meddling in the election also have heightened already debilitating tensions between Washington and Moscow over Syria, Ukraine and a host of other disagreements.
“Only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, repeating the words from an October U.S. intelligence assessment.