Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager John Podesta penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, calling “the failure of the FBI to adequately respond” to Russian hacking “shocking.”
Podesta is upset that the FBI didn’t warn the DNC back in September when it first learned of potential Russian cyber attacks.
“What takes this from baffling to downright infuriating is that at nearly the exact same time that no one at the FBI could be bothered to drive 10 minutes to raise the alarm at DNC headquarters, two agents accompanied by attorneys from the Justice Department were in Denver visiting a tech firm that had helped maintain Clinton’s email server,” Podesta wrote.
He continued: “Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.”
Podesta rips FBI Director James Comey throughout the op-ed, for both breaking “long-established precedent and disregarded strong guidance from the Justice Department with his infamous letter just 11 days before the election” and “ignoring the intelligence community.”
“There are now reports that Vladimir Putin personally directed the covert campaign to elect Trump,” Podesta writes before asking, “So are teams of FBI agents busy looking into the reported meeting in Moscow this summer between Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser, and the Putin aide in charge of Russian intelligence on the U.S. election?”
Podesta’s op-ed concludes: “The election is over and the damage is done, but the threat from Russia and other potential aggressors remains urgent and demands a serious and sustained response.”