President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign blasted out an email on Wednesday claiming former President Barack Obama “dropped the ball” on preventing Russian election interference in 2016.
The campaign sent the email in the middle of Attorney General Bill Barr’s Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on his questionable handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia and obstruction investigations.
“President Obama knew Russia was interfering in the 2016 election,” the email thundered. “But his administration just watched it happen.”
The email includes a video featuring various clips of Fox News pundits, Rep. Adam Schiff and Obama discussing Russia’s attempt to meddle with the election.
At one point, the video digs at Obama for saying that he told Russian president Vladimir Putin to “cut it out.”
“‘Cut it out’ doesn’t cut it,” the video says, a remarkable contrast to Trump’s previously expressed nonchalance toward Russian election hacking (after repeatedly denying that such hacking had happened at all).
The email echoes a similar accusation the campaign made last week when it sent out a bizarre “Official Obama-Russia Accountability” survey that asked questions like “Do you believe Obama doing nothing gave Russians the green light to interfere in the 2016 Election?”