Julia Ioffe: Obama’s Response to Russia Was ‘Very Ad Hoc’

EXCERPT:

IOFFE: "You know, I do have to say that — so the Russian approach was very ad hoc, and they were trying different things, and they ended up not pulling the trigger on certain things like meddling in our election infrastructure, like messing with the voter rolls, with the machinery, et cetera. And I wonder if part of that was because the Obama administration did zag in that direction? They did -- they were focused mostly over the summer and fall, they weren’t focused on the fake news mill but on the -- on the integrity of the voter infra -- the voting infrastructure. So I wonder if that actually -- if the Russians were seeing that and said, 'OK, they’re on this. Let’s try something else.'"