Fear of being accused of trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, and fear of undermining public confidence in our democracy, caused the Obama administration to mishandle its response to Russian interference during the campaign.
That's the main conclusion in the latest bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee about foreign meddling in the last presidential contest, released Thursday.
The report is significant in two ways: For the past two years the panel has been the only part of Congress working in a bipartisan way to assess election interference. And it's latest conclusions underscore what both election security experts and democracy reform advocates have been saying more and more: The fear created by what happened in 2016 is almost as much of a problem in 2020 as any new attempts by foreign powers to hack into election systems or spread misinformation.
The previous administration was "frozen by analysis paralysis," Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, said in a joint statement releasing the document. "Obama officials debated courses of action without truly taking one."
The panel's ranking Democrat, Mark Warner of Virginia, said he remains concerned that the fears generated by warning the public about attacks or attempted attacks in the run-up to this November could cause people to lose faith in our entire election system.
The report concedes that the muddled response was partially due to the fact that the extent of what the Russians were doing did not become clear until long after the election.
Reports from various agencies have shown that Russian operatives tried to break into computerized U.S. election systems and used misinformation and publication of thousands of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign to promote Donald Trump.
Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and his ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told committee investigators that, early on, the level of secrecy surrounding the discovery of what the Russians were doing was reminiscent of the lead-up to the raid in which Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden was killed.
"The major concern I think in the White House was, if we do something or say something, particularly publicly, about this, are we amping it up?" Clapper told the committee.
The committee concluded that:
- The decision to limit and delay the release of information inadvertently constrained the Obama administration's ability to respond.
- The rules of cyber-engagement are being written by "hostile foreign actors, including Russia and China" and that the United States needs to take the lead on the issue.
- More information should be shared within the government and with the public.
Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, in a separate statement at the end of the report, was particularly critical of the secrecy of the Obama administration. He said the public will never know the extent of the warnings that were given because no records were kept of some of top administration officials's meetings.
Wyden concluded by renewing his concerns that even now congressional staffers are being denied access to some investigatory materials. "It is bizarre that the committee would not heed its own recommendation and grant access to this information to its own staff," he wrote.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.