The New York Times recently came out with a pretty stunning article about the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s hacking of Democrat operatives’ emails. It makes seemingly explosive claims about the Trump campaign’s interaction with Russia, such as;

‘American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.’

Wow, right? Contacts with Russia, seemingly confirmed by multiple intelligence agencies. But wait, it’s all according, ‘former American officials,’ or, more succinctly, politicians from the Obama administration. And just a little further down…

‘The nature of the contacts remains unknown. Several of Mr. Trump’s associates have done business in Russia, and it is unclear if any of the contacts were related to business dealings.’

In other words, everything so far has been found to be completely innocuous, just normal business dealings. The speciousness of the evidence did not dissuade the opposing political party in the White House from treating it like a serious threat. So serious in fact, that the former administration declassified and spread raw intelligence throughout multiple channels in an attempt to ‘preserve’ it. This is nothing more than a political party using the power of the state to smear an incoming president. Without any hard evidence, Obama’s administration insinuated to foreign allies that Trump was involved in a conspiracy with Russia.

Imagine the outcry if a Republican administration facing a president elect Hillary Clinton declassified as much information as it could about her time at State and possible connections with her foundations, wiretapped foundation conversations and leaked them to the press. Then it spread this incomplete information, implying such things as ‘she sold uranium to Russia,’ throughout government agencies and to allies under the claim that they want to ‘preserve’ all information from destruction by the incoming administration.

We don’t need to imagine the reverse because that’s what has already happened. Government officials violated the civil rights of Michael Flynn by recording a phone conversation and then illegally leaking the contents to reporters. There is no problem with insiders leaking to reporters. There is a major problem when the power of the state is illegally used to spy on a private individual and leak information to the press for political purposes. And on Flynn, it is exceedingly obvious that nothing nefarious was discussed because the reporters who saw the transcripts didn’t report on it. However, they caught him in a lie and it was all downhill from there.

Suddenly this line early on makes far more sense, ‘Former senior Obama administration officials said that none of the efforts were directed by Mr. Obama.’ Just like the rest of the Obama administration scandals and illegal behavior, it was never initiated by Obama. His administration has openly admitted to intentionally undermining the Trump administration based on nothing more than circumstantial conversations. The ramifications of such behavior are exceedingly dangerous if repeated and escalated. If anything does come from the Russian scare, I have a feeling the scandal will be Obama’s not Trump’s.