"If Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?” President Donald Trump asked. | Getty Trump: If Russia meddled in our election, why didn't Obama stop it?

President Donald Trump sought to turn the tables Thursday morning on the ongoing investigations into the 2016 campaign, wondering online why his predecessor had been unable to stop Russian government efforts to interfere in last November’s presidential race.

Trump also suggested that his position — that there was no connection between his campaign and the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the race — had been vindicated on Wednesday by testimony from former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to the House Intelligence Committee.


“Former Homeland Security Advisor Jeh Johnson is latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between Trump & Russia,” the president wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. “By the way, if Russia was working so hard on the 2016 Election, it all took place during the Obama Admin. Why didn't they stop them?”

Johnson did not, as Trump suggested, say there was no evidence of a tie between the president’s campaign and the Russian government.

In fact, when Johnson was asked Wednesday if he had seen evidence during his tenure as homeland security secretary of collusion between individuals with ties to Trump and the Russian government, he said he had seen nothing “beyond what has been out there open-source, and not beyond anything that I'm sure this committee has already seen and heard before, directly from the intelligence community.”

In subsequent posts to Twitter, Trump sought to lay blame for last year’s campaign-related cyberattacks at the feet of the Democratic National Committee, suggesting that it could have taken steps to protect itself and has not cooperated with the investigation. The DNC’s activities, he said, are evidence of “a big Dem hoax” to serve as an “excuse for losing the election.”

“Why did Democratic National Committee turn down the DHS offer to protect against hacks (long prior to election). It's all a big Dem HOAX!” Trump wrote. “Why did the DNC REFUSE to turn over its Server to the FBI, and still hasn't? It's all a big Dem scam and excuse for losing the election!”

