Longtime Democrat operative and newly minted Fox News contributor Donna Brazile defended former President Barack Obama and his administration over Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election, saying she believes they did “everything they could.”

“I think they did everything they could without sounding all of the alarm bells,” Brazile said on Fox News’s The Daily Briefing.

“If Obama did more on Russian meddling, she said, critics would have accused him of trying to help his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in her race against then-candidate Donald Trump,” Fox News reported.

“He was in a box,” Brazile said of the former president.

“Perhaps President Trump is in a box,” she added, before calling for action to prevent future meddling.

In the Fox report, Brazile claimed it was the Trump campaign that “exploited” information from WikiLeaks, which has suspected ties to Russia.

“Every day, the Trump campaign would get the WikiLeaks information; they would blast it,” Brazile said. “He used it in his daily rallies and daily meetings.”

“Brazile, who served as interim Democratic National Committee chair during the election, backed away from making any determination about whether her party should pursue impeaching the president,” Fox reported.

The Mueller report concluded that neither President Trump nor anyone in his presidential campaign colluded with Russia but stopped short of clearing the president of obstructing justice.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to leave the obstruction question open has been snapped up as what Democrats have called a “road map for impeachment.”

One of the Democrat presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), announced on Twitter on Friday that she supports starting impeachment proceedings.

But Brazile backed away from endorsing an effort to get the president removed from office.

“I think it’s premature to talk about what the next step is,” she said. “Before we can move into what I call the impeachment gear, perhaps we should just dive into this report.”

“Like Brazile, DNC Chair Tom Perez appeared to sidestep impeachment questions on Thursday and said it was unclear whether or not obstruction occurred,” Fox reported.

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