Misleading campaign ad

Misleading Trump campaign ad attacks Obama over Russian hacking

By ERIC GELLER

President Donald Trump's reelection campaign said in a new ad that President Barack Obama failed to counter Russian election interference and "just watched it happen" — but the video misleadingly used a clip of Obama's top cyber adviser to make its point.

The two-minute ad includes a brief clip of former White House cyber coordinator Michael Daniel telling the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's cyber retaliation plans "were put on the back burner" — confirming a Yahoo News story that said former national security adviser Susan Rice told Daniel, "Don't get ahead of us."

But the ad implies that Daniel was referring to response measures in general, while Daniel's other comments at the June 20, 2018, hearing make clear that he was referring only to retaliatory measures.

During the hearing, Daniel told Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) that the National Security Council's cyber team simply "shifted our focus" to prioritize "protecting the electoral infrastructure" and gaining "visibility" into Russia's actions.

He did not say the NSC stopped working on the issue.

As for Rice's "stand down" order, Daniel said, "the decision at that point was to neckdown the number of people that were involved in developing our ongoing response options" — meaning that that process continued, just not with Daniel's team.

The new ad follows multiple reports about how election security is a radioactive topic in the Trump White House because the president associates it with questions about the legitimacy of his election victory. Experts have criticized the Trump administration for its lack of high-level focus on the issue.