An interesting aspect of this is the Obama White House knew the Russians did not hack the DNC. Yet Obama kicked out Russian diplomats and introduced sanctions against Russia. When a response from Putin did not come, they tried to pretend that's why they had to find out what Flynn was doing. But they already knew Flynn's call to the diplomat was benign. They also had to know the Russians, before reacting, would wait a few weeks until the new administration was in place. New Trump Admin goes with the "Russians hacked DNC" story because where would they get any intel that it was untrue? - certainly not from the MSM, and the Seth Rich story was considered a major conspiracy theory. So the relationship between Trump and Putin was successfully damaged by Obama.

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