We Now Have Proof Susan Rice Gave the ‘Stand Down’ Order

You may recall Susan Rice’s pivotal role in lying about the Benghazi affair where Americans on the ground said they were given a stand down order, delaying them from rescuing the Americans who were under fire at the mission.

But now there’s new information that Rice figured prominently in another ‘stand down’ order of some weight.

Many have questioned why the Obama administration didn’t respond to the supposed Russian involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC and the leaking of John Podesta’s emails during the 2016 campaign.

As it turns out, it was Rice who prevented actions from being taken, according to a new book by Michael Isikoff and David Korn, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

From Biz Pac Review:

The former National Security Adviser, who chaired a number of high-ranking intelligence principals, told an official to “stand down” on developing cyber-espionage countermeasures because they had not been approved by President Obama.

At one pivotal point during the presidential campaign, Susan Rice directly told the White House director of cybersecurity Michael Daniel to cease and desist from developing further technological options to thwart apparent Russian attempts to create havoc in the digital elections infrastructure.

“One day in late August, national security adviser Susan Rice called Daniel into her office and demanded he cease and desist from working on the cyber options he was developing. ‘Don’t get ahead of us,’ she warned him. The White House was not prepared to endorse any of these ideas. Daniel and his team in the White House cyber response group were given strict orders: ‘Stand down.’ She told Daniel to ‘knock it off,’ he recalled,” the book recounts.

“That was one pissed-off national security adviser,” Daniel would say to one of his aides.

His people couldn’t believe it.

“We’ve been told to stand down.” Daniel Prieto, one of Daniel’s top deputies, recalled, “I was incredulous and in disbelief. It took me a moment to process. In my head I was like, ‘Did I hear that correctly?’” Then Prieto spoke up, asking, “Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?” Daniel informed them that the orders came from both Rice and Monaco. They were concerned that if the options were to leak, it would force Obama to act. “They didn’t want to box the president in,” Prieto subsequently said.

It was a critical moment that, as Prieto saw it, scuttled the chance for a forceful immediate response to the Russian hack—and keenly disappointed the NSC aides who had been developing the options.

Many have questioned why Obama did nothing in response.

“Some former Obama officials now confess to misgivings about Mr. Obama’s reluctance to act, or speak out more forcefully, even as the evidence piled up during the spring and summer of 2016 that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee and were behind the leak of damaging emails about Hillary Clinton.”

The plausible rationale for the former president’s reluctance to act was poignantly captured by the subsequent president Donald Trump.

“That’s because he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win and he didn’t want to ‘rock the boat,’ ” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “When I easily won the Electoral College, the whole game changed and the Russian excuse became the narrative of the Dems.”

This wasn’t the only odd reaction that Susan Rice exhibited in relation to the Russia probe.

Sen. Chuck Grassley brought attention to a suspicious email that she had written to herself on the very day of the Trump’s inauguration as the Obama administration were leaving office that appeared to provide justification for a meeting that she had with FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Vice President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama.

Now such a meeting is a very questionable meeting especially in light of the Russia probe. It suggests potential interference by Obama.

Rice’s email reads like something written for investigators who might discover the meeting.

“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book.’ The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book,” Rice wrote to herself.

Comey, when questioned by Congress listed two meetings he had with Obama but did not list this meeting, which raises more questions.

So why would Obama through his minion Rice issue a stand down order against the Russians? Why wasn’t it important until after Hillary Clinton lost?