Republicans and members of the administration probing the origins of the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation are now focusing on lower-profile members of the Obama administration—a move that suggests lawmakers may soon issue subpoenas or pursue charges against additional officials who held influential roles during that period.
Among them is Lisa Monaco, former Deputy U.S. Attorney General, who in December 2016 publicly indicated that then-President Barack Obama was weighing “sanctions” against Russia for its alleged “interference” in that year’s election. At the time, U.S. intelligence agencies were scrambling to compile a report on Russian involvement, despite lacking definitive evidence that Moscow acted to help President Donald Trump.
A resurfaced clip of Monaco’s remarks recently went viral after being flagged by Mike Davis, an attorney with the Article 3 Project and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. “Lawyer up, Lisa,” he wrote on X. “Nobody is above the law.”
Monaco, appearing on PBS, told viewers that the administration was working to “make clear we will impose consequences for Russian aggression, and their interference, or attempts to interfere in, our political process.”
The sanctions implemented at the time prohibited select Russian officials from traveling to the United States and blocked them from engaging in certain financial transactions with U.S. institutions. “We’ve decided to take these actions quite deliberately, and we’ve done so with precision,” she said at the time.
The list of Obama-era officials linked to the Trump-Russia hoax continues to expand. Last week, former President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, confirmed that she had referred former President Barack Obama to the U.S. Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
The referral followed an investigation by U.S. intelligence agencies into the potential criminal liability of several high-ranking officials from that period, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
