Posted originally on the CTH on November 1, 2024 | Sundance 

On January 17, 2017, just three days before President-Trump was sworn into office, outgoing President Obama had a secret conference call with progressive media allies.

A long battled FOIA request by Jason Leopold was finally able to receive documents and within the documents the transcript of the phone call is revealed. [Documents Here]

Again, this is three days before Trump took office, when the Obama White House and Intelligence Community were intentionally pushing the Trump-Russia conspiracy story into the media in an effort to disrupt President Trump’s transition to power.  President Obama is essentially asking his progressive allies to help defend his administration. Part of the 20-page transcript is below: 

Barack Obama – […] “I think the Russia thing is a problem. And it’s of a piece with this broader lack of transparency. It is hard to know what conversations the President-elect may be having offline with business leaders in other countries who are also connected to leaders of other countries. And I’m not saying there’s anything I know for a fact or can prove, but it does mean that — here’s the one thing you guys have been able to know unequivocally during the last eight years, and that is that whether you disagree with me on policy or not, there was never a time in which my relationship with a foreign entity might shade how I viewed an issue. And that’s — I don’t know a precedent for that exactly.

Now, the good news there, I will say, is just that there’s a lot of career folks here who care about that stuff, and not just in the intelligence agencies. I think in our military, in our State Department. And I think that to the extent that things start getting weird, I think you will see surfacing objections, some through whistleblowers and some through others. And so I think there is some policing mechanism there, but that’s unprecedented.

And then the final thing that I’m most worried about is just preserving the democratic process so that in two years, four years, six years, if people are dissatisfied, that dissatisfaction expresses itself. So Jeff Sessions and the Justice Department and what’s happening with the voting rights division and the civil rights division, and — those basic process issues that allow for the democratic process to work. I’d include in that, by the way, press. I think you guys are all on top of how disconcerting — you guys complain about us — (laughter) — but let me just tell you, I think — we actually respected you guys and cared about trying to explain ourselves to you in a way that I think is just going to be different.

On balance, that leads to me to say I think that four years is okay. Take on some water, but we can kind of bail fast enough to be okay. Eight years would be a problem. I would be concerned about a sustained period in which some of these norms have broken down and started to corrode.

Q Could you talk a bit more about the Russia thing? Because it sounds like you, who knows more than we do from what you’ve seen, and is genuinely —

THE PRESIDENT: And can say less. (Laughter.) This is one area I’ve got to be careful about. But, look, I mean, I think based on what you guys have, I think it’s — and I’m not just talking about the most recent report or the hacking. I mean, there are longstanding business relationships there. They’re not classified. I think there’s been some good reporting on them, it’s just they never got much attention. He’s been doing business in Russia for a long time. Penthouse apartments in New York are sold to
folks — let me put it this way. If there’s a Russian who can afford a $10-million, or a $15- or a $20- or a $30-million penthouse in Manhattan, or is a major investor in Florida, I think it’s fair to say Mr. Putin knows that person, because I don’t think they’re getting $10 million or $30 million or $50 million out of Russia without Mr. Putin saying that’s okay.

Q Could you talk about two things? One is, the damage he could do to our standing in the world through that. I mean, just this interview he gave the other day, and what you’re worried about there. And then the other side — and you sat down with him. I found the way in which he screamed at Jim Acosta just really chilling. If you just look at the face in a kind an authoritarian or autocratic, whatever word you want to use, personality — would you, on those two?

THE PRESIDENT: On the latter issue, EJ, you saw what I saw. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

Q But you sat down with him privately. I’m curious about —

THE PRESIDENT: Privately, that’s not — his interactions with me are very different than they are with the public, or, for that matter, interactions with Barack Obama, the distant figure. He’s very polite to me, and has not stopped being so. I think where he sees a vulnerability he goes after it and he takes advantage of it.

And the fact of the matter is, is that the media is not credible in the public eye right now. You have a bigger problem with a breakdown in institutional credibility that he exploits, at least for his base, and is sufficient for his purposes. Which means that — the one piece of advice I’d give this table is: Focus. I think if you’re jumping after every insult or terrible thing or bit of rudeness that he’s doing and just chasing that, I think there’s a little bit of a three-card Monte there that you have to be careful about. I think you have to focus on a couple of things that are really important and just stay on them and drive them home. And that’s hard to do in this news environment, and it’s hard to do with somebody who, I think, purposely generates outrage both to stir up his base but also to distract and to — so you just have
to stay focused and unintimidated, because that’s how you confront, I think, a certain personality type.

But in terms of the world — look, rather than pick at one or two different things — number one, I don’t think he’s particularly isolationist — or I don’t think he’s particularly interventionist. I’m less worried than some that he initiates a war. I think that he could stumble into stuff just due to a lack of an infrastructure and sort of a coherent vision. But I think his basic view — his formative view of foreign policy is shaped by his interactions with Malaysian developers and Saudi princes, and I think his view is, I’m going to go around the world making deals and maybe suing people. (Laughter.) But it’s not, let me launch big wars that tie me up. And that’s not what his base is looking from him anyway. I mean, it is not true that he initially opposed the war in Iraq. It is true that during the campaign he was not projecting a hawkish foreign policy, other than bombing the heck out of terrorists. And we’ll see what that means, but I don’t think he’s looking to get into these big foreign adventures.

I think the bigger problem is nobody fully appreciates — and even I didn’t appreciate until I took this office — and when I say “nobody,” I mean the left as well as the right — the degree to which we really underwrite the world order. And I think sometimes from the left, that’s viewed as imperialism or sort of an extension of a global capitalism or what have you. The truth of the matter, though, is, if I’m at a G20 meeting, if we don’t initiate a conversation around human rights or women’s rights, or LGBT rights, or climate change, or open government, or anti-corruption initiatives, whatever cause you believe in, it doesn’t happen. Almost everything — every multilateral initiative function, norm, policy that is out there — it’s underwritten by us. We have some allies, primarily Europe, Canada, and some of our Asia allies.

But what I worry about most is, there is a war right now of ideas, more than any hot war, and it is between Putinism — which, by the way, is subscribed to, at some level, by Erdogan or Netanyahu or Duterte and Trump — and a vision of a liberal market-based democracy that has all kinds of flaws and is subject to all kinds of legitimate criticism, but on the other hand is sort of responsible for most of the human progress we’ve seen over the last 50, 75 years.

And if what you see in Europe — illiberalism winning out, the liberal order there being chipped away — and the United States is not there as a bulwark, which I think it will not be, then what you’re going to start seeing is, in a G20 or a G7, something like a human rights agenda is just not going to even be — it won’t be even on the docket, it won’t be talked about. And you’ll start seeing — what the Russians, what the Chinese do in those meetings is that they essentially look out for their own interests. They sit back, they wait to see what kind of consensus we’re building globally, they see if sometimes they can make sure their equities are protected, but they don’t initiate.

If we’re not there initiating ourselves, then everybody goes into their own sort of nationalist, mercantilist corners, and it will be a meaner, tougher world, and the prospects for conflict that arise will be greater. I think the weakening of Europe, if not the splintering of Europe, will have significant effects for us because, you may recall, but the last time Europe was not unified, it did not go well. So I’m worried about Europe.

There are a lot of bad impulses in Europe if — you know, Europe, even before the election, these guys will remember when we were, like, in Hanover and stuff, and you just got this sense of, you know, like the Yeats poem — the best lacked all conviction and the worst were full of passion and intensity, and everybody on their heels, and unable to articulate or defend the fact that the European Union has produced the wealthiest, most peaceful, most prosperous, highest living standards in the history of
mankind, and prior to that, 60 million people ended up being killed around the world because they couldn’t get along.

So you’d think that we’d have the better argument here, but you didn’t get a sense of that. Everybody was defensive, and I worry about that. Seeing Merkel for the last time when I was in Berlin was haunting. She looked very alarmed.

Q What can you share with us about what foreign leaders, like Merkel and others, have expressed to you about what happened here in this election and what’s happening internationally generally since November 8th?

THE PRESIDENT: I think they share the concerns that I just described. But it’s hard for them to figure out how to mobilize without us. This is what I mean — I mean, I’ll be honest, I do get frustrated sometimes with like the Greenwalds of the world. There are legitimate arguments to be made about various things we do, but overall we have been a relatively benign influence and a ballast, and have tried to create spaces — sometimes there’s hypocrisy and I’m dealing with the Saudis while they’re doing all kinds of stuff, or we’re looking away when there’s a Chinese dissident in jail. All legitimate concerns. How we prosecute the war against terrorism, even under my watch. And you can challenge our drone policy, although I would argue that the arguments were much more salient in the first two years of my administration — much less salient today.

You can talk about surveillance, and I would argue once again that Snowden identified some problems that had to do with technology outpacing the legal architecture. Since that time, the modifications we’ve made overall I think have been fairly sensible.

But even if you don’t agree with those things, if we’re not there making the arguments — and even under Bush, those arguments were made. I mean, you know, they screwed up royally with Iraq, but they cared about stuff like freedom of religion or genital mutilation. I mean, there was a State Department that would express concern about these things, and push and prod and much less NATO, which you kind of would think, well, that’s sort of a basic, let’s keep that thing going, that’s worked okay.

So I think the fear is a combination of poor policy articulation or just silence on the part of the administration, a lack of observance ourselves of basic norms. So, I mean, we started this thing called the Open Government Partnership that’s gotten 75 countries around the world doing all kinds of things that we’ve been poking and prodding them to do for a long time. It’s been really successful making sure that people know what their budgets are and how they can hold their elected officials accountable, and we’re doing it in Africa, in Asia, et cetera. And now, if we get a President who doesn’t release his tax returns, who’s doing business with a bunch of folks, then everybody looks and says, well, what are you talking about? They don’t even have to, like, dismantle that program, it’s just — our example counts too.

Q Mr. President, can I ask you to go to kind of a dark place for a second in terms of —

THE PRESIDENT: I was feeling pretty dark. (Laughter.) I don’t know how much — where do you want me to go exactly?

Q I can bring us lower, trust me.

Q The John McCain line, everything is terrible before it goes completely black. (Laughter.)

Q I know that you feel that there’s a lot you can’t say on the Russia story, but just even speaking hypothetically, if there were somebody with the powers of U.S. President who Russia felt like they could give orders to, that Russia felt like they had something on them, what’s your worst-case scenario? What’s the worry there in terms of the kind of damage that could be done?

And also domestically, with a truly malign actor, if he’s, way worse than we all think he might be, and he wanted to use the powers of the U.S. government to cause — to advance his own interests and cause other people harm that he saw as his enemies, are there breaks out there that you see? What are the places where you worry the most in terms of damage being done?

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, on the foreign policy, the hypothetical is just — I can’t answer that because I’ll let you guys spin yourselves.

What I would simply say would be that any time you have a foreign actors who, for whatever reason, has ex parte influence over the President of the United States, meaning that the American people can’t see that influence because it’s not happening in a bilateral meeting and subject to negotiations or reporting — any time that happens, that’s a problem. And I’ll let you speculate on where that could go.

Domestically, I think I’ve mentioned to Greg the place that I worry the most about. I mean, I think that the dangers I would see would be — and we saw some hints of this in my predecessor — if you politicize law enforcement, the attorney general’s office, U.S. attorneys, FBI, prosecutorial functions, IRS audits, that’s the place that I worry the most about. And the reason is because if you start seeing the government engaging in some of those behaviors and you start getting a chilling effect, then looking at history I don’t know that we’re so special that you don’t start getting self-censorship, which in some ways is worse, or at least becomes the precursor.

We have enough institutional breaks right now to prevent just outright — I mean, you would not, even with a Supreme Court appointment of his coming up, Justice Roberts would not uphold the President of the United States explicitly punishing the Washington Post for writing something. I mean, the First Amendment — there’s certain things that you can’t get away with.

But what you can do — it’s been interesting watching sort of a handful of tweets, and then suddenly companies are all like, oh, we’re going to bring back jobs, even if it’s all phony and bullshit. What that shows is the power of people thinking, you know what, I might get in trouble, I might get punished. And it’s one thing if that’s just verbal. But if folks start feeling as if the law enforcement mechanisms we have in place are not straight, they’ll play it straight. That’s dangerous, just because the immense power — one of the frustrations I’ve had over the course of eight years is the degree to which people have, I think in the popular imagination and certainly among the left, this idea of Big Brother and spying and reading emails and writing emails — and that’s captured everybody’s imaginations.

But I will tell you, the real power that’s scary is just basic law enforcement. If the FBI comes and questions you and says it wants your stuff, and the Justice Department starts investigating you and is investigating you for long periods of time, even if you have nothing to hide, even if you’ve got lawyers, that’s a scary piece of business, and it will linger for long periods of time.” …. (Much More Continues after Page, 10)