Margot Cleveland of the Federalist focuses on one key element of Attorney General William Barr’s recent interview with CBS.

The DOJ has “an increasingly robust program that is focusing on foreign influence in our election process, with the FBI obviously taking the lead,” Barr told [Jan] Crawford. But not enough was done in 2016, Barr acknowledged.

“Bob Mueller did some impressive work in his investigation, you know, identifying some of the Russian hackers and their influence campaign and you sort of wonder if that kind of work had been done starting in 2016, things could have been a lot different,” he said. Crawford replied, “It’s just hard to understand why it wasn’t taken more seriously.” Barr agreed, saying he had no idea why it wasn’t. “That’s one of the things I’m interested in looking at as part of my review of the Russia collusion investigation,” Barr stressed.

With people warned as early as April 2016, “I’m wondering what, exactly, was the response to it if they were alarmed. Surely the response should have been more than just, you know, dangling a confidential informant in front of a peripheral player in the Trump campaign,” the attorney general told Crawford before she moved to another topic. …

… Barr’s comments also should not be considered in isolation. When considered in tandem with several aspects of the Spygate investigation, it suggests the Obama administration habitually ignored Russia’s efforts to affect the election, opting instead to target Trump and the Trump campaign, transition team, and administration.