Obama was setting up another insurance policy… telling the cyber defense to “stand down” opened up the possibilities of blaming the election results on Russian “hacks” if he didn’t like the results. Heck, the NSA/DHS could have simply used Russian proxies or faked the “fingerprints” of the attack to make it look like it came from overseas.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in 2016 that Russia ran a program of hacking and disinformation to interfere in the elections and it later developed into an attempt to help Republican candidate Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. On Feb. 16, a U.S. special counsel indicted 13 Russians and three companies, including St.-Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency known for its trolling on social media, with charges of tampering in the campaign.
Notice the line about “later developed into”… because the fake news media had to keep moving words around to give the illusion that Trump won with Russian help.
h/t brutus_beefcake69