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President Barack Obama and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, right, walk along the Colonnade of the White House on Nov. 14, 2016. | AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

A senior official from the administration of Barack Obama defended the former presidents handling of Russian efforts to interfere in last years presidential election, which current President Donald Trump has at times characterized as negligent or worse.

Seeking to set the record straight about the events of last fall, Denis McDonough, Obamas chief of staff from 2013 until he left office earlier this year, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Thursday night that the former president worked with his own intelligence community as well as leaders in Congress to protect not just the integrity of last Novembers election but also the publics confidence in it.

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Obama also directed the intelligence community to seek out and make public as much evidence of Russias culpability as possible, McDonough said. On two occasions, the former chief of staff said, Russia was warned directly about the consequences of continued efforts to interfere in the U.S. election: once in early October directly from Obama to Putin and again later that month via the Russian embassy in Washington.

We believe that these direct warnings in fact caused the Russians to dial back their efforts to interfere, McDonough said.

And while the government first made public its assessment that Russia was behind the campaign of election-year cyberattacks, internal government movements on it began much earlier, according to McDonough. Briefings for Congressional leaders began in August and continued throughout the month. The president also invited the majority and minority leaders from both houses of Congress to the White House to ask them to release a bipartisan statement of concern on the election interference efforts, McDonough said.

Such a statement was intended to help insulate the White Houses efforts from appearing partisan, McDonough said. With the same goal in mind, he recalled the White House asking two Democrats not to release a public statement on the Russian cyberattacks.

Despite McDonoughs assertions published Thursday, as well as past statements from other Obama administration officials, Trump and his defenders have insisted that his predecessor did not do enough in the moment to stop the Kremlins efforts to affect the election. At least one Obama official, quoted anonymously in a Post story published last month, agreed, telling a reported that I feel like we sort of choked in responding to Moscows activities.

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Trump himself has said that Obama was unwilling to more forcefully address Russias efforts because he was fearful of rocking the boat in what, for almost all of last fall, appeared was going to be an easy victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton. It was only after Trumps surprise victory that the issue became a ready excuse for embarrassed Democrats, the president has argued.

In his op-ed, McDonough called on Trump to take a firmer stance against Russia and follow through on the work began by Obama to more forcefully respond to the Kremlin. Those steps, the former chief of staff said, should ensure that renewed efforts by Russia will not succeed.

Russia poses a threat to our democracy. Yet the past several months have also seen too much denial, finger-pointing and partisan posturing on this issue, he wrote.

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Denis McDonough defends Obama's Russia hacking response in op-ed - Politico