Donald Trump on Monday morning continued to dismiss reports that the CIA concluded that Russian hackers tried to help Trump win the 2016 election, casting doubt on the CIA’s findings with a false claim that the issue was not reported before the November election.
Unless you catch “hackers” in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn’t this brought up before election?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
However, the U.S. intelligence community issued a statement in early October reporting that the Russian government was behind Democrats’ leaked emails on WikiLeaks.
“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement.
It was widely reported at the time that intelligence officials believed Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee. Trump even acknowledged this in July, thanking “one of our many, many ‘friends’” in China or Russia for the leaked DNC emails, and he called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s emails.
In October, Mike Pence also acknowledged that it looked like Russia was behind the hacks.
“I think there’s no question that the evidence continues to point in that direction, and we should follow it where it leads,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And there should be severe consequences to Russia or any sovereign nation that is compromising the privacy or the security of the United States of America.”
It was also reported at the end of October that FBI Director James Comey was hesitant to publicly blame the cyber attacks on Russia.
While the conclusion that Russia tried to influence the election through the hacks is not new, the CIA came to a new conclusion last week that the hacks from Russia were aimed at helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
In another Friday morning tweet, Trump dismissed reports that the Russian hacks were aimed at helping him.
Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
The lying liar tells more lies in an effort to divert and misdirect. The more he suggests “there’s nothing to see here,” the more likely it is that there’s a lot to see, and he’s neck deep in it.
Hillary Clinton brought it up to Trump’s face in two separate debates. The first time, he tried to blame a 400 pound guy at home on his bed. Th next time, Clinton spelled it out incredibly clearly, even naming Putin and saying the purpose was to influence the election. She even asked Chris Wallace, when he asked her about a Wikileaks quote “Finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that they are doing this?” I’m not sure how this didn’t make it into your story, but it was said in front of over 50M people and for Trump to claim it wasn’t reported is simply a bald-faced lie (and exactly the kind he’s been getting away with the entire campaign).
Yes, your Illegitimacy. I can imagine the opposite. But what I would expect would be an Olympic Games of collective GOP freakout, calls for hearings, rantings and ravings on Fox News, calls for Dems to be investigated, put on trial and sent to Guantanamo. In fact, The GOP would work overtime over their holiday (1) break to do this. That’s what I imagine.
(1)#WarOnXmas
Edit. Sorry Rick. Meant to be a general comment, but this works.
Why are we not seeing this from the Dems? From Obama, even? What, at this point, do we have to lose? Why are our electeds pretending it’s business as usual when a slow motion coup is taking place? There are no brakes on the Republican slide into authoritarianism. They have nothing but contempt for our democracy and they’ll collude with a hostile foreign power to seize power. Call it what it is.
Cheeto Donnie on Russian hacking
From Huffington Post July/2016…
even more annoying is the collective amnesia of the MSM and ‘pundits’ to call him out over it…