The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee alleged Thursday that President Donald Trump may have divulged classified information when he said in an interview that “the CIA was hacked, and a lot of things taken.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) tweeted that Trump, in his “effort to again blame Obama … appears to have discussed something that, if true and accurate, would otherwise be considered classified information.”
“For anyone else to do what the President may have done, would constitute what he deplores as leaks,” Schiff’s statement concluded.
.@POTUS appears to have discussed something that, if true & accurate, would be classified. Had it been anyone else he would call it a “leak” pic.twitter.com/XedWH4CTNF
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) March 16, 2017
Trump’s comment came seemingly apropos of nothing in an interview that aired Wednesday night with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, during a discussion of his charge that former President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower. Trump has still offered no evidence for that claim.
“And by the way, with the CIA, I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked and a lot of things taken,” Trump told Carlson. “That was during the Obama years. That was not during us. That was during the Obama situation. Mike Pompeo is there now doing a fantastic job now.”
WikiLeaks last week published thousands of documents that it said came from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence.
“It is our policy as a government not to confirm the authenticity of any kind of disclosure or hack. That would be highly inappropriate for us,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said of WikiLeaks’ document dump, adding: “But all of these occurred under the last administration – that is important. All of these alleged issues.”
