Trump contradicts Pompeo in bid to downplay massive hack
‘‘The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality.’’ President Donald trump
President Donald Trump addressed the ongoing cyber hacks of the US government for the first time yesterday, seeking to turn blame away from Moscow in defiance of mounting evidence while downplaying how devastating the intrusions appear to be.
In a bizarre outburst on Twitter that Trump’s critics condemned for its alarming disconnect from the facts, the president contradicted his top diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who on Saturday pinned the breaches that have afflicted at least five major federal agencies ‘‘clearly’’ on Russia. Rather, the president baselessly suggested that the true culprit ‘‘may be China (it may!)’’
Trump’s aversion to calling out the Kremlin for its malign activities in cyberspace and his deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin has become a hallmark of his presidency. He has repeatedly trusted the word of Putin over the assessments of his own intelligence community, including its conclusion that Russia waged a sophisticated campaign to interfere in the 2016 presidential election – a verdict Trump believes calls into question the legitimacy of his victory four years ago.
His tweets yesterday raise fresh concerns that he will seek to shrug off what may turn out to be a cyber hack of unprecedented scale, and that Russia will not be held to account. The president has complained to advisers, who believe Russia is culpable, that the intrusions are a fake narrative meant to damage him politically. ‘‘The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,’’ Trump tweeted, despite a federal alert in recent days that called the widespread cyber espionage campaign ‘‘a grave risk to’’ government agencies and the private sector.
‘‘I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control,’’ he said, while agencies are scrambling to investigate and contain a series of major breaches at agencies including the State, Treasury, Energy, Homeland Security and Commerce departments – an effort that is likely to take months.
He also speculated, with no evidence, that the hacks may also have included ‘‘a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big.’’ Twitter flagged that assertion, saying that ‘‘multiple sources called this election differently.’’ There is no evidence that November’s election was undermined by significant or widespread fraud, despite Trump’s insistence otherwise.
Trump had, until yesterday, studiously avoided the topic, reluctant to address publicly an issue that has bedevilled him since he took office: Russia’s hacking of US targets. He broke his silence only after he was criticised publicly by lawmakers from both parties for an apparent unwillingness to confront Putin.
White House officials had drafted a statement to be released on Saturday accusing Moscow of carrying out the cyber intrusions in a months-long campaign, but they were blocked from doing so, said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
But Pompeo, in an interview on The Mark Levin Show, had no qualms about speaking out. ‘‘This was a very significant effort,’’ he said, ‘‘and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.’’
Pompeo did not specify which branch of the Russian government carried out the campaign, but US officials have privately said they believe it is the foreign intelligence service, the SVR, a successor agency to the KGB. None have suggested that China played any role. Moscow has denied any involvement in the intrusions. Federal agencies were first revealed to have been hacked last weekend.
Pompeo said he could not say much more as the investigations were ongoing. ‘‘But suffice it to say, there was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems, and it now appears systems of private companies and companies and governments across the world as well,’’ he told Levin, a syndicated radio talk show host.
His remarks come as government agencies and affected companies race to figure out the scope of the breaches, how the Russians carried them off without being detected for months and how to prevent future compromises.