Obama hints at Russian bid to sway US polls with email hack
MOSCOW DENIES HAND IN LEAKS SHOWING DEMOCRAT PANEL’S PREFERENCE FOR CLINTON
US President Barack Obama said it was possible that Russia would try to influence the US presidential election, after a leak of Democratic National Committee emails that experts have attributed to Russian hackers.
“Anything is possible,” Obama told NBC News in an interview when asked if the Russians would try to influence the November 8 election.
Obama said the FBI was investigating the leak of more than 19,000 DNC emails, which showed the committee had favoured Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders for the party’s presidential nomination.
“I know that experts have attributed this to the Russians,” Obama said, adding that Republican nominee Donald Trump is getting “pretty favourable” Russian media coverage.
A Russian lawmaker rejected the accusations. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, said. “It’s absolutely clear that Russia doesn’t have either the desire or the means to influence the electoral campaign.”
Democrats officially nominated Hillary Clinton as their standard-bearer in the presidential contest yesterday, sealing her position as the first female nominee of a major party in US history at the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia. While Clinton had already met the threshold of the 2,383 delegates required to clinch the nomination and beat Bernie Sanders through her primary victories, the official vote was a significant moment in American political history despite lingering discord within the party.
Although Clinton finished the Democratic primary with 2,807 delegates, compared with Sanders’ 1,894, a faction of the Vermont senator’s supporters arrived at the convention threatening a floor fight — or contested vote on the floor — over the nomination. They were further emboldened by leaked emails showing personal bias toward Clinton among officials at the Democratic National Committee, a controversy that culminated in the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
But in a bid for party unity, the campaigns of both Clinton and Sanders agreed to hold a vote that allowed Sanders delegates to show their support for the senator, who defied all expectations by creating a grass roots movement across the country.
In a symbolic gesture, it was Sanders who called for the party to unanimously nominate Clinton when the roll call vote reached its completion with the Vermont delegation. The moment echoed the 2008 Democratic convention, when Clinton ended the roll call vote with a similar call for acclamation for Barack Obama from the New York delegation.
Many seemed swept up in a sense of history in the making as they pointed out again and again that she was the first female nominee of any major American party.
“Tonight we will shatter that glass ceiling again,” said civil rights leader John Lewis as he seconded Clinton’s nomination and heralded her as a fitting successor to Obama.
“It’s a day you will be able to say I was there when we nominated Hillary Clinton as the first president,” added Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe.