Trump calls Russia probe ‘hoax’

President alludes to hand-over of Facebook ads to investigators

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday called allegations of Russian election meddling a “hoax” and insisted that the media were the “greatest influence” on the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s tweets early Friday appeared to respond to Facebook’s announcement that the social media giant will provide to congressional investigators the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency.

“The Russia hoax continues, now it’s ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?”

He later added: “The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media ‘screaming’ for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Next, she was a bad candidate!”

Facebook has faced growing pressure from members of Congress to release the content of the ads. The company has already handed over the ads to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Facebook also says it will now require political ads to disclose both who is paying for them and all ad campaigns those individuals or groups are running on Facebook.

Also Friday, the federal government told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems last year, although in most cases the systems were not breached.

The government said last year that more than 20 states were targeted by hackers believed to be Russian agents before the 2016 elections. But for many states, the calls Friday from the Department of Homeland Security were the first official confirmation of whether their states were on the list.

The Associated Press contacted every state election office Friday. While not all of them responded immediately, those that said they were targeted were Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Arkansas’ secretary of state’s office was informed Friday that the state was not one of those hacked, an office spokesman said.

The government did not say who was behind the hacking attempts or provide details about what had been sought. But election officials in three states said Friday that the attempts could be linked to Russia.

The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the state’s systems were targeted by “Russian government cyber actors.”

Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states, the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems. The targets included voter registration systems but not vote tallying software. Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks but most were unsuccessful.

Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems.

Colorado said the hacking wasn’t quite a breach.

“It’s really reconnaissance by a bad guy to try and figure out how we would break into your computer,” said Trevor Timmons, a spokesman for the Colorado secretary of state’s office. “It’s not an attack. I wouldn’t call it a probe. It’s not a breach, it’s not a penetration.”