Trump: Russia email comments ‘sarcastic’

Candidate invited nation to unearth Clinton’s emails.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump says he was being sarcastic when he prodded Russia to unearth Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. But Democrats aren’t likely to let the Republican presidential nominee’s extraordinary comments simply fade away.

“Of course I’m being sarcastic,” Trump said Thursday on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” a day after his remarks at a news conference ignited fierce debate over his urging of a global adversary to meddle in American politics.

Trump’s invitation to Russia to find and reveal emails by his rival for the White House came on the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

It also all but overshadowed an embarrassing leak of different hacked emails, these from the Democratic National Committee, showing that party staffers supported Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders when they were publicly promising to remain neutral during the primary campaign.

Trump’s insistence that his invitation to Russia wasn’t serious was backed up by his campaign chairman.

“He was making a sarcastic point,” Paul Manafort said Wednesday on Fox News’ “The Kelly File.”

Democrats and some Republicans quickly condemned Trump’s remarks.

The Clinton campaign called Trump’s statement the “first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against a political opponent.”

At the convention, Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary, said Trump is “asking a U.S. adversary to engage in hacking or intelligence efforts against the United States of America to affect an election.”

Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, warned of “serious consequences” if Russia interfered in the election.

The reality TV star turned presidential contender detonated the controversy Wednesday when he said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Trump was referencing emails on Clinton’s private server that the former secretary of state said she deleted, maintaining they were private, before turning other messages over to the State Department.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute Clinton over her email practices. But FBI Director James Comey called her “extremely careless” in handling classified information.

A Trump campaign communications adviser, Jason Miller, said on Twitter that Trump never urged or invited Russia to hack Clinton’s emails. Instead, he said, Trump was “clearly saying” that if Russia or anyone else already had Clinton’s deleted emails they should share them with the FBI.

Trump never mentioned the FBI in his comments.

The flap over Clinton’s emails came after Obama identified Russia as almost certainly being responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee.

WikiLeaks published on its website last week more than 19,000 internal emails stolen from the DNC earlier this year. The head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned over the disclosures.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia would never interfere in another country’s election.

THE NEW YORK TIMES TODD HEISLER/ Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday he hoped Russia had hacked Hillary Clinton’s email. He then encouraged them to find Clinton’s missing emails, later saying he was being sarcastic.