The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump falsely says U.S. delayed hacking claim
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday falsely stated that the U.S. government had waited until after the election “to complain” that Russia had hacked into U.S. political organizations to interfere in the presidential race.
But in doing so, he raised substantive questions about the Obama administration’s slow response to a cyberattack that proved successful.
In another of his provocative, early morning posts on Twitter, Trump cast doubt on the government’s conclusion that Russia had carried out the hacking with the approval of the highest levels of the Kremlin, suggesting instead that the finding was a case of postelection sour grapes by President Barack Obama.
“Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” Trump asked, ignoring the fact that the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, had formally blamed Russia on Oct. 7 — a month before Election Day — for the cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee and other organizations.
In September, meeting privately in China with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Obama not only complained, the White House says, but warned him of consequences if the Russian activity did not halt.
“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act?” Trump wrote.
The Twitter post was the latest move by Trump to accuse the intelligence agencies he will soon control of acting with a political agenda, and to dispute a well-documented conclusion that Moscow carried out a meticulously planned series of attacks and information releases devised to interfere in the 2016 presidential race. In the message, Trump again sought to dismiss the evidence of Russia’s misdeeds as the unfounded complaints of sore losers.
But Trump also seized upon questions that have roiled the White House and the highest echelons of the Obama administration: Why did it take months after Russia’s breaches had been discovered for Obama to publicly name Moscow as the culprit?
White House officials say the warning to Putin at a September summit meeting in Hangzhou, China, constituted the primary U.S. response. But when the administration decided to go public a month later with its conclusion that Russia was responsible, it did so in a written statement from the director of national intelligence and the secretary of homeland security, not in a high-profile presidential appearance.
Officials said they worried that any more public response to the hacking would raise doubts about the integrity of the election, something that Trump was seeking to do in campaign appearances in which he insisted that the election was “rigged.”
In a conference call with reporters later Thursday morning, aides declined to explain what Trump would do about the issue as president.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said those raising questions about the hacking were refusing to come to terms with Trump’s victory.
“At a certain point you’ve got to realize that the election from last month is going to stand,” Miller said.
Trump raised questions about the Obama administration’s slow response to a cyberattack that proved successful.