Trump casts doubt on election hacking
President says in visit to Poland that “nobody really knows for sure” what happened.
President Trump again cast a skeptical eye on intelligence community assessments that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election, saying Thursday while on a visit to Poland that “nobody really knows for sure” what happened.
“Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it was other people in other countries who also interfere,” he said at a news conference in Warsaw with the president of Poland. “I won’t be specific, but I think a lot of people interfere.”
Trump has made such pronouncements to varying degrees before. This one came on the eve of his first face-to-face meeting Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg.
Intelligence agencies say Putin personally directed an effort to boost Trump’s candidacy through the theft of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and party leaders and release to websites such as WikiLeaks. The remarks followed a
Washington Post report last month detailing President Obama’s administration’s stumbling attempts to deal with suspected Russian meddling during last year’s campaign. The CIA gave Obama an urgent report three months before the election. “That’s a lot of time. He did nothing about it,” Trump said.
“They say he choked. I don’t think he choked,” Trump said. “I think what happened is he thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and he chose not to do anything about it. If he thought I was going to win, he would have done something about it.”
Trump compared the intelligence about Russian interference to the faulty assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in 2002, which provided President George W. Bush with a justification to go to war.
“Guess what. They were wrong, and that led to one big mess,” he said.
Trump answered questions with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the Royal Castle, his first stop on a tour in which he will meet European leaders and attend the summit. It was his first news conference in nearly a month — and the first time he answered questions on foreign soil.
The event came as Trump faces questions on foreign policy, including his response to North Korea’s test of a multistage missile.
The president called on nations to confront North Korea’s “very, very bad behavior” and vowed consequences for the missile launch.