Trump finally accepts Kremlin hacked emails
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has finally accepted that Russia was behind the hack of Democrat emails, his chief of staff has said, as the incoming president’s team embark on an offensive to assuage mounting concerns about his reluctance to believe U.S. intelligence reports.
Reince Priebus, the most “establishment” member of Trump’s top team, went on TV Sunday to say that Trump now accepted the Kremlin was to blame. The president-elect, he said, “is not denying that entities in Russia were behind this particular hacking campaign.”
The comments from Trump’s incoming chief of staff mark the first time that anyone from Trump’s senior team has accepted the intelligence findings.
Priebus also said that Trump would retaliate. That’s more than Trump himself has said, and he hasn’t responded to calls for Washington to retaliate. Those are decisions, aides said, that Trump will make after he becomes president on Jan. 20, though he and some of his cabinet nominees could face sharp questioning this week.
But even as Priebus was speaking, another of Trump’s senior staff members, Kellyanne Conway, was still referring to “alleged attacks” and refusing to confirm that Trump would punish the Kremlin.
Conway insisted on turning the questions around to emphasize that Trump legitimately won the election. The Republican appears to be smarting from the idea that people are suggesting he did not fairly win.
“All of this amounts to a simple fact: alleged attacks on our democracy failed,” said Conway. “Donald Trump won. Hillary Clinton was viewed as unlikeable — that had nothing to do with Moscow.”
When asked why she insisted on referring to the hack as “allegedly” coming from Russia, she replied: “Alleged to interfere with our democracy, and they did not succeed.”
She added: “I keep hearing that we’re so reluctant (to accept Russian blame). “Yes he sees. Read his statement. He knows that Russia tries to hack. But where was the outcry when China hacked 21 million citizens? Everything changed when the election result was not what they anticipated.”
An unclassified version of the report directly tied Russian President Vladimir Putin to election meddling and said that Moscow had a “clear preference” for Trump over Clinton. Trump and his allies have bristled at any implication that the meddling helped him win the election.
On Saturday, Trump was still tweeting in anger at the disclosures about Russian involvement — insisting that the hack had not won him the election, though there have been no suggestions that the voting process itself was hacked.
— With files from AP