FBI backs CIA’s Russian hack claim
It’s a ‘fact’ election meddling by Russia helped Trump win, White House officials say
WASHINGTON— The FBI is supporting the CIA’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the presidential election with the goal of supporting Republican candidate Donald Trump.
In a message sent to employees, CIA director John Brennan said he had spoken with FBI director James Comey and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence.
Brennan said in the message that “there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election.”
A U.S. official who had seen the unclassified message from Brennan confirmed it to The Associated Press on Friday.
President Barack Obama is promising that the U.S. will retaliate against Russia for its suspected meddling in America’s election process, an accusation the Kremlin has vehemently denied. As the White House grew more bullish about suggesting President Vladimir Putin was personally involved, Obama said he’d spoken directly to Putin about his concerns. He said whenever a foreign government tries to interfere in U.S. elections, the nation must take action “and we will at a time and place of our own choosing.”
“We have been working hard to make sure that what we do is proportional, that what we do is meaningful,” Obama said in an NPR News interview airing Friday.
Obama’s remarks were the clearest indication that whatever response the U.S. is planning, it hasn’t happened yet. The White House has insisted for months that when the U.S. did retaliate, it might not be made public, a position that has created uncertainty about the strength and timing of any response.
“Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin,” Obama said in his year-end news conference. The president said he had warned Putin there would be serious consequences if he did not “cut it out,” though Obama did not specify the extent or timing of any U.S. retaliation.
Obama also expressed bewilderment over Republican lawmakers and voters alike who now say they approve of Putin, declaring, “Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave.”
Democrat Hillary Clinton has even more directly cited Russian interference.
She said Thursday night, “Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyberattacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me.”
Obama did not publicly support that theory Friday. He did, however, chide the media for what he called an “obsession” with the flood of hacked Democratic emails that were made public during the election’s final stretch.
White House officials said it was “fact” that Russian hacking helped Donald Trump’s campaign against Clinton.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest also assailed Trump over his refusal to acknowledge the hacking and his attacks on the U.S. intelligence community.
The tough talk from the White House fell flat in Moscow, where Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the accusations baseless and inappropriate.
“They should either stop talking about that, or produce some proof at last,” Peskov told reporters Friday. “Otherwise it all begins to look unseemly.”
There has been no specific, persuasive evidence shared publicly about the extent of Putin’s role or knowledge of the hackings.
That lack of proof undercuts the Democrats’ strategy to portray Pu- tin’s involvement as irrefutable evidence of a directed Russian government plot to undermine America’s democratic system.
But the White House pointed to a U.S. intelligence assessment released publicly in October that asserted “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
And Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, connected the dots further, saying Thursday Putin was responsible for the Russian government’s actions.
Trump has been under increasing pressure from both parties to acknowledge Russia’s actions, despite his insistence that he doesn’t believe Moscow was meddling.
Trump has rejected the CIA’s assessment that Russia’s aim was to help him win and argued on Twitter that “these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”