‘No evidence Russia meddled in US poll’
Election officials prep
MOSCOW, Feb 19, (Agencies): Russia’s government on Monday insisted there was no evidence that it meddled in the US elections, after Washington indicted 13 Russians for alleged covert efforts to sway voters.
“There are no indications that the Russian government could be involved in this,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
It was the Kremlin’s first comment since the indictments were filed on Friday by a US special prosecutor as part of a federal government probe. The indictments allege that an associate of President Vladimir Putin led a Russia-based operation churning out social media content, using fake US identities, that included criticisms of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday glossed over any Russian responsibility and offered no indication of what his administration would do about it. He wrote on Twitter that Russia had indeed succeeded in sowing discord in the US but denied that his campaign colluded with Russia, saying that this was what Moscow wanted people to believe.
“If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams,” Trump tweeted.
“They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!” he added.
Meanwhile, ten months before the United States votes in its first major election since the 2016 presidential contest, US state election officials huddled in Washington this weekend to swap strategies on dealing with an uninvited guest: Russia.
A pair of conferences usually devoted to staid topics about election administration were instead packed with sessions dedicated to fending off election cyber attacks from Russia or others, as federal authorities tried to portray confidence while pleading with some states to take the threat more seriously.
“Everyone in this room understands that what we are facing from foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, is real,” Chris Krebs, a senior cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), told an audience of secretaries of state, who in many states oversee elections. Russia, he added, is “using a range of tools against us.”
Peskov