Obama says he told Putin to ‘cut it out’ when Russia was hacking America
BARACK OBAMA confronted Vladimir Putin over Russian hacking during the US election, telling him to “cut it out”, the American President said during his last news conference before leaving office.
“In early September, when I saw President Putin, I felt the most effective way was to talk to him directly. Tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didn’t,” Mr Obama said yesterday.
The President defended the White House’s handling of the scandal, saying that after his administration was alerted to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, his first priority was to ensure a smooth election process and to avoid accusations of political bias. “We didn’t want this to become a political football,” he said.
“We handled it the way it should have been handled. We allowed law enforcement to do its job. We briefed everyone involved. We announced it – not through me, but through the intelligence agencies. Then we allowed you and the American public to make an assessment.”
Mr Obama said there was no evidence hacking had changed the outcome of the election, adding that Rus- sia was only a threat to the US “if we lose track of our values. The Russians can’t change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller economy, they don’t produce anything people want to buy apart from oil and arms,” he said.
Mr Obama added that “Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave” if he knew the level of support for Mr Putin among Republicans. A recent survey suggested 37 per cent of Republicans approve of the Russian president.
Earlier it emerged that Hillary Clinton had suggested that Mr Putin directed Russian hackers to interfere in the election because he had a “personal beef ” to settle with her. Breaking her silence about the hacking scandal, Mrs Clinton said Mr Putin had harboured a grudge against her since she publicly raised concerns about the conduct of Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections.
“Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election,” Mrs Clinton told campaign donors, said The New York Times.
The FBI backs the CIA’s view that Russia intervened to help Donald Trump win the US presidential election, according to reports yesterday.
The Kremlin denied the accusations. “At this point they need to either stop talking about this or finally present some sort of proof,” it said.