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Donald Trump says CIA charge Russia influenced election is 'ridiculous' Donald Trump says CIA charge Russia influenced election is 'ridiculous' Donald Trump says CIA charge Russia influenced election is 'ridiculous'
(35 minutes later)
Donald Trump has said the CIA’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the presidential election is “ridiculous” and being used by Democrats as “just another excuse” for his defeat of Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump said on Sunday that a CIA conclusion that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election was “ridiculous”, and that he did not believe that the Kremlin had tried to bolster his candidacy.
The president-elect told Fox News Sunday that he did not necessarily oppose Barack Obama’s order for a review of campaign-season cyber-attacks. The president-elect said the CIA’s assessment was “just another excuse” for his stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton last month.
But he added that in any such effort, “you should not just say ‘Russia’. You should say other countries also, and maybe other individuals.” “I don’t believe it,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. “Every week it’s another excuse.”
The Obama administration has said the review is not just about Russia or the election. The White House says the report will look at other election-year incidents, including 2008 and 2012 cyber-attacks linked to Chinese hackers. Two days earlier, the Washington Post reported that in a secret assessment, the CIA had concluded the Russian government sought to influence the election by hacking into Democratic party emails.
Trump has long said the culprit for such attacks could be China or just a hacker sitting on a couch. The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that Russia sought to influence the US election on behalf of the Republican. During the campaign, the intelligence community accused Russia-backed actors of hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
The Republican president-elect also questioned whether the CIA was behind the reports that indicated Moscow wanted him in the White House. “I think the Democrats are putting it out,” he said. Thousands of the emails, which intelligence officials said were provided by individuals with ties to the Russian government, were published by WikiLeaks. At the time officials said Russia hoped to undermine confidence in the election, but did not explicitly say the Kremlin favored Trump, as the CIA later concluded.
Two leading Republican voices on foreign policy in the Senate, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, joined two Democratic senators on Sunday in expressing concern over the reports on Russian interference and saying it could not become a partisan issue. This week, Barack Obama ordered what the White House called a “full review” of Russia’s role in the hacks and cyberattacks by Chinese hackers in the 2008 and 2012 campaign cycles.
“For years, foreign adversaries have directed cyber attacks at America’s physical, economic, and military infrastructure, while stealing our intellectual property,” the senators, including Democrats Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed, said in a statement. Trump refused to believe the CIA’s findings, saying on Sunday: “Nobody really knows, and hacking is very interesting.
“Now our democratic institutions have been targeted. Recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American.” “Once they hack, if you don’t catch them in the act you’re not going to catch them. They have no idea if it’s Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place.”
US intelligence agencies have told Congress and the Obama administration Russia has grown increasingly aggressive in Syria and Ukraine and has stepped up activities in cyberspace. On Saturday, Trump’s transition team was more scathing, issuing a statement that invoked the faulty intelligence used to justify the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“This cannot become a partisan issue,” the senators said. “The stakes are too high for our country.” “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement read.
Trump’s chief of staff, however, said it was “insane” to suggest that Russian hacking influenced the outcome of the election and added that the Russians “didn’t tell Hillary Clinton to ignore Wisconsin and Michigan”. The split was reflective of a growing rift between the CIA and Trump, who has declined daily intelligence briefings. The president-elect, who receives intelligence briefings just once a week claimed on Sunday he could skip the briefings because: “I’m, like, a smart person.”
Reince Priebus told ABC’s This Week that Clinton “ignored states that she shouldn’t have, and Donald Trump was the change agent … Donald Trump won in an electoral landslide that had nothing to do with the Russians.” “I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day,” he added.
McCain and Graham are among those senators who will likely play key roles in any confirmation hearing for Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil chief executive who was said by Trump aides speaking anonymously on Saturday to be the most likely pick for secretary of state. Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said the CIA's findings about the election were “unfounded” and undercut the peaceful transition of power. In an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, she said Democrats were refusing to accept responsibility for their loss.
Tillerson is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, who gave him Russia’s highest award in 2013, has done extensive business in Russia, and has spoken out against sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea and aggression in eastern Ukraine. “They did a recount,” she said, alluding to a campaign funded by the Green Party. “They’re vilifying [FBI director] Jim Comey. It’s everybody’s false but Hillary Clinton’s.”
Praising Tillerson in his interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump said: “To me a great advantage is that he knows many of the players in the world and he knows them well.” But a bipartisan group of senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two of the most outspoken Republicans on foreign policy, echoed the concerns of the intelligence community.
He added: “He does massive deals in Russia not for himself, but for the company.” “This cannot become a partisan issue,” the senators said in a statement. “The stakes are too high for our country.”
Speaking to CNN on Saturday, McCain said: “I have obviously concerns about his relationship with Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer, but obviously we will have hearings on that issue and other issues concerning him will be examined and then it’s the time to make up your mind on whether to vote yes or no.” McCain later told CBS: “It’s clear the Russians interfered. Whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to elect a certain candidate, I think that’s a subject of investigation.
“The fact that he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin and other across the globe is not something we should be embarrassed by,” said Priebus on ABC. “I think it would be an advantage for the United States.” “But facts are stubborn things. They did hack into this campaign.”
Priebus said that although the final choice had not been made, he had no concern about a confirmation for Tillerson, who he said was “incredibly talented and would do an incredible job as secretary of state”. McCain said he hoped to create a select committee to investigate the interference. He also expressed doubts over Trump’s reported decision to nominate Exxon Mobil’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, as his secretary of state.
The Kentucky senator Rand Paul, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, told ABC he had an open mind on Tillerson but flatly rejected the prospect of Bush administration United Nations ambassador John Bolton serving as an undersecretary at the state department, as has been reported. “It’s a matter of concern to me that he has such a close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. And obviously they’ve done enormous deals together,” McCain said, referring to a 2011 deal to access Arctic oil, potentially worth $300bn.
Bolton, a foreign policy hawk, was “an automatic no”, Paul said, who “should get nowhere near the state department”. “That … would color his approach to Vladimir Putin and the Russian threat.”
Later on Sunday morning, Trump tweeted: “Whether I choose him or not for “State”- Rex Tillerson, the Chairman & CEO of ExxonMobil, is a world class player and dealmaker. Stay tuned!” McCain nonetheless said Trump’s appointees would be given a fair hearing in the Senate, where they must first clear relevant committees before receiving a vote in the broader chamber.
On Sunday, Trump said he had not made a final decision on Tillerson, tweeting: “Whether I choose him or not for ‘State’ – Rex Tillerson, the chairman & CEO of ExxonMobil, is a world class player and dealmaker. Stay tuned!”
Tillerson has engineered deals around the world and is close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russia’s state-owned oil giant Rosneft. In 2013, Tillerson was given the Order of Friendship award. In 2014, he called for the US to lift economic sanctions on Russia and leaders such as Sechin.
Reports of the possible nomination of Tillerson stirred criticism even among some Republicans, including two members of the Senate foreign relations committee, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.
“Being a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an attribute I am hoping for from a #SecretaryOfState,” Rubio said on Twitter. Paul said he was concerned should reports be confirmed that Trump plans to nominate former UN ambassador John Bolton, a leading supporter of the Iraq invasion, as the undersecretary of state.
Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, insisted that the decision was not yet final.
“It’s amazing to me that immediately everyone’s just jumping the shark on this,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Poking this prematurely is something that just isn’t … helpful. But it’s also not accurate.
“I mean this is a guy who has business relationships in every continent in the entire world.”
Priebus also denied that Trump lacked confidence in US intelligence, saying the president-elect was rejecting unnamed sources in newspaper reports.
But Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said it was clear “what the Russians were after”.
“Plainly they were after discord and in this they were spectacularly successful,” Schiff said on NBC. “But it wasn’t alone to try and sow discord.
“They had a candidate with pro-Putin, pro-Russian views who belittled Nato, who was willing to potentially remove sanctions on Russia and by contrast they had in Secretary Clinton a candidate very tough on Russia.”