President-elect Donald Trump's rejection this weekend of U.S. intelligence analysts' conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 e...
President-elect Donald Trump's rejection this weekend of U.S. intelligence analysts' conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help him win the White House is the latest in a string of conflicts between Trump and the intelligence community he will command.
Most of them involve Russia, which has grown increasingly aggressive - according to what U.S. intelligence agencies have told Congress and the administration of President Barack Obama - in Syria and Ukraine. The agencies also reported that Russia has ratcheted up activities in cyberspace including meddling, sometimes covertly, in European and U.S. elections.
The intelligence agencies have concluded with "high confidence" that not only did their Russian counterparts direct the hacking of Democratic Party organizations and leaders, but they did so to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, not just to shake confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
The president-elect's transition office responded by releasing a statement that exaggerated his margin of victory and attacked the U.S. intelligence community's work on Iraq, but did not address the analysts' conclusion about Russia.
"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," the statement said. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"
In a statement issued on Saturday, California Democrat Adam Schiff, a member of the House intelligence committee, called the Russian hacking of the U.S. election "spectacularly successful."
"One would also have to be willfully blind not to see that these Russian actions were uniformly damaging to Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton and helpful to Donald Trump," Schiff said. "I do not believe this was coincidental or unintended."
Trump has rejected the intelligence agencies' finding.
"I don't believe they interfered," he told Time magazine about Russia in an interview published this week. "That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, 'Oh, Russia interfered.'"
Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
The president-elect has been receiving the President's Daily Brief (PDB), one of the most highly classified documents in the U.S. government and which can include details of U.S. and allied covert operations, only once a week. That is far less often than most of his predecessors.So far, intelligence officials said, Trump has not requested a special briefing on Russia, despite the agencies' warnings that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine trans-Atlantic unity and test U.S. and allied resolve.
Source: reuters.com
