An intelligence source told NBC News that Putin’s involvement was initially a ‘vendetta’ against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and became an attempt to show corruption in US politics.
US intelligence agencies blamed the hack of the Democratic National Committee on Russia in October 2016. Intelligence officials told NBC News the US now has intelligence that links the Russian president.
And on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest hinted that Trump knew about Russia’s involvement. He was filmed saying: ‘There’s ample evidence that was known long before the election, and even in most cases long before October, about the Trump campaign in Russia, everything from the Republican nominee himself calling on Russia to hack his opponent.
‘It might be an indication that he was obviously aware and concluded, based on whatever facts or sources he was – he had available to him, that Russia was involved, and their involvement was having a negative impact on his opponent’s campaign.’
He continued: ‘That’s why he was encouraging them to keep doing it. You had the Republican nominee refer to the president of Russia as a strong leader.
‘The Republican nominee chose a campaign chair that had had extensive, lucrative, personal, financial ties to the Kremlin and it was obvious to those who were covering the race that the hack and leak strategy that had been operationalized was not being equally applied to the two parties and to the two campaigns.’
‘There was one side that was bearing the brunt of that strategy and another side that was clearly benefiting from it.’ The CIA has concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russia sought to influence the U.S. election to benefit Trump.
Trump has rejected the CIA’s conclusion that Russia tried to interfere with the presidential election and blamed ‘very embarrassed’ Democrats for the public release of the assessment.
The president-elect called the CIA’s assessment ‘ridiculous’ while speaking to Fox News on Saturday.
On Wednesday, Republican senator Lindsey Graham told CNN Russian hackers had accessed his campaign email account.
He told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on ‘The Situation Room‘: ‘I do believe the Russians hacked into the (Democratic National Committee). I do believe they hacked into (John) Podesta’s email account. They hacked into my campaign account.’
