On Sunday, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, claimed in an interview with CNN that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC (Democratic National Committee), stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the goal of actually helping Donald Trump”.
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The email leak forced Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida to resign as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
But neither the Clinton campaign, the White House, nor lawmakers briefed on the hack definitively linked the leak to the Russian government on Monday.
“I know that experts have attributed this to the Russians”, Obama said, according to Reuters.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” yesterday, regarding the “changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian”, which could provide some of the motive behind the hacks.
“Anything is possible”, Obama told NBC News when asked if the Russians would try to influence the November 8 election. And some argue that the Democrats and their presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton are looking to benefit from anti-Vladimir Putin sentiment. USA officials suspect that the attack was carried out by Russian hackers.
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still investigating who hacked the Democratic committee e-mails and leaked them to Wikileaks, Obama said “I know that experts have attributed this to the Russians”.
Obama pointed out that Clinton’s Republican opponent in the White House race, Donald Trump, has “repeatedly expressed admiration for [Russian President] Vladimir Putin” and has said he wants to work more closely with Russian Federation to solve global problems such as battling the Islamic State group. “I don’t want to use four-letter words”, he said after a meeting with USA secretary of state John Kerry in Vientiane, Laos, on Tuesday, apparently suggesting that the accusations are ridiculous.
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Putin, in turn, has praised Trump as “a very talented man” and said that he would welcome “a deeper level of relations with Russia” under a Trump administration.
