Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has backed down from his suggestion that Russian Federation should hack the e-mail of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, saying on July 28 he was “being sarcastic”.
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“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent”, said Jake Sullivan, a senior policy advisor to Hillary for America.
Trump also said it’s not about the hackers anyway: “It was about the things that were said in those emails”.
A spokesman for Trump, Jason Miller, later tried to tamp down the storm of protest saying Trump did not urge Russian Federation to hack Clinton’s emails.
“But if it is Russian Federation, it’s really bad for a different reason because it shows how little respect they have for our country when they would hack into a major party and get everything”, he said, before immediately asking Russian Federation to hack Clinton’s emails.
– During the week of the Democratic National Convention when the focus was supposed to be on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump found a way to steal the spotlight.
“[Trump] asked the Russians to engage in American politics”, former Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta said. This is about the security of the United States. “So let’s see”, Trump said at a news conference, referring to emails that Clinton judged as personal and did not hand over to the State Department from her private server, which she used to conduct official business. “That’s not law and order, that’s criminal intent”.
He said Moscow “probably” already has the emails Clinton considered to be private and deleted after serving as the top US diplomat from 2009 to 2013.
When asked by reporters if Russian President Vladimir Putin might favour a win for Trump, the billionaire said he had “never met Putin, I don’t know who Putin is”.
He later said on Twitter that if anyone had Clinton’s emails, “perhaps they should share them with the Federal Bureau of Investigation!” “Who knows who it is?”
“If it’s any foreign country it shows how little respect they have for the United States”, said Trump, who added that he was “not an email person myself because I believe it can be hacked”.
“We’re still witnessing attempts to use the Russian issue – in a paranoid way – during the USA election campaign”, he told reporters on Tuesday. I said thank you very much to the newspaper and that was the end of it.
But, in a statement, his office did address the leak of the Democratic National Committee emails, saying it would be premature to blame any particular country or individual for the DNC email hack. Several of these speakers served during the Iraq war, which Clinton supported when she was the senator of NY. Trump said he has no relationship with Putin.
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, are sending some mixed signals fewer than two weeks into their partnership.
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During the pugilistic news conference at his Doral golf resort, which lasted more than 45 minutes, Trump also said Putin would respect him if he were elected and called current President Barack Obama, a Democrat, the most “ignorant” president ever. “It’s disgraceful”, Trump said.
