Donald Trump asked Russian Federation to help “find” the missing emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server during a Wednesday press conference here at his Florida resort.
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At a press conference in Miami, Trump focused on about 30,000 State Department emails that were deleted and not able to be retrieved by congressional and FBI investigators. “I don’t know anything about him other than he will respect me”, Trump said during a press conference this morning at his golf club in Doral, Florida. The FBI declined to prosecute Clinton over her email practices but its director said she had been “extremely careless” handling classified materials.
Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush, panned Donald Trump’s comments on Wednesday encouraging Russian intelligence to find Hillary Clinton’s emails.
But while putting Donald Trump on trial for treason appears highly unlikely to occur, to say the least, the candidate’s evident affinity for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is reportedly starting to worry usa intelligence officers, because as a presidential nominee, Trump is scheduled to begin receiving classified national security briefings next week – as is Hillary Clinton. He said Trump “is now openly inviting Russian Federation to engage in cyber-attacks against the United States”.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the Chicago Sun-Times, Trump “has a bromance with Vladimir Putin.
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.
Representatives from Clinton’s campaign have previously claimed that Russians hacked computers belonging to their party, and released those emails on the eve of the party’s convention to benefit Trump’s candidacy.
“We have people coming in this country with very evil intentions”, Trump said. Obama also appeared to embrace the notion that President Vladimir Putin might have been responsible because of what he described as Trump’s affinity for Putin. Low voter turnout, the president said, may benefit the bombastic NY businessman, in similar ways that suppressed turnout among British youth contributed to the success of a campaign to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union last month.
Elie Jacobs, a cyber-security expert from the Truman National Security Project, said it was likely that Russian Federation was involved with the hacking – but doubted links to Trump. Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul says he’s shocked.
“He will respect me”, Trump said. Encouraging Russian espionage and interference in a US presidential election, however, represents a depressing new low.
In inviting a foreign power to hack and release emails from Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has crossed a line that even his nativist, isolationist, sexist and racist statements to date had not come close to approaching.
“If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the Federal Bureau of Investigation!”
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.
Mrs Clinton appeared via video from NY, following a trend set last week by Donald Trump at the Republican convention.
“No, it gives me no pause”, the celebrity businessman said. Without hard evidence, all we have are questions – questions that the candidate will apparently leave hanging until election day.
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He also deemed Trump “the absolute leader of the presidential race” – comments that Trump himself received warmly.
