Several Moscow-based European Union diplomats say Russia’s tactic of methodically lobbying southern and eastern European Union member states is starting to seriously erode the bloc’s unity on the issue, making it potentially harder to renew them next time.
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But asked about those comments Thursday on Fox News, the real estate mogul seeking his first elected office said, “Of course I was being sarcastic”.
The Kremlin says it had zero involvement in the hacking of Democratic Party emails while US officials say the hack originated in Russian Federation.
“But you have 33,000 (Clinton) emails deleted, and the real problem is what was said on those emails from the Democratic National Committee”, he said, referring to hacked emails released last weekend by WikiLeaks.
NBC reports that its source says the meeting never happened because of schedule changes, though Putin sent a gift to Trump in NY.
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort dismissed those claims as “crazy”. US intelligence agencies have reportedly told the White House they are confident the Russian government was behind the theft.
He made the remark at a testy news conference at his Doral golf resort in Florida that allowed him to steal some of the limelight from the Philadelphia convention where Mrs Clinton accepted the Democratic presidential nomination for the Nov 8 election.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said Thursday he was being “sarcastic” when he said he hopes Russian hackers obtain deleted emails from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s private server. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”.
Trump said in a tweet Tuesday that Democrats were simply trying to “deflect the horror and stupidity of the Wikileakes (sic) disaster”. The Clinton campaign alleged that Russian Federation had hacked the DNC emails to help Trump.
While Trump has sided with Putin on a wide range of issues, Putin has not openly backed the Republican nominee and the Kremlin denies interfering in the US electoral process.
Lazar admitted hacking into the email and social media accounts of US politicians and celebrities between October 2012 and January 2014, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the family of former presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush. “That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts”.
Soon after Panetta spoke Wednesday night, the Trump campaign released a statement criticizing the former defense secretary’s stance and saying it was Clinton who had breached national security.
The two newspapers joined in the criticism of the Republican nominee shortly after some in Trump’s own party rejected the idea.
People are going so far as to claim that Trump committed espionage with that remark.
“Mister Trump is not the president of the United States, at least not yet”, said Yelchenko.
“We need to head off any external attempts to interfere in the elections, in our domestic political life”, Putin, who is facing re-election in 2018, told officers from Russia’s FSB security service in February. “He’s a really brilliant and talented person, without any doubt”, Putin told reporters, later adding, “(H)e’s the absolute leader in the presidential race”.
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As if to verify those close ties, the Russian ambassador to the United States recently broke a long-standing diplomatic tradition of steering clear of any country’s domestic politics.
