At a campaign event with running mate and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in Roanoke, Virginia, Trump said although outgoing DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz worked “very, very hard to rig the system” in favor the of presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton “threw her under the bus” after emails between top DNC staffers were leaked online.
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Isikoff explains the importance of that revelation: It is “the first indication that the reach of the hackers who penetrated the DNC extended beyond the official email accounts of committee officials to include their private email and potentially the content on their smartphones”.
But even if Russians were involved in the hack, they were not necessarily behind the leak, warned James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
Donald Trump on Monday dismissed as a “joke” claims by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that Russian Federation is trying to help Trump by leaking thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta suggested there was “a kind of bromance going on” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. On Sunday, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced she was leaving her DNC post after the convention.
“Internet attack attribution is very hard, and in many cases impossible”, said Bruce Schneier, cyber-security expert and chief technology officer at Resilient, an IBM company.
Trump has business ties to Putin allies; his campaign manager spent years working with the pro-Putin party in Ukraine; his top military adviser attended a party for the Kremlin news outlet Russia Today; and his policies critical of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies and the European Union are in sync with those of the Russian leader.
Pelosi, asked whether she thought Trump played any role in the hack or release of the 20,000 emails, said, “I have no reason to think that”.
Campaign manager Robby Mook contrasted that with Trump, whose convention featured angry speeches, few solutions and a headliner whose lifetime cause, Mook said, has been his own personal self-aggrandizement.
Putin accused Clinton of stirring up protests against his rule after a December 2011 Russian parliamentary election that was marred by allegations of fraud, saying she had encouraged “mercenary” Kremlin foes by criticizing the vote.
“I can’t think of bigger lies, but that exactly goes to show you what the DNC and what the Clinton camp will do”, Trump told Tapper on “State of the Union”. “I think we need to let the Federal Bureau of Investigation do their work before we try to form any conclusions here in terms of what happened and what the motivation was behind it”. As journalists who have covered Russia, as well as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, pointed out, such an action would be in line with previous Russian interference in foreign elections, a lot of them closer to home. Two separate Russian intelligence-linked cyberattack groups were both in the DNC’s networks.
“They (democrats) spoke about hackers (who allegedly have ties to Russia)”, Peskov said.
Russian officials have flatly denied any involvement with the DNC breach.
She said the Russians have also been interfering in Ukraine and France.
A diplomat with experience working on Russian Federation said the Kremlin also might be betting that Clinton will win and is sending a shot across her bow.
Another WikiLeaks cable, from 2006, from US diplomats described Manafort’s role this way: “Yanukovych’s Party of Regions is working to change its image from that of a haven for mobsters into that of a legitimate political party”.
Despite public Trump-Putin exchanges of praise, Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russian Federation and Eurasia, warned against reaching any quick conclusions about Putin’s view of Trump.
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On Friday, Wikileaks released what it said were 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from leaders at the Democratic National Committee.
