Democrats have charged that the exploit was created to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and favor Donald Trump’s.
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In Moscow, meanwhile, a Kremlin spokesman pointedly told Washington to solve its own email problems.
Konstantin von Eggert, a commentator and host for the opposition-leaning news channel TV Rain, says Russia’s leadership has reasons for seeing a Trump presidency as a win-win situation. They see Clinton as someone who may be bad for Russian Federation, but still as a politician they know and can understand, whereas Trump is less of a known quantity.
“Russia, if you are listening”, Trump told reporters Wednesday, “I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”.
Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs fighting in the Iraq War, told the Republican candidate from the stage Thursday evening: “Donald Trump, I didn’t put my life on the line to defend our democracy so you could invite Russian Federation to interfere in it. You are not fit to be the commander in chief”.
“You have to be kidding. And when I’m being sarcastic with something…”
Trump said he wasn’t serious.
Asked if he was indeed being sarcastic, Trump snapped, “Of course I’m being sarcastic”.
Biden’s comments about Putin come amid controversy over Democratic National Committee emails damaging to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, which the USA intelligence community believe were most likely hacked by Russian Federation and then posted on the WikiLeaks site.
The DNC emails showed party leaders favouring Clinton over her rival in the campaign for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The committee is supposed to be neutral. Adviser Rudy Giuliani argued the same, while ally Newt Gingrich claimed the comments were a “joke”. “We never poke our noses into others’ affairs and we really don’t like it when people try to poke their nose into ours”, he said, adding, “The Americans need to get to the bottom of what these emails are themselves and find out what it’s all about”, he said.
The group founded by Julian Assange released the emails just before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
He also said Moscow “probably” already has the emails Clinton considered to be private and deleted after serving as the top USA diplomat from 2009 to 2013.
While Clinton’s use of the private server when Secretary of State was wrong, the audacity of inviting foreign governments, particularly one hostile to the United States, to conduct espionage on a presidential candidate and potentially influence an election should disqualify Trump for the presidency.
“If they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails”, he said during a press conference at his Miami-area hotel.
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The FBI and other counter-intelligence agencies involved in the probe of the DNC hacking have not yet officially attributed the cyber attack to hackers allied with Russian Federation.
