The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the US presidential election to help US president-elect Donald Trump win the White House and not just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system, a senior US official said on Friday.
US intelligence agencies have assessed that as the US presidential campaign drew on, Russian government officials devoted increasing attention to assisting Trump’s effort to win the election, the US official familiar with the finding told reporters on Friday night on condition of anonymity.
Citing US officials briefed on the matter, the Washington Post on Friday reported that intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
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As summer turned to fall, Russian hackers turned almost all their attention to the Democrats. Virtually all the e-mails they released publicly were potentially damaging to Clinton and the party, the official told reporters.
“That was a major clue to their intent,” the official said. “If all they wanted to do was discredit our political system, why publicize the failings of just one party, especially when you have a target like Trump?”
A Friday night statement released by Trump’s transition team said that the CIA “are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”
“The election ended a long time ago... It’s now time to move on and ‘make America great again,’” the statement said.
A second official familiar with the report said the intelligence analysts’ conclusion about Russia’s motives does not mean the intelligence community believes that Moscow’s efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the US election.
Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the US election.
The hacked e-mails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency.
US intelligence analysts have assessed “with high confidence” that at some point in the extended US presidential campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government had decided to try to bolster Trump’s chances of winning.
The Russians appear to have concluded that Trump had a shot at winning and that he would be much friendlier to Russia than Clinton would be, especially on issues such as maintaining economic sanctions and imposing additional ones, the official said.
Moscow is launching a similar effort to influence the next German election, following an escalating campaign to promote far-right and nationalist political parties and individuals in Europe that began more than a decade ago, the official said.
In both cases, Putin’s campaigns in both Europe and the US are intended to disrupt and discredit a Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties and political figures, the official said.
Additional reporting by AP
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