Republicans on Saturday rejected reports of a secret CIA assessment finding that Russia sought to tip the US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor, as a Democratic Senate leader called for an investigation.
“The intelligence is wrong,” Republican National Committee (RNC) spokesman Sean Spicer told CNN. “It didn’t happen.”
He was referring to a New York Times report saying US intelligence agencies had “high confidence” that Russian hackers infiltrated the Republican National Committee’s computer systems as well as those of Democratic Party organizations, but released information stolen only from the Democrats.
News about the CIA report, first reported by the Washington Post on Friday, drew an extraordinary rebuke from Trump’s camp.
“These are the same people that said [former Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s transition team said.
However, US Senator Chuck Schumer, set to become Democratic minority leader next month, called for a congressional probe into the matter.
“That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core,” he said on Saturday. “It’s imperative that our intelligence community turns over any relevant information so that Congress can conduct a full investigation.”
The reports of Russian interference in the White House vote follow US President Barack Obama’s order for a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the election cycle.
The Washington Post said that individuals with connections to Moscow provided the WikiLeaks Web site with e-mails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign chief and others.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” a US official briefed on an intelligence presentation to key senators told the newspaper. “That’s the consensus view.”
CIA agents told the lawmakers it was “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post.
Russian hackers did not limit their hits to the Democrats, the Times reported.
“We now have high confidence that they hacked the DNC and the RNC, and conspicuously released no documents” from the Republican organization, one senior administration official told the Times.
It is unclear however when Russia started supporting Trump, “and many intelligence officials — and former officials in Mrs Clinton’s campaign — believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote,” the Times said.
The CIA’s assessment falls short of a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies, the Post said.
Republican US Representative Devin Nunes, chair of the House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee and a member of Trump’s transition team, said he “does not believe the evidence shows that the Russians interfered in the elections in order to help Trump,” a spokesman said.
However Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said “the integrity of our elections is hindered” when Trump and his transition team “minimize or dismiss the intelligence assessments.”
For Schiff, “one would also have to be willfully blind not to see that these Russian actions were uniformly damaging to Secretary Clinton and helpful to Donald Trump.”
Democrats in Congress called on US intelligence agencies to provide all information about Russian hacking and disinformation.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in