Alwaght- Russia has interfered in US 2016 presidential election in order to help Donald Trump win the presidency, the Washington Post has reported, citing officials briefed on the matter.
The report comes after outgoing US president ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention that took place during the 2016 election cycle.
The US daily claimed that individuals with connections to Russia provided whistleblowing website WikiLeaks "with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman," adding" Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances."
“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,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”
Those individuals were “one step” removed from the Russian government, consistent with past practice by Moscow to use “middlemen” in sensitive intelligence operations to preserve plausible deniability, the report said.
CIA agents told the lawmakers it was “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post, citing growing evidence from multiple sources.
However the CIA’s assessment fell short of a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies, the report said.
For example, intelligence agents don’t have proof that Russian officials directed the identified individuals to supply WikiLeaks with the hacked Democratic emails.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied any links with Russia.
President-elect Trump has aslo rejected the intelligence community’s conclusion of Russian involvement.
“I don’t believe they interfered” in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, “could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”
Trump’s transition team also issued a statement on Friday saying, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,”
“The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.”