Donald Trump's Debate Talk Contradicts Growing Body of Evidence Tying Russia to Recent Hacks
"Maybe there is no hacking," Trump said during the debate.
— -- During Sunday night’s debate, Donald Trump not only questioned whether Russia is behind a series of recent hacks targeting American political organizations, but he also suggested that perhaps those highly-publicized hacks never really happened in the first place.
Such rhetoric contradicts a growing body of evidence gathered by both the political organizations targeted and the nation’s top intelligence agencies, which just days ago released a rare statement saying they are "confident" that the Russian government is responsible for many of the recent hacks.
However, according to the Republican presidential nominee on Sunday night, Hillary Clinton and others regularly blame Russia for hacking “any time anything wrong happens.”
“I notice any time anything wrong happens, they like to say ‘The Russians!’ She doesn't know if it's the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia and the reason they blame Russia is because they think they are trying to tarnish me with Russia,” Trump said during the debate.
John Cohen, a former top Homeland Security official who’s now an ABC News consultant, said while it’s clear that Trump didn’t acknowledge the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies about Russia’s involvement, his motivation for doing so is not.
“As a former intelligence and Homeland Security official who has worked for both Democratic and Republican officials, I find his comments discounting Russia's involvement in the recent cyber-attacks against the DNC both perplexing and disconcerting,” Cohen said, referring to the Democratic National Committee. “Donald Trump is either uninformed or ignoring what intelligence officials are saying publicly and I suspect telling him in classified briefings.”
A source confirmed to ABC News that during at least one of his classified briefings, Trump was told that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia was behind a series of recent hacks targeting U.S. political organizations. NBC News first reported that Trump’s classified briefings included discussion of Russia’s involvement in hacking.
Those briefings came before Friday’s public statement from the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security blaming Russia.
“The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. ... We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.
Last month, the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees issued their own statement, saying, “Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election.”
For months, sources familiar with information gathered by the U.S. intelligence community have been telling ABC News and other media outlets the same thing.
Over the summer, a trove of documents taken from the DNC were posted online. A cyber-security firm hired by the DNC to address the issue said it had determined that “two separate Russian intelligence agencies” were behind a massive cyber-attack on the political organization.
Not only did the hack apparently allow the cyber-operatives to steal opposition research on Trump, but it also revealed internal messages detailing efforts by DNC officials to undermine Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders during the primary season. The FBI confirmed at the time that it was “investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC,” adding, “A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously.”
During an interview with Fox News that aired hours after Trump’s first classified briefing on Aug. 17, the Republican nominee was asked whether he trusts U.S. intelligence.
"Not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country. Look what's happened over the last 10 years. Look what's happened over the years. It's been catastrophic,” Trump said.
Sunday night’s debate was far from the first time that Trump has brought Russia into the fold of the presidential campaign.
At a news conference in late July, around the same time that the Democratic National Committee email hack was revealed, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 33,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller later posted a tweet saying that “to be clear, Mr. Trump did not call on, or invite, Russia or anyone else to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails today,” going on to say that he was “clearly saying” that if anyone has the emails, they should share them with the FBI.
The FBI has since concluded that only some of those 33,000 emails were work-related, and the FBI found no evidence to suggest Hillary Clinton knew that work-related emails were being deleted by her legal team.