CIA claims Vladimir Putin’s Russia DID interfere in US election to make sure Donald Trump won
Top spies say Moscow used ‘middlemen’ to hand over emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party to controversial website WikiLeaks
AMERICA’S top spies have said that Russia interfered with the US election and actively helped Donald Trump win the White House.
The Central Intelligence Agency, better known as the CIA, claim that emails hacked from the Democratic Party and given to the controversial website WikiLeaks aided the Republican candidate’s win in November’s race.
In a brief statement, they said: “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.’”
The CIA’s report comes on the same day President Barack Obama ordered a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the 2016 campaign after calls from the US Congress for more information on the extent of Russian interference.
The spy agency says individuals with connections to Moscow provided anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks with emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta.
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.
A senior US official with knowledge of the report said: “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favour one candidate over the other; to help Trump get elected … That’s the consensus view.”
CIA agents told Congressional lawmakers it was “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal and cited growing evidence from multiple sources.
However, some questions remain unanswered and the CIA’s assessment fell short of a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies.
For example, intelligence agents don’t have proof that Russian officials directed the identified middlemen to supply WikiLeaks with the hacked Democratic emails.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid being arrested on rape charges, has denied any links with Russia.
During a Trump speech in Michigan yesterday several people were removed from the venue for protesting against the controversial businessman.
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