Priebus: Trump accepts report that Russia was behind hacking
President-elect Trump believes the report released by U.S. intelligence officials Friday saying that the Russians were behind the hacking in the presidential election in November, incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Sunday.
Priebus told “Fox News Sunday” that Trump “accepts the findings” of the report and is not denying that the Russians were behind the campaign. According to the report, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an “influence campaign” and wanted to “undermine the public faith” in the U.S. democratic process.
Trump was briefed on the report by top intelligence officials Friday.
But when pressed by host Chris Wallace, Priebus said that he hasn’t asked Trump if he believes the report’s charge that Putin and Russia tried to help Trump by discrediting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“I haven’t asked him about this,” Priebus said. “He accepts the fact that Russia and other entities engage in cyberattacks in the United States all day long. He accepts the case that this particular case was entities in Russia, so that’s not the issue.”
But he argued that such behavior is nothing new and nation-states have tried doing this in the past. And he bashed the Democratic National Committee for not having strong cybersecurity.
“Yes, we have bad actors around the world,” Priebus said. “We’ve had bad actors, including the Russians, but we also have a problem when we have a major political institution that allows foreign governments into their system with hardly any defenses and training. That’s a huge story and that’s what people aren’t talking about as well.”
The report, which was released Friday, was prepared by the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency and revealed that while they have tried to exert their influence on the U.S. democratic process in the past, the attempts this time represented a “significant escalation in directness, level of activity and scope of effort compared to previous operations.”
