John Bolton is denying that he suggested the Obama administration hacked into the Democratic National Committee as a “false flag” operation.
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations appeared on Fox News on Monday morning to clarify a statement he made on the same network the day before that was taken as an accusation toward the Obama administration. Bolton said Monday he doesn’t believe the administration is to blame for the hacks, but suggested other countries could have been behind it and want people to think Russia is to blame.
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Here’s the truth about what I said regarding alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. Election: https://t.co/kNbzLRqFMP
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) December 12, 2016
“It’s typical bad reporting. I’ve never believed that. I didn’t believe that. I didn’t believe that yesterday. I don’t believe that today,” Bolton said on “Fox and Friends.”
Bolton said other countries like China, North Korea or Iran may have hacked into the DNC — and possibly the Republican National Committee — and made it look like it was Russia’s fault.
“Why would Russia leave fingerprints that it was trying to interfere in the election?” Bolton asked. “I could see Russia trying to undermine trust and confidence generally across our political system … but then to be so inexpert that the trail can be rapidly taken back to them is hard to understand.”
Speaking to host Eric Shawn on Fox News on Sunday, Bolton said: “It is not at all clear to me just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation.”
Pressed by Shawn about whether he was making an accusation against the Obama administration, Bolton said: “We just don’t know. But I believe that intelligence has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree.”
On Monday, Bolton said he’s in favor of a congressional investigation into the hacks because the public deserves to know what intelligence agencies are seeing as proof of Russian involvement.
He said it’s hard for anyone outside the intelligence community to know what’s going on unless they let the public in.
“To have someone outside look at this makes sense,” Bolton said.
