White House won’t point finger at Putin for email hacks

The White House’s top spokeswoman wouldn’t say Wednesday if he believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the hacks into the emails of Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign officials.

Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he couldn’t go beyond the intelligence community’s statement, which he said was carefully worded.

The intelligence community concluded that the hacks were “almost certainly directed by senior Russian government officials.” Whether that includes Putin, Earnest said, only the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Homeland Security Department can say.

Earnest did say that the Kremlin’s motivation is destabilization.

“And the intent, as per the analysis of the intelligence community, is that Russia was interested in destabilizing, or at least attempting to destabilize, the U.S. political system,” Earnest said on Wednesday.

“We’ve seen Russia try to pursue those tactics in other countries,” Earnest said. “But frankly, those other countries don’t have the kind of well-developed, durable democratic institutions that we have in this country. So, you know, the American people can continue to be confident in the stability and durability of our election systems and of our democracy.”

Earnest repeated that the Obama administration will not make any announcements before it retaliates or sanctions Moscow for its involvement, and may not ever inform the public about certain steps.

The official statement noted intrusions into some state’s election systems, but did not finger the Kremlin as the perpetrators.

Those intrusions “in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company,” the DHS-ODNI statement read. “However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government.”

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