President-elect Trump on Friday mocked what the alleged Russian hacks into the Democratic National Committee and emails from top Hillary Clinton officials revealed.
“Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?” Trump tweeted, taking another shot at his opponent in the presidential election.
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Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2016
Hacks into the DNC and Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta’s emails, reportedly done by Russia, have dominated the news cycle this week. Trump has refused to believe the hacks were done by the Russians despite the consensus of the intelligence community.
Trump was referring to an email leaked by Wikileaks that showed Donna Brazile, then a CNN commentator working at the DNC, had told the Clinton campaign about a topic the former secretary of state would be questioned about in a debate with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Brazile later became the interim head of the DNC after the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The leak resulted in Brazile losing her contract with CNN and condemnation from Republicans and members of the media for her unethical behavior. While it was seen as a violation of journalism ethics and biased behavior in favor of Clinton, it is not illegal to leak debate questions to a candidate.
Trump has repeatedly said since the summer that no one knows who actually hacked into the DNC and subsequently leaked the emails. During a presidential debate, Trump said it could have been someone in a basement somewhere and tweeted earlier this week that it’s hard to catch hackers unless they’re caught in the act. That notion was dismissed by many experts.
Last week, Trump’s transition team released a statement dismissing a report from CIA sources that Russia hacked into the DNC and Podesta’s emails in order to help him get elected.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s team said in a statement. “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.'”
Trump hasn’t been taking the presidential intelligence briefing every day during the transition, saying he’s a “smart person” who doesn’t need to be told the same thing every day.
That’s raised some eyebrows among many in Washington, with President Obama saying his successor needs to not assume he knows everything and listen to the experts.
“I think the president-elect may say one thing and do another once he’s here, because … it’s a big complicated world,” Obama said on “The Daily Show” this week. “You have to have the best information possible to make the best decisions possible. … If you are not getting their perspective, their detailed perspective then you are flying blind.”
