House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul claimed on Tuesday that he recently told Donald Trump that Russia is trying to influence the U.S. presidential election, but the Republican nominee declined to believe him.
“I think he has in his mind that there’s not the proof,” McCaul, R-Texas, said at an event hosted by the Texas Tribune, according to Politico. “Now he hasn’t had the briefing I had, but I made it clear that in my judgment it was a nation-state.”
The GOP congressman, who never explicitly endorsed Trump but plans to vote for his party’s nominee, said the candidate’s campaign invited him to brief Trump on national security ahead of the first presidential debate in late September. National security, he said, is “not [Trump’s] strength.”
Trump, however, appeared to ignore what McCaul had told him. During the third and final debate last week in Las Vegas, the billionaire said Hillary Clinton “has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else” behind the email hackings of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
“Our country has no idea,” he added.
In addition to McCaul, the Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees have all accused the Russian government of making a concerted effort to interfere with the U.S. election.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations,” DHS and ODNI wrote in a joint statement earlier this month.
Trump has continued to cite stolen emails published by WikiLeaks in his stump speeches. On Monday, the candidate told his supporters that emails from Podesta revealed the Clinton campaign oversampled Democrats in its polling in order to suppress supporters of his campaign.
“WikiLeaks also shows how John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling Democrats: a voter suppression technique,” Trump said at a rally in St. Augustine, Fla.
