WikiLeaks challenged Hillary Clinton’s claim that the entire U.S. intelligence community has confirmed that it’s colluding directly with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
“Clinton’s ’17 US intelligence agencies’ may be the biggest, most immediately disprovable wopper [sic] ever intentionally made during a debate,” the hacking group said Thursday on its social media feed.
The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security said earlier this year in a statement that emails published by WikiLeaks appear to be part of a larger effort to “interfere with the U.S. election process.”
“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.
The U.S. intelligence community comprises 17 separate groups that “work both independently and collaboratively to gather and analyze the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s website.
The groups include the Department of the Treasury, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Army Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and the Department of State.
Also included are the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Energy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy Intelligence.
WikiLeaks injected itself into the 2016 race this year when it released thousands of private emails from the Democratic National Committee’s databases. More recently, the group has published emails purportedly taken from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Clinton’s team says it will not attempt to verify whether the Podesta emails are real, even as it claims that Russia was behind the hacking.
The Democratic nominee has sought to downplay the email dumps by highlighting claims WikiLeaks is coordinating with Russian sources to sway the 2016 election in GOP nominee Donald Trump’s favor. On Wednesday, Clinton tried again to dismiss the content of the released emails by pointing to the source of the hacks.
“What is really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions. Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet,” Clinton said.
“This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly from Putin himself, in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election,” she added, demanding that Trump condemn “Russian espionage against Americans.”
Trump has seized on the WikiLeaks dumps to go after Clinton, and maintains that it’s uncertain whether the group is actually colluding with Russia. “She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else,” Trump said at the debate.
Spokespersons for the Clinton campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
