The White House is declining to say whether Russia’s hack-and-leak operations during the 2016 election ultimately benefited President-elect Trump, despite simultaneously pressuring Republican lawmakers to answer that same question.
“At least for today, I don’t have any official White House election analysis to put forward,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday after he was asked if President Obama believes “the Russians swung [the] election somehow.”
However, Earnest did say that the primary focus during the final few weeks of the election was on “emails that had been hacked and leaked by the Russians” that belonged to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and the Democratic National Committee.
Following Obama’s request last week for a “full review” of Russia’s cyber activity by intelligence officials, some Democrats and Republicans expressed an interest in conducting their own congressional investigations into the matter.
“I don’t know what they could conclude,” Earnest said of those calling for a congressional probe. “But what we have right now on Capitol Hill is a situation where many Republicans who offered their endorsement of the Trump campaign less than five weeks later are now publicly worrying about Russian influence.”
“How they reconcile their political strategy and their patriotism is a question they’re going to have to answer,” he told reporters.
“Listen, I think what we’re focused on right now is trying to understand exactly what the Russians did, collect as much available information as we can about that [and] try to assess what their motives were,” Earnest said. “In some ways, this is going to be a pointed question. In some ways, this is not just a question to ask the president, this is actually an even better question to ask supporters of Trump’s campaign, many of whom now, at least in Congress, are worried about the answer to that question.”
Meanwhile, the incoming Republican president and those involved with his transition operation have dismissed reports that Russia may have impacted the election and accused those who have taken such claims seriously of seeking to “delegitimize” Trump’s election victory.
“Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!” the president-elect tweeted early Monday morning.
