Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson said Wednesday that the recent U.S. intelligence agencies’ report on Russian cyberattacks during the 2016 election is “troubling,” but he avoided endorsing President Obama’s retaliatory sanctions and demurred when asked about supporting future sanctions.
“That report clearly is troubling and indicates that all the actions you described were undertaken,” Tillerson told Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Tillerson avoided saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government carried out the “influence campaign” in order to boost President-elect Trump’s campaign. The agencies released a nonclassified report Friday concluding that Putin “developed a clear preference” for Trump as the campaign unfolded.
Instead, Tillerson struck a middle ground between the agencies and Trump, who insists that the intelligence community can’t know for certain who was behind the hacks.
“I’m not in a position to make that determination,” Tillerson said when asked if the hacks could have taken place without Putin’s knowledge and direction. “I think that’s a fair assumption [that Putin would have authorized the hacks].”
Tillerson resisted agreeing to mandatory sanctions for such hacks, however, saying that the president should have the authority to waive them when necessary for national security issues. “There could be a whole array of important issues that require consideration,” he said.
The debate about Russia’s role in the hacks has often been polarized along political lines, but Tillerson’s answer puts him closer to the Republicans who agree that the hacks, and subsequent leaks, were ordered by Putin, but have questions about their intent and the appropriate U.S. response.
“Typically, when intelligence agencies around the world do that, they do that to gain intelligence insights, it’s not to take offensive actions, right? So that matters,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters last week. “And then to take it to the point of, some people have said to declare it an act of war, you’ve got to really, you’ve got to really dig deep and go way beyond just initial intent before you start making those kinds of declarations.”
