Outgoing Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus forcefully dismissed a New York Times report that the RNC was hacked by Russians, claiming it is “absolutely not true.”
“We contacted the FBI months ago when the when the issue came about,” Priebus told ABC News, referring to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in July. “They reviewed all of our systems. We have hacking-detection systems in place, and the conclusion was then, as it was again two days ago when we went back to the FBI to ask them about this, that the RNC was not hacked.”
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In separate reports Friday, the Washington Post and the New York Times claimed a secret CIA assessment concluded that Russians hacked both party institutions but only released the DNC’s internal communications as part of a deliberate effort to undermine the Clinton campaign.
Priebus said the report “is based on unnamed sources who are perhaps doing something they shouldn’t be doing by speaking to reporters or someone talking out of line about something that is absolutely not true.”
“This is about 17 or so unnamed agencies in an unnamed report that based the report on something that is totally false,” he said, adding that it is “unbelievable” the media would run with the story and simultaneously “ignore the fact that the people actually involved in the other side of the story are telling you it’s not true.”
The Trump transition team and chief RNC strategist Sean Spicer have also pushed back on the intelligence findings.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the Trump team said in a statement on Friday.
“If the intelligence community is so certain it happened, why won’t they go on the record and say it,” Spicer said in an interview with CNN on Saturday. “I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make any sense.”
