Trump Picks Putin Over His Own Intelligence Community  Again
From the Starting time, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered
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Trump'due south Mixed Messages on Russian Meddling
President Trump was shown articulate evidence on Jan. six, 2017, that President Vladimir Five. Putin of Russia had ordered cyberattacks to sway the 2016 election. But his statements since take suggested other explanations.
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"Equally far every bit hacking, I recall information technology was Russia, just I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people." "Russian federation is a ruse. I have null to practice with Russia. Haven't fabricated a phone call to Russia in years. Don't speak to people from Russia. Non that I wouldn't. I just take nobody to speak to." "Well, I think it was Russian federation, and I think it could have been other people in other countries." "President Putin really feels, and he feels strongly, that he did not meddle in our election. I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with their leadership." "The Russians had no impact on our votes whatever. Simply certainly there was meddling and probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals." "I have President Putin. He simply said information technology's not Russia. I volition say this, I don't see whatever reason why it would be." "The sentence should have been, 'I don't see whatever reason why information technology wouldn't be Russia.' Sort of a double negative. And then you could put that in and I recall that probably clarifies things pretty skillful by itself." "Thank you lot all very much. Appreciate it. Cheers." "Is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President?" "Cheers very much. No." "No, you don't believe that to exist the case?" "No." "The president said, 'Thank yous very much' and was proverb no to answering questions." "I let him know we can't have this. We're not going to accept it. And that'southward the way it's going to be."
WASHINGTON — 2 weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian armed forces officers and information gleaned from a top-hole-and-corner source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. Simply ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to deject the very clear findings that he received on January. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders accept unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more than clear than this week.
On Mon, standing side by side to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr. Putin's denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided with his intelligence agencies.
On Wed, when a reporter asked, "Is Russia notwithstanding targeting the U.S.?" Mr. Trump shot back, "No" — directly contradicting statements fabricated only days before by his managing director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the Cabinet Room. (The White Firm later said he was responding to a dissimilar question.)
Hours afterward, in a CBS News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin personally, but just indirectly, for the election interference by Russia, "because he's in charge of the country."
In the run-up to this calendar week's ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to advise other possible explanations for the hacks into the American political organisation. His fearfulness, according to ane of his closest aides who spoke on the status of anonymity, is that any access of fifty-fifty an unsuccessful Russian endeavor to influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his presidency.
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The Jan. 6, 2017, meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime number case. He was briefed that day by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Control.
The F.B.I. manager, James B. Comey, was also there; later on the formal conference, he privately told Mr. Trump about the "Steele dossier." That written report, past a onetime British intelligence officeholder, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump's activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.
According to nearly a dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin'due south function in the election interference.
They included stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the Grand.R.U. had plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.
And ultimately, several human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin's own role.
That included one especially valuable source, who was considered so sensitive that Mr. Brennan had declined to refer to it in any way in the Presidential Daily Cursory during the final months of the Obama administration, every bit the Russia investigation intensified.
Instead, to go along the information from being shared widely, Mr. Brennan sent reports from the source to Mr. Obama and a small-scale group of top national security aides in a carve up, white envelope to assure its security.
Mr. Trump and his aides were also given other reasons during the conference to believe that Russia was behind the D.N.C. hacks.
The aforementioned Russian groups had been involved in cyberattacks on the State Section and White House unclassified email systems in 2014 and 2015, and in an attack on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They had aggressively fought the N.Due south.A. confronting existence ejected from the White House system, engaging in what the deputy director of the agency afterward called "mitt-to-hand combat" to dig in.
The pattern of the D.N.C. hacks, and the theft of emails from John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, fit the same pattern.
Afterward the briefings, Mr. Trump issued a statement afterward that day that sought to spread the arraign for the meddling. He said "Russia, China and other countries, exterior groups and countries" were launching cyberattacks against American government, businesses and political organizations — including the D.North.C.
Even so, Mr. Trump said in his statement, "there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election."
Mr. Brennan after told Congress that he had no doubtfulness where the attacks were coming from.
"I was convinced in the summer that the Russians were trying to interfere in the ballot," he said in testimony in May 2017. "And they were very aggressive."
For Mr. Trump, the messengers were every bit much a function of the trouble as the message they delivered.
Mr. Brennan and Mr. Clapper were both Obama administration appointees who left the government the mean solar day Mr. Trump was inaugurated. The new president soon took to portraying them equally political hacks who had warped the intelligence to provide Democrats with an excuse for Mrs. Clinton's loss in the election.
Mr. Comey fared piffling better. He was fired in May 2017 after refusing to pledge his loyalty to Mr. Trump and pushing frontward on the federal investigation into whether the Trump campaign had cooperated with Russian federation'south election interference.
Only Admiral Rogers, who retired this past May, was extended in function past Mr. Trump. (He, also, told Congress that he thought the prove of Russian interference was incontrovertible.)
And the evidence suggests Russia continues to be very aggressive in its meddling.
In March, the Department of Homeland Security declared that Russia was targeting the American electric power grid, continuing to riddle it with malware that could be used to manipulate or shut down critical command systems. Intelligence officials have described it to Congress as a principal threat to American security.
Simply last week, Mr. Coats said that current cyberthreats were "blinking red" and chosen Russia the "almost ambitious foreign actor, no question."
"And they proceed their efforts to undermine our democracy," he said.
Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, also stood firm.
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"The intelligence customs's assessment has not changed," Mr. Wray said on Wed at the Aspen Security Forum. "My view has not changed, which is that Russia attempted to interfere with the last election and continues to appoint in malign influence operations to this day."
The Russian efforts are "aimed at sowing discord and divisiveness in this land," he continued. "We oasis't however seen an endeavor to target specific ballot infrastructure this time. We could be just a moment abroad from the side by side level."
"Information technology's a threat nosotros need to take extremely seriously and respond to with vehement determination and focus."
Most as soon as he took office, Mr. Trump began casting doubts on the intelligence on Russian federation'southward ballot interference, though never taking effect with its specifics.
He dismissed it broadly as a fabrication past Democrats and function of a "witch hunt" against him. He raised unrelated problems, including the land of investigations into Mrs. Clinton's home computer server, to distract attention from the key question of Russian federation's role — and who, if anyone, in Mr. Trump's immediate orbit may have worked with them.
In July 2017, but after coming together Mr. Putin for the first time, Mr. Trump told a New York Times reporter that the Russian president had fabricated a persuasive instance that Moscow's cyberskills were and so good that the government's hackers would never accept been caught. Therefore, Mr. Trump recounted from his conversation with Mr. Putin, Russia must not have been responsible.
Since then, Mr. Trump has routinely disparaged the intelligence nearly the Russian election interference. Under public force per unit area — as he was later his statements in Helsinki on Monday — he has periodically retreated. But fifty-fifty then, he has expressed confidence in his intelligence briefers, not in the content of their findings.
That is what happened once again this calendar week, twice.
Mr. Trump'southward statement in Helsinki led Mr. Coats to reaffirm, in a statement he deliberately did not get cleared at the White House, that American intelligence agencies had no incertitude that Russia was behind the 2016 hack.
That contributed to Mr. Trump'due south decision on Tuesday to say that he had misspoken i word, and that he did believe Russia had interfered — although he too veered off script to declare: "Could exist other people besides. A lot of people out there."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/world/europe/trump-intelligence-russian-election-meddling-.html
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