Politics

Donald Trump Tweets About Russian Hacking

December 12th 2016

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted Monday about recent reports regarding Russia's alleged involvement with the presidential election by hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to help Trump win. 

"Why wasn't this brought up before?"

The former reality television host's tweet suggested that the CIA's belief in Russian involvement via hacking was never brought up has started to raise some eyebrows. Because, actually, the notion was discussed during the presidential debates, and by Trump, too, at a press conference during his campaign.

donald-trumpAP/Evan Vucci - apimages.com

In the first presidential debate in September, Trump dismissed the idea that Russian hackers were behind the DNC hack, saying, "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

After the debate, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.), a ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that Trump's claim of a mysterious 400 pound hacker are dubious. "My guess is if this guy weighs 400 pounds he's sitting somewhere in Russia right now," he said.

Homer Simpson 400 pound hacker memeKnow Your Meme - knowyourmeme.com

Chris Finan, the former Director for Cybersecurity Legislation and Policy at The White House, told Blitzer, "I was pretty surprised during the debate -- there is no ambiguity here."

He continued:

"Everybody knows who did it. So to suggest it was an individual -- and the other thing is -- these intrusion sets are fairly sophisticated. To say it was an individual or lone actor or small group, that to me shows a lack of appreciation about the threat and how sophisticated and pernicious it is."

"Russia, if you're listening..."

It's even more curious for Trump to claim in his tweet that it's "hard to determine who was doing the hacking" and that this issue was never previously brought up considering his comments at a press conference in July.

"Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press," he said at the press conference in reference to the deleted emails of Hillary Clinton.

He then followed that up with a tweet on July 27:

The CIA maintains its belief that Russia hacked the DNC.

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