After FBI Director Jim Comey warned a congressional panel on Wednesday that hackers are “poking around” voter-registration systems in various states, law-enforcement officials told CNN that the U.S. suspects Russian involvement. ABC News reported that nearly half of U.S. states have come under cyberattack from hackers affiliated with Russia, which helps explain Comey’s comment during Wednesday’s hearing that the FBI is looking into “just what mischief is Russia up to in connection with our election.” … So why did Donald Trump stand on a debate stage this week and equivocate on the DNC hack? … It’s not like Trump waffled onstage because he truly didn’t have the information that Clinton had. A U.S. intelligence officials told Time that the government’s confidence in Russia’s involvement in the DNC hack was covered in one of Trump’s intelligence briefings.
“I do not comment on information I receive in intelligence briefings,” Trump responded in a statement to the magazine. “However, nobody knows with definitive certainty that this was in fact Russia.” But Trump doesn’t have a particularly stellar track record of keeping details from his classified briefings to himself. Earlier this month, he said intelligence officials in one briefing seemed displeased with the Obama Administration, based on their body language. (His comments were criticized by former intelligence officials, who say agents who deliver briefings are trained never to betray emotion or display a preference for one policy over another.)
Instead, Trump’s statement during the debate came across as another manifestation of his apparent willingness to cozy up with Russia. As The Washington Post pointed out earlier this week, the way Trump discussed the DNC attack mirrors how Russian President Vladimir Putin tends to talk about it: first, a demurral about the identity of the attackers—It’s complicated! We may never know!—and then, a pivot to the information that the hackers leaked, which was damaging to the Democratic Party.
Full Article: Why Won’t Trump Blame the DNC Hack on Russia? – The Atlantic.