Report: CIA concluded Russia attempted to help Trump win White House
Senior US official: "Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected."
By JPOST.COM STAFFUpdated: DECEMBER 10, 2016 07:39A light installation is seen in the reception room of the former Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) headquarters.(photo credit: REUTERS)
The CIA announced that in a 'secret assessment' they discovered that Russia's intervention in the 2016 election was not just to undermine confidence in the electoral system of the United States, but also to specifically help Donald Trump win, according to a in The Washington Post.The report states that intelligence officials found individuals involved in a 'wider Russian operation' to support Trump and hurt Clinton hacked Democratic National Committee e-mails and provided them to WikiLeaks.The Post quoted a 'senior US official' as saying that the "consensus view" among the intelligence community is that "Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected."However, there are some "minor disagreements" among intelligence officials, the Post reported, regarding whether or not the Russian government was the source of these orders. Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has denied Russia's involvement in the e-mail scandals.According to The New York Times, the Trump transition team issued a statement on Friday regarding the CIA report. "“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”US security officials have said that starting last year, hackers infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee, the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and her party's congressional fundraising committee.Trump campaign manager denies influence from extreme-right groupsUS officials said they have concluded that Russia or its proxies were responsible, leading to calls by some Democrats and cyber security officials for the Obama administration to blame Russia publicly. Kremlin officials have dismissed the allegations as absurd.The White House said on Friday the intelligence review ordered by President Barack Obama into these cyber attacks will go beyond the Nov. 8 vote and will include the 2008 election."What the president asked for is a review to look at malicious cyber activity tied to our presidential election cycle," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said at a news briefing. "It will be broader than just looking at this past election."Reuters contributed to this report.