CIA thinks Putin directed US election interference: report

The CIA informed President Obama that the Russian president gave direct orders to ensure that Trump beat Clinton

A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report sent directly to former US president Barack Obama contained details of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct instructions to the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 US election and help elect Donald Trump, The Washington Post has reported.

In a detailed investigative article published on Friday, the Post laid bare the shortcomings of the Obama administration in responding to Russia’s threat against American democracy and revealed the existence of a CIA report which told of Putin’s “direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the US presidential race,” and the Russian president’s directives to ensure that Trump win over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

The Post reveals that the CIA’s report on Putin’s directive to elect Trump over Clinton came “from sourcing deep inside the Russian government” and was considered too sensitive to be shared in the President’s Daily Briefing.



Many in the Obama administration fear the former president did not do enough to stop Russian interference, for fears that any action on his part would be seen as tipping the scales in favour of Clinton, who had served in his cabinet.

Instead, Obama left his successor a secret program that could be used to retaliate against the Kremlin—which was left entirely up to Trump to implement. The Post, however, reports that the Obama administration felt the retaliation effort was undermined by the incoming Trump administration.

President Trump has been reluctant to even admit Putin was responsible for last year’s attack on the US voting system, let alone that the Russian president had a specific goal to elevate Trump over Clinton. Moreover, Trump has been vocal in insisting that the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers and subsequent leaks of emails did not come from Russia, suggesting back in June 2016 that the DNC probably hacked itself as distract from issues around their “deeply flawed candidate”.



Investigators are currently trying to ascertain to what extent the incoming administration interfered with retaliation efforts put in motion by Obama. The New York Times has reported that they’re also looking into whether during the campaign the Trump associates used data from voter databases which were hacked too.

It wouldn’t be the first time Trump used hacked information to his advantage. In March of 2016, then-candidate Trump implored Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Clinton’s private server – an issue that dogged the Democratic candidate throughout the campaign. Trump’s comment was made during the height of an extensive Russian cyber campaign targeting the US voting system with—as the Post reports—the expressed intent to elect Trump president.

 

This article originally appeared on Raw Story.