Thread: Trump still unconvinced Russia meddled in 2016 election

Trump still unconvinced Russia meddled in 2016 election


By Sara Murray and Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 12:28 AM ET, Wed February 14, 2018

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump still isn't buying that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Even as his intelligence chiefs unanimously told a Senate panel Tuesday that Russia meddled in 2016 and is planning to do so again in 2018, three sources familiar with the President's thinking say he remains unconvinced that Russia interfered in the presidential election.

While this issue is separate from the question of whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian officials, to Trump the issues are interwoven, the sources say. He views the notion that Russia meddled in the election as an argument that he had help to win, and that he didn't win the election on his own.

Trump's view contradicts his intelligence chiefs, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and FBI Director Chris Wray, who all testified -- again -- on Tuesday that they supported the intelligence community's January 2017 assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

"There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 US midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations," Coats said at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats.

Trump has been skeptical about the intelligence assessment that Russia meddled ever since he was first briefed on the issue during the presidential transition. But that skepticism has endured even after Trump hand-selected his own intel chiefs and they reiterated the conclusions of their predecessors.

Trump has only begrudgingly acknowledged that Russia may have interfered in the election. In a press conference as president-elect, Trump said, "As far as hacking, I think it was Russia. But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people." At a June 2017 press conference in Poland, he again said Russia meddled in the election, but added that "other people and other countries" likely did as well.

More often, Trump has cast doubt on accusations of Russian meddling. He has questioned whether the Russians were responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee, and he has called the entire "Russia story" a hoax perpetuated by angry Democrats. He even convinced Pompeo to personally meet with a conspiracy theorist who denies that Russia hacked the DNC.

Trump caused a stir during his trip to Asia when he suggested that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials that his government meddled in the election. Trump and Putin met several times on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Vietnam. "Every time he sees me, he says, 'I didn't do that,'" Trump said. "And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it."

But members of Trump's cabinet have bucked Trump and sided with the intelligence community including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who said in October: "When a country can come interfere in another country's elections, that is warfare."

Tuesday's hearing was the latest opportunity for Democrats to pounce on the conflicting messages coming from the intelligence chiefs and their commander in chief. Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, urged the intelligence officials to convince Trump that the issue of collusion was separate from election meddling.

"I understand the President's sensitivity about whether his campaign was in connections with the Russians, and that's a separate question. But there is no question -- we've got before us the entire intelligence community, that the Russians interfered in the election in 2016 -- they're continuing to do it, and they're a real imminent threat to our elections in a matter of eight or nine months," King said.

"My problem is I talk to people in Maine who say the whole thing is a witch hunt and a hoax because 'the President told me'," he added.

Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, asked whether the steps the intelligence community was taking to counteract Russia's election interference efforts had been directed by Trump.

"Not specifically directed by the President," Wray said.

CNN's Marshall Cohen contributed reporting

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/13/polit...ion/index.html

The reason Trump doesn't believe it is the same reason I don't believe it, you haven't produced any evidence of it. A few Facebook ads? Some hackers breaking into state voter registration databases? After all of this, this is all you've got to claim Russia is meddling in our elections? They have free speech, they can express their views any way they want in our country. We're being hacked left and right by our own people as well as people from all over the world. Facebook ads are not a threat to our democracy, it's what our Republic guarantees. As to hackers, you better wake up and smell the crap, because if you want to try to focus this on Russia when it's a worldwide problem, then you're just a bunch of fools.

I honestly don't know how a bunch of grown men, supposedly "intel experts" can line up in front of Congress and make the weak, whiny and extremely foolish statements they made about Russia. Russia is not our problem, Russia is actually a friend and has always been. They aren't idiots and are going to defend themselves against US, with good cause, but they are proving themselves much smarter, stronger and more honest than we are.

It was Great Britain, not Russia, who tried to meddle in our elections to help Hillary, not Trump. There were forces in England furious over Trump's pro-Brexit and Muslim-cautious views. Christopher Steele was representing those forces and it's going to come out, wait and see, that he was working for MI-6 the whole gawd damn time trying to defeat Trump in the election and if that didn't work, having an "insurance policy" to try to bribe him or impeach him if he won.