For months, Americans have speculated that Russia is trying to influence the presidential election. Now, a pair of lawmakers say that it’s true.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Adam Schiff. D-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a joint statement Thursday that based on briefings they received, they have concluded that “Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence” the November election.
“At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election – we can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians,” they said. “We believe that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such actions could come only from very senior levels of the Russian government.
About 20,000 emails were released in July by WikiLeaks, which provided a searchable database of correspondence of seven DNC officials between January 2015 to May 2016. WikiLeaks also has posted DNC internal documents and voice mail.
In recent months, a computer network used by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also have been hacked.
Feintsein and Schiff called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to immediately halt this activity.
“Americans will not stand for any foreign government trying to influence our election,” they said. “We hope all Americans will stand together and reject the Russian effort.”
The White House has refused to say who was behind the hacks, but President Barack Obama said an interview this summer on NBC that “Anything’s possible.” He said that Russians “on a regular basis, they try to influence elections in Europe.”
Anita Kumar: 202-383-6017, @anitakumar01
Comments