Obama orders full review of 2016 election hacking
US President Barack Obama has ordered a full review of alleged hacking by the Russians into the 2016 election, says the White House.
"The President has directed the Intelligence Community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process. It is to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders," White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser Lisa Monaco told reporters on Friday.
Monaco (pictured below) said that Obama had ordered intelligence agencies to deliver a report before he leaves office on January 20.
Moscow and Washington have long been at odds over claims by American intelligence officials about an attempt by the Kremlin to disrupt the November 8 presidential election, when Republican Donald Trump defeated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
The allegations against Russia first came a few months before the election, when the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks released thousands of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The hacked emails were provided to WikiLeaks via a hacker who goes by the name “Guccifer 2.0” and is deemed Russian by American intelligence agencies.
The hacking prompted warnings from Clinton’s campaign against what the former first lady and her aides called foreign interference in favor of Trump.
Moscow, however, has constantly denied the accusations, with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying that Russia “on a state level has never done this."
Monaco said that the review "is consistent with the work that we did over the summer to engage Congress on the threats that we were seeing."
Later on Friday, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said that the measure "is a major priority for the president of the United States.”
Schultz said that the review would be a “deep drive” which would be carried out into such behavior over several years, as far back as the US presidential election in 2008.
The Russian government on Friday denied the allegations again, calling on Washington to show evidence of its involvement.
"We are also very interested in understanding what they accused Russia of," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. "Many times the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have asked Americans to provide full information. But never had any response."
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