President-elect Donald Trump says Democrats have shown “gross negligence” by allowing their servers to be hacked in the run-up to the November 8 presidential election.
Donald Trump made the comments after an intelligence report said Russian President Vladimir Putin had “sought to help Donald Trump win”.
He has stopped short of accusing Russia of interfering, saying only that the election outcome was not affected.
The Kremlin has not commented, but Russia has previously denied the claims.
Following the report’s findings, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that voting machines and other election databases would be classified as “critical infrastructure” and given more protection from cyber-attacks.
Emphasizing that the election outcome was not affected, Donald Trump added on January 7: “Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!”
In an interview with ABC, President Barack Obama said that he was concerned that there had been “Republicans or pundits or cable commentators who seem to have more confidence in Vladimir Putin than fellow Americans because those fellow Americans are Democrats.
“That cannot be.”
Asked whether Donald Trump was among them, President Obama said: “We have to remind ourselves we’re on the same team. Vladimir Putin’s not on our team.”
The unclassified report says that Russia developed a “clear preference” for Donald Trump.
Russia’s goals, the document added, were to “undermine public faith” in the US democratic process and “denigrate” Hillary Clinton, harming her electability and potential presidency.
However, the report gives no detailed evidence of Vladimir Putin’s alleged role.
The report says the Russian president liked Donald Trump because he had vowed to work with Russia and the Russian leader had had “many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder”.
In contrast, Vladimir Putin had blamed Hillary Clinton for inciting anti-government protests in 2011 and early 2012 “and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him”.
