Donald Trump Win Was Goal Of Russian Hackers Identified In WikiLeaks Scandal, Obama Briefed By CIA

Donald Trump’s win was the goal of Russian hackers, and the CIA has proof. Individual Russian hackers have been identified in the WikiLeaks scandal that may have contributed to Donald Trump’s win in the November presidential election, according to American intelligence agencies who briefed President Obama on Thursday. The classified information identifying the Russian hackers will be given to Donald Trump a day after President Obama. Apart from identifying the Russian hackers, the CIA briefing also contained recordings of Russian officials celebrating Donald Trump’s win. In a Washington Post report on the classified documents, a government source claims that these intercepted communications support the claim that Donald Trump’s win was the goal of Russian hackers, and perhaps of Putin himself,

“The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on November 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did.”

Despite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s denial of claims that Russian hackers were the source of the hacked emails that buried Clinton in the election, the CIA briefing will undermine this denial and prove that Donald Trump’s win was the ultimate goal of the Russian hackers’ attack on the Democratic National Committee.

More than 50,000 emails were released by WikiLeaks in the months leading up to the election, and contained information that may have ultimately secured Donald Trump’s win. The damning emails exposed what FBI Director James Comey called “extremely careless” behavior, as reported by CNN, and while no charges were brought against Clinton, the damage was done and American voters’ trust in Hillary Clinton was undermined.

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

President Obama has insinuated that Russian hackers were deliberately trying to damage Clinton’s campaign and secure Donald Trump’s win, and the classified CIA documents identifying the Russian hackers would seem to back up Obama’s claim. NBC reports that a source with close knowledge of the documents has stated that Russian hackers did not just target the Democratic National Committee, but also penetrated the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and a number of large American corporations in their efforts to undermine the American political system and secure Donald Trump’s win.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.”

The documents identifying the Russian hackers also identify the Russian officials who released the hacked material to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in order to damage the Clinton presidential campaign. While Donald Trump and others claim that these officials were not operating at the direction of Vladimir Putin, some have directly linked Putin to the intermediaries who released the hacked Clinton emails to WikiLeaks.

Speaking to Fox‘s John Hannity on Tuesday, Assange denied claims that Putin or the Russian government was directly responsible for the hack, or that the hacker’s goal was to ensure that Donald Trump would win the presidential election last November,

“We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

Assange went so far as to claim that the Obama administration is actively trying to undermine Donald Trump ahead of the transition later this month. While Hannity seemed convinced that Donald Trump’s win was not the goal of Russian hackers, even praising Assange for his commitment to transparency, news of the CIA briefing has bolstered President Obama’s claims that Russian cyber-attacks were meant to interfere in the American elections. Donald Trump has responded to the news that his presidential win was the primary goal of Russian hackers ahead of being briefed on the classified documents later today. In a characteristic series of Twitter posts, Donald Trump cast doubt on the veracity of the top-secret report.

The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

Donald Trump has come out strongly against the intelligence community’s claims that they have proof of Russian hackers’ efforts to secure his win against Hillary Clinton through the release of DNC emails to WikiLeaks, and he has also come out against President Obama who moved last week to impose economic sanctions on Russia in response to the hackers’ involvement in the November elections. With new information identifying the Russian hackers and recordings of Russian officials celebrating Donald Trump’s win, it remains to be seen what Donald Trump’s reply will be once he is briefed by the CIA later today. Responding to Donald Trump’s skepticism, President Obama said in a statement yesterday,

“When the President-Elect receives his own briefings and is able to examine the intelligence, as his team is put together and they see how professional and effective these agencies are, some of those current tensions will be reduced.”

With the individual Russian hackers now identified, and CIA intelligence claiming that Donald Trump’s win was the goal of the Russian hackers, it seems that President Obama has been vindicated in his insistence that Russia meddled in the presidential elections last November through the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails to Wikileaks. In the meantime, however, Donald Trump continues to deny the validity of intelligence reports claiming that Russian hackers contributed to his presidential win.

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]