Is Russia the Culprit Behind That Massive DNC Email Leak?
Intelligence sources say Vladimir Putin’s spies hacked the Democratic National Committee.
As the Democratic National Convention continues to storm Philadelphia this week, the unofficial and totally embarrassing opening event — Friday’s leak of nearly 20,000 emails from the party, including its top brass — is still creating a ripple effect.
Now, as the FBI investigates, a consensus over what probably happened seems to be growing: it was Russian hackers that did it. The Guardian reports that a senior official in the Obama administration said that the code used to execute the data breach points squarely at Russia. This confirms what cybersecurity experts said after Friday’s leak.
But the plot is still thickening. The New York Times reported that intelligence agencies in the U.S. believe it wasn’t rogue hackers, but Vladimir Putin’s government that is the culprit here — though the White House isn’t confirming this.
The massive trove of emails, which appeared on WikiLeaks on Friday, revealed a party bias against Democratic primary runner-up Bernie Sanders, which really pissed off his supporters. It also led to the resignation of the party’s lightning rod, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Reuters reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to avoid giving the impression he favors either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but of he has previously hailed Trump as being “very talented”.
Russian state TV, which hews closely to the Kremlin’s world view, has left little doubt however that Moscow would prefer Trump. It casts Clinton, whom Putin accused of stirring up protests against him in her role as U.S. Secretary of State in 2011, as a warmonger.
“We are again seeing these maniacal attempts to exploit the Russian theme in the U.S. election campaign,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the leaked emails.
Meanwhile, at a press conference on Wednesday, Trump seemed to call for Russia to find and release Clinton’s emails from while she was secretary of state — 30,000 of which were deemed personal by Clinton, and not handed over from her personal server.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” Trump said.
Stay tuned as this email intrigue continues…
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