Obama’s Committee Concludes Russians Also Hacked RNC, But Didn’t Leak That Data

by Micah J. Fleck

President Obama assigned a special committee to gathering intelligence regarding the DNC hacks during the election season that was largely responsible for tarnishing Hillary Clinton’s image. That group of intelligence gatherers now has a conclusion: Russians did it. But not only that… They did it to the RNC, too. They just chose to protect that data and leak the DNC data instead. Which implies favoritism and manipulation were at play rather than a simple desire for transparency out of the U.S. government.

According to The New York Times:

American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.

They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.

In the months before the election, it was largely documents from Democratic Party systems that were leaked to the public. Intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russians gave the Democrats’ documents to WikiLeaks.

Republicans have a different explanation for why no documents from their networks were ever released. Over the past several months, officials from the Republican committee have consistently said that their networks were not compromised, asserting that only the accounts of individual Republicans were attacked. On Friday, a senior committee official said he had no comment.

Mr. Trump’s transition office issued a statement Friday evening reflecting the deep divisions that emerged between his campaign and the intelligence agencies over Russian meddling in the election. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Are we really surprised at this response? Even if the proof were handed right to the president-elect, he would likely deny its implications. And so, regardless of what we have likely found out today, the election is over. And Trump will reign.