Foreign

President Barack Obama Orders ‘full review’ into US Election Hacking

Published

8 years ago

December 9, 2016

President Barack Obama has ordered a full review into hacking by the Russians aimed at influencing US elections going back to 2008, the White House said Friday.

“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 said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters Friday. “This is consistent with the work that we did over the summer to engage Congress on the threats that we were seeing.”

White House spokesman Eric Schultz added later that the review would encompass malicious cyber activity related to US elections going back to 2008.

Monaco told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, D.C., that intelligence officials will conduct a full review before Jan. 20 that will be submitted to members of Congress. Monaco did not offer many details about the review, but said it would “capture lessons learned and … report from a range of stakeholders to include their comments,” The Hill reports.

The U.S. intelligence community has said the hacks on the emails of the Democratic National Committee were carried about by Russian agents in the midst of the 2016 election. President-elect Donald Trump has not said directly acknowledged that there was Russian interference. “I don’t believe they interfered,” Trump said in a recent interview with TIME for 2016 Person of the Year . “It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

Officials on both sides of the aisle, however, have called for a thorough investigation into Russia’s actions. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said this week he’ll be leading an investigation.

“It’s pretty clear to me that Wikileaks was designed to hurt [Hillary] Clinton and it could be us tomorrow,” Graham told CNN this week. “I’m going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia.”