RNC spokesman Spicer slams MSM hacks: The Russians never hacked us - FBI also reticent to jump to conclusions

Christian Datoc
The Daily Caller
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 21:58 UTC

© Getty Images

Jason Miller and Sean Spicer

Sean Spicer told CNN's Michael Smerconish Saturday morning that the reports claiming the Russian government hacked the Republican National Committee during the 2016 election are false.

On Friday, the Washington Post and New York Times ran articles detailing a CIA "assessment" U.S. Congressmen received last week.

Hill staffers briefed on the assessment claim it states with "high confidence that [Russia] hacked the DNC and the RNC."

The reports further claim that while the DNC documents were handed over to WikiLeaks for publication, the hackers "conspicuously released no documents" from the RNC breach, indicating "that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected," the Post's source explained.

Spicer, however, cast doubts on the reports Saturday, claiming that the RNC is working with separate U.S. intelligence agencies who have concluded that the RNC was not hacked.

"The intelligence is wrong," Spicer told Smerconish. "It didn't happened. We offered the New York Times conclusive proof that it didn't happen. They ignored it. They refused to look at it because it didn't fit the narrative."

"The bottom line is the intelligence is wrong," he continued. "They are writing that the conclusion they came to was based in part on the fact the RNC was hacked. It wasn't hacked. We have intelligence agencies that we worked with that are willing to sort this out."

Spicer also criticized the media — and Smerconish personally — for accusing him of lying, when he's "just trying to get the facts out there."

"Michael, the New York Times in their story said that they based their conclusion on the fact that the RNC was hacked. If the RNC was not hacked, that casts doubt on their conclusions. I don't understand why this is that difficult to understand."

Comment: CNN adds some more details to the allegations that the RNC was hacked, and quality of the CIA's "intelligence":

The FBI hasn't concluded that the RNC itself was directly breached, a law enforcement official said Sunday. FBI investigators did find that a breach of a third-party entity that held data belonging to the RNC. But the data appears to have been outdated and of little value to the hackers. The FBI also found that some conservative groups and pundits were hacked. The FBI also hasn't found conclusive evidence to show that it was done to help Trump."

At this point, there appears to have been a combination of motivations," one US law enforcement official said. "They wanted to sow discord and undermine our systems. It's clear not even the Russians thought he would win."

Officials familiar with the briefings given to Congress say the CIA assessment wasn't as definitive as has been portrayed in news reports this weekend. The agency developed new information in recent weeks, based on intelligence sources, which prompted a new assessment of the Russian hack. That assessment "leans" toward the view that the Russians were trying to hurt Clinton and help Trump. But the CIA assessment wasn't definitive, the officials said.

Part of the issue is the nature of the CIA and FBI roles in the investigation. The CIA produces raw intelligence, the FBI moves more slowly to reach conclusions based on the intelligence and other investigative work.
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And then there's the partisan views of members of Congress who have been briefed. "Some people in that briefing heard what they wanted to hear. We just gave them the facts and it's up to the policy makers to do what they want with it," a US intelligence official said.

And here's Reince Priebus explicitly denying that the RNC was hacked:

Watch Chuck lie his face off, saying that the intelligence report "conclusively" linked the hacks to Russian agents. What a tool!