As previously reported Obama may still be attempting to obtain a third term.
Washington (CNN) — 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 Counter terrorism 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 said the administration would be mindful of the consequences of revealing the results of their review publicly, and Schultz said they will make public “as much as we can.” All of the Democratic senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee have called on Obama to declassify intelligence on Russia’s actions during the election.
“You want to do so very attentive to not disclosing sources and methods that would impede our ability to identify and attribute malicious actors in the future,” Monaco said of disclosure.
The review is intended to be done before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Monaco said. “He expects to get a report prior to him leaving office.”
In response to the news, the Russian government called for evidence of its involvement, denying claims made by the US.
“We are also very interested in understanding what they accused Russia of,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “Many times the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Minister Lavrov have asked Americans to provide full information. But never had any response.”
The US government before the election publicly blamed senior levels of the Russian government for cyberattacks designed to influence the outcome, including hacks of Democratic groups like the Democratic National Committee.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CNN
Very interesting times we are in.