In the latest explosive news on the political front, the CIA has determined that Russia interfered with this year's presidential election specifically with the goal of getting Donald Trump into the Oval Office.
U.S. intelligence has been investigating such suspicions and, as reported by The Washington Post on Friday, has pinpointed individuals who provided the Russian government with the countless hacked emails that made their way to WikiLeaks throughout the course of the election.
Many of these emails came from the Democratic National Committee, including Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. However, The New York Times reports that the Russians also hacked the Republican National Committee but did not leak any of the information they discovered. Such findings suggest that Russian interference may not have been intentioned solely to undermine the U.S. electoral system, as was the previous assessment, but more specifically to help Trump win the White House.
The CIA briefed senators in a closed meeting last week, says the Post, quoting one anonymous senior official as saying, "It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected. That's the consensus view."
On Friday evening, Trump's transition team responded with the following statement dismissing the CIA's conclusion:
These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. 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'.
Sarah Lindig is the senior digital editor, overseeing special projects for Harper's Bazaar.
