President-elect Donald Trump ripped news reports Thursday on a classified report on Russian hacking during the November election that was presented to President Barack Obama, charging it was leaked to the media because of "politics."
Trump slammed the leaks on Twitter:
President Obama ordered the report after findings by U.S. intelligence agencies that Moscow hacked into the Democratic National Committee and other party operatives in an effort to sway the election to Trump.
During the campaign, Democrat Hillary Clinton also accused the Kremlin of interfering in the election.
The 50-page classified report, details of which were also disclosed by The Washington Post, was prepared by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan.
They were expected to present their findings to Trump on Friday in New York. A declassified version is be released to the public next week.
According to The Post, the report also "catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years" — and it also discloses the "actors" who provided the stolen emails to WikiLeaks, which published them online.
The Post, in addition, reported intelligence intercepted by U.S. agencies showed senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's election victory as a win for Moscow.
The data led the intelligence community to conclude the Kremlin meddled in hopes of swaying the election to Trump, U.S. officials told The Post.
However, the officials declined to say whether that information was part of the classified report presented to President Obama.
"The Russians felt pretty good about what happened on Nov. 8 and they also felt pretty good about what they did," a senior official told The Post.
"In this case, you do learn things after the fact based on how they feel about it."
The official said the seized information heightened the intelligence community's "shifting level of confidence" of Moscow's role in the election.
Earlier Thursday, Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia's cyberattacks went beyond interference and into "activism."
"While there has been a lot of focus on the hacking, this was actually part of a multifaceted campaign that the Russians mounted," he told senators.
Clapper added The Russian Times news agency, "which is heavily . . . funded by the Russian government, was very, very active in promoting a particular line, point of view, disparaging our system . . . whatever crack they could fissure, they could find in our tapestry, if you will, they would exploit it.
"So, all of these other modes — whether as RT, use of social media, fake news — they exercised all of those capabilities in addition to the hacking," he concluded. "And, of course, I think the totality of that . . . is a grave concern."
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the committee's chairman, said "every American should be alarmed" by Russia's involvement in the election.
"What seems clear is our adversaries have reached a common conclusion that the reward for attacking America in cyberspace outweighs the risk," McCain said.
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