Donald Trump Just Set the Table for Vladimir Putin's Next Election Hack
The president just let the Kremlin get away with hacking the 2016 campaign — opening the door to more and more Russian political attacks.
SPENCER ACKERMAN
07.07.17 3:55 PM ET
In the hours before Donald Trump’s first first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin, a Republican senator begged the president to put the screws to the Kremlin leader for Russia’s interference with the 2016 election.
“I don’t think they change the behavior until they actually have experienced some sort of pain,” said Sen. James Lankford, a member of the intelligence committee. “So my issue now is: what is the clear pain that Russia will experience based on their actions?”
Now we have the answer: None. Russia will experience no pain at all.
At the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Trump and Putin agreed to drop the subject—despite warnings by Lankford and nearly every top Western intelligence and law enforcement official that if Russia wasn’t deterred, the Kremlin’s hackers would be messing with the next election, and the one after that.
James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired, warned the Senate last month that, the Russians are “going to come for whatever [U.S. political] party they choose to try and work on behalf of. And they’re not devoted to either, in my experience. They’re just about their own advantage. And they will be back.”
Of course, Trump does not fully accept the NSA, FBI, and CIA’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election for his benefit. But in Hamburg, Trump moved from from denying as “fake news” U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia hacked the election to shaking hands with the Kremlin on laying a massive geopolitical issue to rest.
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