Trump taunts claims that Russia hacked DNC emails for him

The emails, released by activist group WikiLeaks at the weekend, appeared to show favouritism within the DNC for Clinton over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran a close race for the nomination for the November 8 election.

Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook said that analysts have concluded the hack was “perpetrated by Russian state actors” as a way to help Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz quit a few days after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails appeared to show an insider effort to destroy Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Sanders supporters charged that the DNC was biased toward Clinton, and Sanders late in the primary endorsed DNC chair Debbie Wassserman Schultz’s primary opponent in her Florida congressional race.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook believes otherwise, citing Trump’s declaration that he might not support North Atlantic Treaty Organisation nations if Russian Federation attacked, unless it fulfilled its contributions to the United States.

For its part, Wikileaks accused its critics over the weekend of being disproportionately Jewish in a series of messages sent over its Twitter account.

One email features DNC staffers pondering ways to undercut Sanders, an insurgent Democrat who had a bitter relationship with party leadership. The timing is no coincidence, Mook said.

In an interview with Tapper on July 24 Mook stated, “Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these e-mails”. The true identity of this hacker is unknown, but some analysts suggest that he may have Russian ties. He called it outrageous, and reiterated his call for reform at the party.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said US officials have seen indications of foreign hackers spying on the presidential candidates, and that they expect more cyberthreats against the campaigns.

John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, said Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “what we have is a kind of bromance going on between Putin and Trump which is distinct from this leak”.

Donald Trump Jr., the son of the Republican nominee, also bashed Mook’s comments later on “State of the Union”. Paul Manafort, who runs the Trump campaign, responded that this was “pure obfuscation”. Decades-old American foreign policy is driven by an “often-hypocritical focus on democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change”, he told the Russian crowd, questioning the authenticity of U.S. democracy itself: “It’s not always as liberal as it may seem”.

It’s a boost for the Clinton camp, which wants to rack up support from moderate republicans troubled by Mr Trump’s hardline policies.

Last week, Trump told The New York Times that if he becomes president, he might not back up North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies coming under attack from Russian Federation unless he was sure those countries has paid enough money to the alliance.

In this case, the fact that the Clinton camp is pushing this theory for political cover shouldn’t lead you to dismiss the likelihood that Russian hackers are responsible.

Clinton’s campaign, citing a cybersecurity firm hired to investigate the leak, blamed Russian Federation for hacking the party’s computers and suggested the goal was to benefit Donald Trump’s campaign.

“It is unacceptable when foreign money is pumped into election processes”, he said. Trump has been praised by all the major ones – Britain’s UKIP, France’s National Front, the Dutch Party for Freedom and Hungary’s Jobbik. “Tonight, you’ll be talking about Michelle Obama, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren”.