Russian Officials Celebrated Trump Win; Report ID’s Who Transferred the Data to Wikileaks
More, from the Washington Post’s original story: “The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House. Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of “actors” involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.”
Here’s former CIA director Leon Panetta in an interview on TODAY: “In an exclusive interview with TODAY’s Matt Lauer, former CIA director Leon Panetta said Donald Trump’s criticism of the intelligence community should be done privately “in the confines of the Oval Office” instead of questioning its veracity on social media. ‘The fact that the president-elect is tweeting on this issue and taking it to the public, and in many ways undermining the credibility of the very intelligence agencies that have to provide information to him in order for him to be president of the United States, this is just unheard of and unprecedented’ he told Matt. ‘I think we all have to be concerned about this. This is not the kind of bickering that ought to be going on in public.’”
The Wall Street Journal reports James Comey will be among the group briefing Trump today.
More: First Read’s Morning Clips: Russian Officials Celebrated Trump Win