President Donald Trump responded to the stunning indictment of 12 Russians for hacking the 2016 election by blasting the ‘Deep State’ and blaming President Obama for efforts the authorities say were meant to muddy his own rival Hillary Clinton.
It was the first word from Trump on the subject since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictments of the Russians just as Trump was meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.
‘The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration,’ Trump wrote.
President Trump (pictured with First Lady Melania Trump’ arriving at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Scotland on Friday) has issued his first comment on the indictment of 12 Russians
Friday’s indictment accuses the Russians of hacking into emails belonging to Hillary Clinton (left)
‘Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?’ he added.
In another tweet, he wrote: ‘‘Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?’
None of Trump’s morning tweets mentioned ‘collusion,’ nor did a White House statement Friday night include the usual collusion denial.
The indictment reveals contacts between a Russian posing as DCLeaks with an individual who appears to be longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone.
President Trump and President Putin talk during a photo session at the APEC Summit in Vietnam on November 11, 2017. Putin has denied meddling in the election when Trump raised it before
Trump was writing from his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, where he had golf scheduled but advisors also said he would prepare for his Monday summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who according to the FBI ordered the hacking campaign.
Trump took shots at the investigators as well, and appeared to appoint to a conspiracy about a computer server owned by the Democratic National Committee in an unrelated case about an IT staffer who pleaded guilty to a banking crime.
The DNC was a victim of the hack, as the indictment lays out, when Russians targeted multiple staffers with spearfishing campaigns designed to get their passwords and information.
This building, located at 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt, Moscow, was named in the indictment as a possible base for a shadowy operation known as Unit 26165
Trump also has gone after the DNC and former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who was also a hacking victim, for allegedly failing to cooperate with the FBI or hand over their server.
Fired former FBI Director James Comey testified in January that the agency never gained access to the physical machines but were given the necessary data by the security firm CrowdStrike.
“We got the forensics from the pros that they hired which — again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute,” Comey testified.