CIA director rebuked for false claim on Kremlin's election meddling
Source: Politico
CIA director rebuked for false claim on Kremlin's election meddling
Democratic critics accuse Mike Pompeo of echoing Trump that the interference didn't affect the outcome.
By MICHAEL CROWLEY 10/19/2017 06:13 PM EDT Updated 10/19/2017 09:07 PM EDT
CIA Director Mike Pompeo drew sharp criticism Thursday after wrongly stating that the U.S. intelligence community had found that Russian meddling did not tilt the 2016 presidential election.
Pompeo made the inaccurate claim at an event hosted by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank close to the Trump administration. His comments come amid growing evidence of Russian interference in last years campaign, the scale of which remains unclear.
The intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election, Pompeo said.
The intelligence community has made no such assessment. A report by the CIA and the National Security Agency released in January found that the Kremlin hacked emails and disseminated propaganda in order to help [then-candidate Donald Trumps] election chances.
But the reports authors explained that they did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/19/mike-pompeo-cia-russia-influence-election-243967