Report: Russia hacked GOP but didn’t release info, intel agencies believe

Report: Russia hacked GOP but didn’t release info, intel agencies believe
By Elliot Smilowitz - 12-10-16 07:51 AM EST

Russian actors hacked the Republican National Committee (RNC) but chose not to publicly release the information, the New York Times reported Friday night.

The Times's story, which cited senior administration officials, came on the heels of a Washington Post report that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia intervened in the presidential election in an effort to help President-elect Donald Trump.

Documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were leaked throughout the election by WikiLeaks. The U.S. intel community has already publicly blamed Russia for hacking the DNC and sharing the information with WikiLeaks.

"We now have high confidence that they hacked the DNC and the RNC, and conspicuously released no documents" from the RNC hack, an official told the Times.

RNC officials have repeatedly insisted that the committee's accounts were never hacked. RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer disputed the Times report on Twitter:

Don't miss tomorrow's @SangerNYT exclusive interview with Elvis riding his unicorn on a rainbow with Santa https://t.co/vDUxDr81wr

— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) December 10, 2016

Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) in September told CNN that the RNC had been hacked, but shortly afterward said he misspoke and meant to say individual Republican operatives had been hacked.

The Times report was published shortly after the Post's story, which said a secret CIA assessment determined that Russia's goal was specifically to elect Trump, rather than just to generally disrupt or undermine the U.S. election.

"It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected," a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators told the Post. "That's the consensus view."

Trump's team dismissed the Post report in a statement late Friday.

"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again,'" the Trump transition said.