US Blames Russia for Hacking Election, Vows Revenge

Officials: US Will Retaliate at a Time of Our Choosing

Following months of claims by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that Russia is plotting to get Donald Trump elected, the Obama Administration has today publicly endorsed the narrative that Russia was responsible for hacks against the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

Officials had long just insisted it was possible Russia was involved, and today insisted that “only” Russia’s leaders could’ve launched such hacking attacks. The significant change in tone, significantly, did not include any actual release of any evidence to that effect.

The Department of Homeland Security rather said the conclusion was reached simply because it was “consistent with Russian motivations,” and administration officials vowed to take revenge “at time and place of our choosing,” and that the public might not even know the revenge was done by the US.

Officials insisted they were confident that could ensure “a secure election” and that the American public was too resilient to allow Russian hacking to change their mind about who to vote for.

The lack of evidence for Russia’s involvement in the DNC hacks has been a matter of contention for some time now, with former government officials saying there is no way to prove that Russia was involved, let alone wholly responsible for the hacking. That the DHS only cited their presumed motive suggests that there isn’t a lot of secret evidence backing this claim even now.

Clinton’s campaign has suggested that voters should ignore any leaks that seem negative to her campaign, on the grounds that it might be from Russia, and therefore might be a lie. Despite this, the evidence that has been made public so far from the hacks has all appeared to be true, or at the very least never publicly denied by the campaign.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.