President-elect Donald Trump has continued to undermine the US Intelligence community by refuting their assertion that Russia was behind the DNC hacks during the election.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the website that posted the leaked emails, told Fox News Yesterday that the source of the leaks “ is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.” These comments spurred Trump to post more tweets belittling the US Intelligence and even tweeted quotes from Assange’s interview.
In addition, Trump also tweeted this on Tuesday: “The ‘Intelligence’ briefing on so-called “Russian hacking’ was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!”
The briefing in question, which the heads of the FBI, CIA, NSC, and the director of National Intelligence will be attending in order talk to Trump about discuss Russia’s involvement with the hacks, has in fact not been postponed, says the intelligence community. The briefing was always scheduled for Friday.
“This is is absolute madness,” said National security expert Juliette Kayyem on Boston Public Radio. Why are you undermining your intelligence community before you are even president, you are going to need them.”
Kayyem condemned Trump for putting intelligence and Russian hacking in quotes, not so subtly alluding to his distaste for US intelligence. “There is a fine line between being disruptive and eliciting chaos, this is chaos," Kayyem said.
Kayyem also found Trump’s support of Julian Assange troubling. Assange is currently living in the Ecuador Embassy in London because if he leaves, he will be arrested and prosecuted for sexual assault and rape accusations in Sweden. Kayyem also pointed to the many intelligence officers and operatives that Assange has endangered by releasing their names through WikiLeaks.
“This is who are President-elect is siding with,” said Kayyem. “This is crazy.”