US intelligence believes that Russia meddled with US election to help Trump win

US INTELLIGENCE agencies believe that Russia actively interfered in last month’s election race in order to boost Donald Trump, according to reports in several leading newspapers on Saturday, December 10.

Senior administration officials quoted in the New York Times say that the CIA and other agencies have “high confidence” regarding covert hacking activity by Russia during the lead up to the controversial election, and a similar report was also published in the Washington Post.

The latter claims that hackers sent emails gleaned from the Democratic National Committee and Hilary Clinton’s campaign chief, among others, to anti-secrecy website Wikileaks, which posted them online.

Republican National Committee computers were also allegedly hacked, but the information was not released.

The Washington Post quotes an unidentified “senior US official,” who said that intelligence agencies had “identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.”

Another quote confirmed that “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favour one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.”

The latest revelations came after outgoing president, Barack Obama, on Friday ordered a full review of evidence relating to alleged Russian interference over the last three election cycles.

President-elect Trump has refuted the claims, with a statement from his transition team released on Friday asserting that “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.”