President-elect Trump met with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson Friday at Trump Tower amid rising speculation about the Russian cyberattacks that preceded Election Day.
A transition spokesman did not respond to questions about why Johnson traveled to Manhattan to meet Trump, and the Department of Homeland Security chief did not answer questions shouted to him by reporters as he left his roughly 45-minute meeting Friday morning.
Along with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Johnson’s agency was the first to blame a series of high-profile hacks on the Russian government in a joint statement made public on Oct. 7, about a month before Trump’s electoral victory.
But attention to the Russian hacking has intensified this week on the heels of a classified CIA briefing to members of Congress, in which analysts reportedly told lawmakers they had concluded the cyberattacks were driven by a desire to elect Trump over Hillary Clinton.
Trump has avoided acknowledging Russia’s role in the hacks and subsequent leaks of files from the Democratic National Committee and from the inbox of John Podesta, Clinton’s former campaign chairman.
And while there appears to be consensus among intelligence agencies as to the perpetrator of the attack, there is no agreement about the reasons why it was done. FBI agents have reportedly resisted lining up behind the CIA’s assessment, and the ODNI, which oversees 17 U.S. spy agencies, has reportedly declined to embrace its conclusion that Russia intervened specifically to help Trump.
