Donald Trump’s comments about the Democratic National Committee email leaks may have discouraged Russia from further engagement in the presidential election, experts say.
“The Kremlin tries to maintain deniability in whatever it does — in Crimea, in eastern Ukraine — and so here I would [suggest] that maintaining plausible deniability will be Moscow’s goal,” Igor Zevelev, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told reporters on a conference call Thursday afternoon.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been blamed for the DNC hack after WikiLeaks released 20,000 DNC emails on Friday. The hack fed speculation that Russia has obtained the 33,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email account that the former secretary of state deleted before giving the server to federal officials, especially in light of FBI Director James Comey’s statement that the server was not secured.
Trump’s suggestion that Russia might leak those emails in advance of the November election might have helped ensure they don’t see the light of day, even assuming that Russia has obtained the emails.
“If anything, I think Moscow is worried about how badly Trump is going to damage Russia’s interests by dragging them in a very overt way into the political campaign,” American Foreign Policy Council senior fellow Wayne Merry said on the same call. “The Russians don’t want to be in a situation in which Hillary Clinton can either can win the election by running against Moscow or even become president, essentially, on an anti-Russian platform. That would be contrary to everything that Russian foreign policy has conducted in the entire post-Cold War era.”
Trump walked back his call for Russia to “find the 33,000 emails that are missing,” saying Thursday that the comment was a joke. But it’s possible that whatever leaks Putin was contemplating may already be in motion, because WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised that more DNC messages will be forthcoming.
“The assumption at the moment is that Julian Assange has them and if anybody can control Julian Assange, I don’t know who that might be,” Merry said. “Mr. Assange made it very clear when he dumped the first 20,000 that he was explicitly trying to help elect Donald Trump and damage Hillary Clinton. We know what his motives are; but what Moscow’s motives are, are not quite so clear.”
