The White House on Friday declined to answer questions about how U.S. intelligence reports on Russia’s hacking into Democratic emails found their way to NBC, just hours after President-elect Trump tweeted that he wants a congressional probe into the incident.
“I can’t speak to the inner workings of the intelligence community, particularly as it relates to the compiling of this specific report,” press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday, referencing a report about Russian cyberactivity that President Obama has already reviewed. “For questions about how the intelligence community has handled specific pieces of information, you should go talk to them about that.”
Trump expressed frustration on Thursday and Friday that NBC had received details from the report before members of the intelligence community briefed him on it.
The report, which Obama commissioned in the face of allegations against Russian-backed cyber actors accused of meddling in the presidential election, is slated for release in an unclassified form later on Friday, Earnest said.
Trump has irked Democrats and hawkish Republicans by downplaying the veracity and significance of media reports related to election-related Russian hacking. Months prior to Election Day, groups associated with the Kremlin accessed Democratic inboxes and later provided private material to WikiLeaks for release, the Obama administration has said.
But Trump has equated the speculation about Russian hacking to a “witch hunt” designed to delegitimize his electoral victory.
Throughout the campaign, Trump promised to normalize relations with Moscow, which deteriorated significantly in the final years of Obama’s tenure.
