CIAâu00c2u0080u00c2u0088concludes that Russia interfered in 2016 US elections to promote Trump
President-elect Donald Trump in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pic/AFP
Washington: has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
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Citing US officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
"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 Post quoted a senior US official as saying
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The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the CIA to key US senators behind closed-doors last week.
However, Trump has said he is not convinced Russia was behind the cyber attacks. The CIA presentation fell short of a formal US assessment by all 17 US intelligence agencies, it said. A senior US official said there remained minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the assessment because some questions are unanswered.