CIA warned Obama that Putin would help Trump

The CIA warned Barack Obama in August 2016 that Russian President Vladimir Putin had hacked the Democratic Party in order to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Republican Donald Trump, according to a Washington Post report this Friday.

Suspicions against Russia have existed since July 2016, when Democratic Party messages were broadcast by WikiLeaks on the eve of the party convention.

But only now has the Washington Post revealed that the United States intelligence service warned the White House several months before Washington publicly accused on October 7, 2016, the Russian government's high ranking of having fostered electronic piracy.

And it was not until January 2017 that the United States nominally accused the Russian president of trying to destabilize the American electoral system to reduce Hillary's chances and help Republican Trump.

In August last year, according to the report, Obama armed a White House task force in secret, demanding that intelligence and security services get as much information as possible and make a list of potential reprisals, ranging from economic sanctions to Cyber ​​attacks.

According to the Post, in addition to Obama's warning directly to Putin at a meeting in China in September, CIA director John Brennan on 4 August telephoned his colleague at the Russian intelligence service, Alexander Bortnikov, A warning. On October 31, a message was sent to Moscow via a secure channel to warn that any interference in the Nov. 8 election would be unacceptable.

But Obama was wary of reacting before the election for fear that Russia would affect the vote and that those actions would be interpreted politically by Republicans as manipulating the election.

Only on December 29 did Obama authorize sanctions: the expulsion of 35 Russian spies, the end of Russian diplomatic residences in the United States and economic sanctions against the Russian secret services.

Secretly, the Democratic president also authorized a delicate joint operation between CIA, NSA and the US cyber command: the deployment of a malware code on Russian infrastructure that could be activated in case of increased tensions.

Being the Post, there is no indication that this Obama order was canceled by his successor, Trump.