US intelligence agencies have not provided evidence proving that Russia was eager to swing the presidential election to US President-elect Donald Trump with hacking, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said in an interview with the Washington Examiner’s weekly podcast. The excerpts of the interview were published on Jan. 3.
"There's no proof that we have from intelligence sources that I've seen that show that the Russians were directly trying to help Trump," Nunes said.
Nevertheless, he does not rule out that Russia was behind the hacking that the US intelligence agencies claim was targeting the US political structures, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and team members of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
"This is something that Hillary Clinton knew damn well when she set up her private server, that the Russians could have the capability to get into there," he said.
The speculations on hackers, who allegedly act upon Russia’s instructions, have been regularly emerging in US mass media reports over the past months. In July, WikiLeaks published emails stolen by hackers from the systems of the US Democratic National Committee (DNC). The US administration claims that Russian hackers were tied to the cyberattacks. Moscow has repeatedly denied any role in them.