On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” former UN Ambassador John Bolton stated that the alleged Russian hacking into the DNC and RNC might be a “false flag” conducted by another foreign government that left evidence pointing to Russia, and that the Obama administration has politicized intelligence.
Bolton said, “I think that, if you’re outside the circle of intelligence that’s looked at this, it’s very hard to know, but — what the answer is. But I think it’s at least a question to be asked, whether or not this was a false flag operation with some foreign government other than Russia.”
He added that the false flag he was referring to was one “Where a foreign intelligence service conducts an operation, and leaves evidence pointing the finger at somebody else.”
Bolton suggested that China, Iran, or North Kore might have done this. Bolton continued that “it’s not just what the cyber fingerprints are in a counterintelligence estimate like this, it’s political. And the question is, so why would Russia leave fingerprints that it was trying to interfere in the election? I could see Russia easily trying to undermine trust and confidence in our political system generally among Americans, but for them to be so inexpert that the trail could rapidly be taken back to them is just hard to understand.”
Bolton further stated that he didn’t think the Obama administration was responsible for the hacks, but “What I do think the administration has done consistently for eight years is politicize intelligence, as with Benghazi, where they tried to twist it that it was the Mohammed video instead of terrorists, as the efforts in the Central Command to have junior intelligence officers modify their reports to fit the Obama narrative about terrorism.” He further stated that it “makes sense” to take an outside look at the hacks, and that “It bothers me that Obama’s rushing to get this report out before his administration ends, just as it bothered me that the intelligence community seemingly came to this conclusion so quickly and coincidentally in the middle of an election campaign.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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