2016 ELECTION/CYBERWAR/INTELLIGENCE/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump took his criticism of the U.S. intelligence community abroad on Thursday [7-6-17], calling its acumen into question before an international audience in Poland.
While the president conceded that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election, he said other countries could have interfered as well, an assessment that contradicts the findings of 17 U.S. counterintelligence and security agencies.
Mr. Trump’s critique of the U.S. intelligence community came the day before his high-profile meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany. Mr. Putin has denied any interference in the campaign but has said patriotic Russian hackers could have acted on their own without state direction.
Mr. Trump’s chastisement of his country’s own intelligence capabilities in front of a foreign audience marked a rare action for a U.S. president heading into a high-profile international summit. It is the latest point of tension between Mr. Trump and the U.S. intelligence community, whose behavior he likened to that of the Nazis in a tweet ahead of his inauguration.”
-Peter Nicholas, Anton Troianovski, and Paul Sonne, “Trump Says Russia Interfered in Election, But May Not Have Acted Alone,” The Wall Street Journal online, July 6, 2017 05:57pm