Russian President Vladimir Putin was directly involved in the Russian interference in the 2016 United States election, US intelligence officials have said, according to NBC News reports on Wednesday.
The report has come out within days after The Washington Post reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) concluded in a secret assessment that Russia was intervening in the US elections and was attempting to assist Republican candidate Donald Trump win the presidency.
The Russian efforts reportedly included hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairperson John Podesta, the emails were later provided to WikiLeaks which made the emails public.
The report states that the intelligence agencies have identified individuals associated with the Russian government who gave thousands of hacked emails from the DNC to WikiLeaks, including the ones from the Clinton campaign's chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The email leak led to her resignation from the campaign. US officials said that these individuals were part of a wider Russian operation to increase Trump's chances of winning the elections and hurt Clinton's campaign.
The NBC report stated that the intelligence officials believe that the interference in the elections came from the very top of the Russian government.
"Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said," according to NBC reports.
The report also stated:
Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.
Putin had favoured Donald Trump in the US elections, calling him "bright and talented," he however was against Clinton's candidacy and considers her as a Russian foe who incited protests in the nation after the 2011 Russian elections.
Trump, a few days ago, had dismissed the allegation by the CIA of Russian involvement saying, "I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it."
