Obama: I asked Putin to stop hacking after DNC leaks
President Barack Obama, offering a packed news conference a wide-ranging review of his record in office, said Friday that evidence to support the allegation of Russian hacking would not be released as it would give away information on how US intelligence worked. He stressed that the uniform intelligence assessment was that Russian cyber interference in the US election process did take place. It was conducted at the highest level, which, Obama asserted, could not have happened without Putin’s approval. At the same time, Obama stressed that the elections were over and it was now time to turn to governance.
Obama also reported that after the DNC leaks in October, he asked Vladimir Putin to stop the interference. And indeed, he said, the hacking stopped. The president called on his successor, Donald Trump, to launch an exhaustive review of foreign government tampering in the US election process, so as to prevent it happening in the future.
Answering a question on US inaction in the Syrian war, Obama said: “Short of sending large number of US troops over uninvited and without congressional approval, with Russia, a superpower, and Iran, a regional power, on the ground, we could not have made a sustainable difference, and would have brought American security in jeopardy.”