Rep. Trent Franks on Friday walked back comments he made suggesting Russia hackers were only doing what the American media should have done in releasing private emails from the Democratic National Committee.
“The bottom line is if they succeeded, if Russia succeeded in giving the American people information that was accurate, then they merely did what the media should have done,” the Arizona Republican said on MSNBC on Thursday.
But in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “Wolf,” Franks argued that he has been a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and that his comment was misinterpreted.
“Those comments were completely misconstrued,” Franks told Sciutto, adding that “nobody has been harder on Russian than me.”
Franks did not elaborate further on how his comment had been misunderstood.
Meanwhile, the outspoken Republican accused the Obama administration of using the hacking to “delegitimatize the election of Donald Trump to be the president.”
“I am convinced that Barack Obama’s primary motivation is to try to delegitimize the election because the fact is the media sort of ignored the WikiLeaks releases there. The only thing they could talk about somehow was the Russian connection,” he said.
