Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, defended Monday his statements questioning Russia’s role in hacking aimed to influence the 2016 election.
“The President-elect receives intelligence briefings that you and I are not privy to, Anderson,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “Anderson Cooper 360.” “Additionally, he just is noting there are unnamed sources, people talking to the press, instead of attending House Intelligence committee briefings where they have been invited.”
Trump stands apart from the US intelligence community over whether Russia was behind the hacking aimed at meddling with the US election.
“It could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation,” he told reporters on New Year’s Eve. Asked to describe what undisclosed information he knew, Trump said: “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Conway said the hacks have become an issue because Democrats lost the 2016 election. She added that Trump is expected to receive an intelligence briefing this week at Trump Tower.
“What I can say is that we don’t believe that intelligence efforts should interfere into politics, certainly,” she said. “But we also don’t believe that politics should interfere with our intelligence.”
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a report last week that they said “provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence services to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the US election.”
The report added that the Russian hackers also have historically targeted “a range of US government, political, and private sector entities” using similar tactics.