“They did with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts”
Washington: Email phishing attack on the Democratic National Committee was conducted, through which committee emails were stolen and subsequently published by WikiLeaks.
When asked about the description of Russian-led “cyber intrusions” that took place during the 2016 US election season, James Comey, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said: “There was “a massive effort to target government and non-governmental—near governmental—agencies like non-profits”
“What would be the estimate of how many entities out there the Russians specifically targeted in that time frame?” Burr media asked.
“It’s hundreds,” Comey said. “I suppose it could be more than 1,000, but it’s at least hundreds.”
Comey said he has “no doubt” that the Russian government was behind that attack.
“The FBI had been aware of ‘Russian-connected cyber intrusion’ since the late summer of 2015,” Comey said. That’s around the time of the first Republican primary debate that year, which was on Aug. 7.
“There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever,” he said. “The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. It was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government.”
“The reason this is such a big deal is we have this big messy wonderful country where we fight with everybody all the time”
“But nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about, what to vote for, except other Americans. That’s wonderful and often painful” he added.
During the hearing, Mr Comey also sent a warning to the US President, claiming he hopes there were tapes from their meeting.
He said: “I have seen the Tweet about tapes, Lordy I hope there are tapes.”
“Though the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI, by saying that the organisation was in disarray”
“That it was poorly led. The workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies plain and simple,” he concluded.