Comey: The Russians ‘were unusually loud in their intervention — it’s almost as if they wanted us to know’

Russia’s intervention in the US election was “unusually loud,” FBI Director James Comey said during a hearing on Monday before the House Intelligence Committee on the Russian efforts to undermine Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“They were unusually loud in their intervention,” Comey said when asked by Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida what the Russians did in the 2016 presidential race that they hadn’t done before.

“It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew,” he said.

Comey suggested that Russia may have wanted the US government to tell the public what Russia was doing, so as to “amplify” its efforts.

“Their loudness, in a way, would be counting on us to amplify it by telling the American people what we saw and freaking people out about how the Russians might be undermining our elections successfully,” Comey said.

Many cybersecurity and Russia experts share the view that the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign throughout the election was highly conspicuous.

Digital footprints were left on the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta hacks, which were sloppy and easy to link back to the Kremlin, as state-sponsored Russian news agencies like Russia Today and Sputnik openly backed Donald Trump.

 

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Featured image courtesy of Reuters.