Donald Trump has hit out at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for blaming Russia for the huge cyber attack.
In a swipe at Pompeo, the one-term defeated president who has had a love-type relationship with Russia and its authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin, tweeted today that China was behind the unprecedented hack on US government agencies and private sector firms, after the Secretary of State confirmed that the Kremlin was to blame.
There have been no reports of any involvement of Beijing in the cyber attack and Trump provided no information or evidence as to why he thought China may be involved.
While the nation’s cybersecurity agency has described the breach as a ‘grave threat’, Trump downplayed the hack which has compromised broad swathes of the federal government and private sector and has been described as the cyber equivalent of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He brushed off its severity claiming it ‘is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality’ and insisted that ‘everything is well under control’.
Trump also once again pushed unfounded claims of widespread fraud in the presidential election, saying without evidence that voting machines could have been hacked.
‘The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control,’ he tweeted.
‘Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).’
Meanwhile, Trump has a close relationship with Putin and has never criticized his actions where other nations have.
Trump refused to accept findings of the Mueller report that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, while his response to the recent poison attack on Putin’s opponent Alexey Navalny was that China is ‘far worse.’
He continued in a follow-up post claiming without evidence that voting machines may have been hacked and that he ‘won big’ in the election.
Twitter marked this tweet with a warning stating that ‘Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election.’
His comments come just hours after Pompeo became the first US official to publicly attribute the massive hacking campaign to Russia.
‘There was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems,’ Pompeo told The Mark Levin Show on Friday.
‘This was a very significant effort, and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.’
Even before Pompeo’s comments, Russia was thought to be behind the attack.
Several private security companies said the breach bears the hallmarks of a Kremlin operation.
Some have pointed at the Russian hacking cell dubbed ‘Cozy Bear’ – though other experts argue that the tools and methods used in the new attack are different from any past breach, making attribution tricky.
Today Republican Senator Marco Rubio also pointed the finger at Russia tweeting that: ‘The methods used to carry out the cyberhack are consistent with Russian cyber operations.’
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe on Wednesday issued a statement revealing that the breach on government agencies was ‘significant.’
‘This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government,’ he said.
Sources told CNN today that the White House had prepared a statement blaming Russia for the attack and planned to release it Friday afternoon but were ordered not to.
The insiders said the statement said Russia was responsible but that the government could not yet rule out involvement from others.
They said they were not told why the statement was not released.
His silence did not go unnoticed with Democrats in Congress blasting Trump for failing to address the issue and demanding a harsh response on the perpetrators.
‘Our nation is under assault. This cyberattack could be the largest in our history. We don’t yet know the extent of the damage, but we know that we weren’t prepared & have our work cut out for us,’ tweeted Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat Friday.
‘We can’t wait for leadership, we need it now. @realdonaldtrump, where are you?’
Crow also likened the attack to Pearl Harbour in a follow-up tweet: ‘The situation is developing, but the more I learn this could be our modern day, cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor.’
In contrast to Trump, President-elect Joe Biden issued a statement Thursday about the attack where he vowed to make cybersecurity ‘imperative’ when he takes office and said he would not ‘stand idly by’.
‘I want to be clear: My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government – and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,’ Biden said in a statement.
‘We will elevate cybersecurity as an imperative across the government, further strengthen partnerships with the private sector, and expand our investment in the infrastructure and people we need to defend against malicious cyberattacks.’
While Trump attempted to brush off the severity of the hack, his comments come direct opposition to the concerns raised by top administration officials, politicians, tech giants and cybersecurity experts.
The Cyber security and Infrastructure Security Agency said the attack posed a ‘grave risk’ to ‘critical infrastructure’ in both the public and private sector, and at all levels of government.
‘CISA has determined that this threat poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,’ the agency said Thursday.