CIA Director Mike Pompeo was reportedly urged by President Donald Trump to meet with a conspiracy theorist who claims Russia didn’t hack the DNC in 2016. The former intelligence official was among those whose assertions counter the findings of intelligence agencies investigating the presidential election hacking, Business Insider reports.
The former NSA official further claimed that the Democratic National Committee’s emails were not released as a result of a hack but due to an inside job. Pompeo’s meeting with William Binney took place in late October, allegedly at the request of the president. Binney maintained that it was Trump who urged Pompeo to arrange the meeting in order for him to learn the facts.
Binney also talked to Pompeo about the deceased DNC employee, Seth Rich, who, he claimed, was killed on the orders of Clinton’s campaign. This conspiracy theory was also referenced by Donald Trump Jr in a Sunday tweet.
In the memo Binney and his colleagues wrote, they claim the DNC data was stolen by someone on the east coast of the United States, not through a remote internet hack. These claims contradict the findings of the four intelligence agencies which investigated the matter and came to the conclusion that the DNC’s servers were breached by a Russian hacker, known as Guccifer 2.0.
Even some of the members of the group which compiled the memo refused to sign it in the end and signed an opposing memo in which they state the “troubling questions about its conclusions” as the reason for that.
The CIA commented on the meeting, saying that “stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment,” which confirms Russia’s interference with the election, CNN reports.
Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Russia had nothing to do with the outcome of the election. A former CIA officer said it would be “crazy” to deny what several intelligence agencies have confirmed, comparing it to saying “the Japanese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor.”
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