John Kennedy Admits He Was Wrong On DNC Election Hack: 'It WAS Russia'

After a wild interview Sunday on Fox News, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) conceded Monday to CNN host Chris Cuomo that he was wrong in the earlier interview.  Russia, not Ukraine, was responsible for hacking Democratic National Committee emails before the 2016 presidential election, he clarified.

“I was wrong,” he said on CNN. “The only evidence I have, and I think it’s overwhelming, it that it was Russia who tried to hack the DNC computer. I’ve seen no indication that Ukraine tried to do it.”

Asked by Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday if he thought Russia was behind the damaging cyberattack — as the U.S. intelligence community has concluded — Kennedy falsely claimed that nobody knows. When Wallace responded that the “entire intelligence community says it was Russia,” Kennedy answered: “Right, but it could also be Ukraine.”

Kennedy, however, left some major wiggle room in his walk back. He told Cuomo he misheard Wallace as saying that “only Russia had tried to interfere in the election.” Though he believed Russia was responsible for the hack, he was reluctant to rule out Ukrainian involvement in other election interference, Kennedy explained.

But his clarification reveals how difficult it is for even one of Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters to swallow the president’s narrative that the Democrats hacked their own emails with Ukraine’s help so they could blame it on the Republicans.

Fiona Hill, a former top White House adviser on Russia, testified before the House Intelligence Committee last week that the account is a “fictional narrative being propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Check out the clip up top as Kennedy keeps explaining.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.