GOP congressman: Russia did ‘what the media should have done’ by leaking emails

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer

A longtime Republican congressman says that Russia’s leak of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the U.S. presidential election was a public service.

“If Russia succeeded in giving the American people information that was accurate,” Arizona Rep. Trent Franks said Thursday afternoon on MSNBC, “then they merely did what the media should have done.”

Franks’ comments came shortly before the Obama administration announced sanctions against Moscow for interfering with the U.S. election.

“I’m all for doing what’s necessary to protect the election here,” Franks said. “But there’s no suggestion that Russia hacked into our voting systems or anything like that.”

In October, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian hacking of American “political organizations” like the Democratic National Committee was an attempt to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system. In a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill earlier this month, the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that it was “quite clear” that electing Donald Trump was Russia’s goal.

Related: Paul Ryan welcomes Obama’s ‘overdue’ Russia retaliation

Trump dismissed the assessment, calling it a “card” being played by the Democrats to undercut his stunning election victory.

“Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 12. “It would be called conspiracy theory!”

“Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?” Trump tweeted on Dec. 16.

On CNN, Sean Spicer, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, also suggested to Jake Tapper that the media did not scrutinize the DNC’s lack of adequate cybersecurity.

“At what point is it incumbent upon you guys in the media to ask the DNC what measures do they take to protect this? Because it seems to me there’s a lot of talk about the DNC not doing what they should have done to protect their own network servers,” Spicer said. “I’m not saying in any way shape or form, to be clear, any attempt to hack or to do anything nefarious is wrong and illegal. At some point, the question hasn’t even been asked of the DNC, ‘Did you take basic measures to protect the data that was on there?'”

But Franks’ praise of a foreign actor’s alleged cyberattack against the United States ignited a backlash on social media.

“It’s good to know what side he’s on,” Neera Tanden wrote on Twitter. “When it comes to American citizens v Russia, Franks chose Russia.”