Cheney says Russia's election cyber attacks possibly an "act of war"
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has no doubts about President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, but still thinks there was Russian meddling in the election that must be investigated.
“There’s not any argument at this stage that somehow the election of President Trump was not legitimate, but there’s no question that there was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic, fundamental democratic processes,” Cheney said.
“In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war,” he added, in remarks at the Economic Times’ Global Business Summit in New Delhi Monday.
Cheney also said his comments “don’t speak for anybody else” and “are very much my own.”
The former vice president also referred to Russian cyber attacks carried out against Baltic states like in Estonia in 2007.
“I would not underestimate the weight that we as Americans assign to the Russian attempts to interfere with our internal political processes,” he said.
The former vice president’s remarks came as House and Senate investigations are probing the communications between Trump staffers, as well as the alleged hacking of DNC emails during the 2016 election.
In a testimony last Monday for the House Intelligence Committee, FBI Director James Comey said that the agency had been investigating Russian involvement in the election since July.
And in December, counterintelligence sources confirmed to CBS News that Russian actors willfully used cyber attacks to influence the election in favor of President Donald Trump.
The White House has dismissed the claim and has publicly attempted to distance itself from the issue.