Donald Trump says DNC's "gross negligence" allowed hacking to take place.
On Friday, a declassified report released by the U.S. intelligence officials said, in part, "we asses Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election."
The report also pointed out that Russia's campaign was aimed at helping Donald Trump, noting, "Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."
Trump, however, continues to downplay Russia's role and in a series of tweets blamed the DNC for hacking.
He said, "Gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place. The Republican National Committee had strong defense!"
Trump continued, "Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!"
He also said, "Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!"
After his intelligence briefing on Friday, Trump expressed similar views in a statement, “While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful."