Trump suggests he sides with Assange over CIA on Russian hacking

President-elect Donald Trump continues to cast doubt on the conclusion by U.S. intelligence officials that Russia was behind the hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee. He suggested Wednesday that he believes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claims more than the CIA’s.

“Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ — why was DNC so careless?” Trump tweeted. “Also said Russians did not give him the info!”

In an interview that aired Tuesday, Assange told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Russia was not the source of the stolen documents, and that those who say otherwise are trying to delegitimize Trump’s election victory.

“They are trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate president,” Assange said in the interview, which was conducted Monday at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Assange has been living in exile for more than two years.

“We can say, we have said repeatedly over the last two months, that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party,” he told Hannity.

Despite Assange’s claims, the U.S. intelligence community has said it is certain that Russia was behind the cyberattacks that led to the WikiLeaks disclosures. Experts have also linked “Guccifer 2,” the hacker who claims to have leaked the DNC emails, to the Kremlin.

In the weeks leading up to the November election, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails from Podesta’s account.

Related: Assange: ‘Who knows’ if WikiLeaks emails swayed U.S. election?

Asked if the emails changed the outcome of the election, Assange said: “Who knows? It’s impossible to tell. But if [they] did, the accusation is that the true statements of Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, and the DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz — their true statements [are] what changed the election.”

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, leaked emails published by WikiLeaks led to the ouster of Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair.

During his mini-tweetstorm Wednesday, Trump questioned why the DNC did not have a proper “hacking defense.”

“Somebody hacked the DNC but why did they not have ‘hacking defense’ like the RNC has,” Trump wrote, “and why have they not responded to the terrible things they did and said (like giving the questions to the debate to H). A total double standard! Media, as usual, gave them a pass.”

CNN cut ties with Donna Brazile, the DNC’s acting chair, after hacked emails published by WikiLeaks revealed that she had provided questions to the Clinton campaign in advance of a town hall and debate hosted by the network during the Democratic primary.

In early December, President Obama ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review of election-season cyberattacks and asked that it be completed before he leaves office. Late last month, the administration announced sanctions against Russia in response to the Kremlin’s interference in the election — and intelligence officials said they would brief Trump on their investigation this week.

On Tuesday night, Trump claimed on Twitter that his intelligence briefing had been pushed back to Friday, calling the apparent delay “very strange.” But intelligence officials told reporters there was no delay, and that the briefing had always been scheduled for Friday.

Asked about Trump’s comments on Assange, House Speaker Paul Ryan called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a “sycophant for Russia.”

“He leaks, he steals data and compromises national security,” Ryan told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.