McMaster says definitive proof of Russia plot
20 February, 2018
U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Saturday there was “incontrovertible” evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election, a blunt statement that shows how significantly the new criminal charges leveled by an American investigator have upended the political debate over his inquiry.
The statement by H.R. McMaster at the Munich Security Conference stood in stark contrast to Trump’s oft repeated claim that Russian interference in his election victory was a hoax.
“As you can see with the FBI indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain,” McMaster told a Russian delegate to the conference.
The detailed document presented the most compelling public evidence to date that the Russian operation was elaborate, expensive and real. Citing emails and conversations by the perpetrators of the plot, it also demonstrated that the ongoing probe may have access to explosive intelligence material gathered on the Russian operations.
McMaster also noted that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team had shown that the United States was becoming “more and more adept at tracing the origins of this espionage and subversion.”
Just minutes before, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had dismissed the indictment as “just blabber.”
“I have no response,” Lavrov said when asked for comment on the allegations. “You can publish anything, and we see those indictments multiplying, the statements multiplying.”
In Russia, news of the indictment was met with more scorn.
“There are no official claims, there is no proof for this. That’s why they are just children’s statements,” Andrei Kutskikh, the presidential envoy for international information security, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Lavrov argued that U.S. officials, including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, have said no country influenced the U.S. election results.
“Until we see the facts, everything else is just blabber. I’m sorry for this not very diplomatic expression,” Lavrov said.
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