Everyone’s confused about Trump denying Russian hack involvementhttp://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2016/10/everyones-confused-about-trump-denying-russian-hack-involvement-217064WHAT WOULD IT TAKE, EXACTLY? — Donald Trump’s refusal to believe that Russia is linked to the recent hacks of the U.S. election process is leaving some inside the Beltway scratching their heads. House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul — a member of the GOP nominee’s national security advisory council — told the real estate mogul about Moscow’s involvement in the string of high-profile intrusions, but apparently Trump didn’t believe him. “I think he has in his mind that there’s not the proof,” McCaul said Tuesday during a Texas Tribune event in Austin. "Now he hasn't had the briefing I had, but I made it clear that in my judgment it was a nation-state."
Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is responsible for providing classified briefings to both presidential contenders, declined to specify what national security issues Trump had been told or asked about behind closed doors. “I will say, though, that policymakers have the option of listening to intelligence or not. That’s up to them,” the spy chief deadpanned, provoking laughs from the audience. Earlier, Clapper said it was his “hope that the next president, whoever it is, would continue in the tradition of the current president in allowing and encouraging truth to power. I think that is a fundamental writ of intelligence that it be presented to the president in an unpoliticized, unvarnished manner.”
