Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton suggested on Sunday that reports of Russian interference in the presidential election could be a “false flag.”
“It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation,” he told Fox News’ Eric Shawn.
“The question that has to be asked is, why did the Russians run their smart intelligence service against Hillary’s server but their dumb intelligence services against the election?”
When pressed as to what he meant by a false flag operation, a term used to describe a covert action by the government that makes it look as though it was carried out by another entity, Bolton said “we just don’t know.”
In the Obama administration, intelligence has been politicized “to a very significant degree,” he said.
Bolton’s suggestion comes on the heels of a report released Friday showing that the CIA concluded Russia intervened to help get Trump elected.
Trump called the report “ridiculous” and said “it’s just another excuse” for Clinton’s loss.
Bolton questioned why, if the Russians did interfere, they left fingerprints.
“We would want to know who else might want to influence the election and why they would leave fingerprints that point to the Russians. That’s why I say, until we know more about how the intelligence community came to this conclusion, we don’t know whether it’s Russian inspired or a false flag,” he said.
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