U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on January 20, 2017, the White House said on Friday.
In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of acampaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the presidential election.
Mr. Obama’s homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters the report’s results would be shared with lawmakers and others.
“The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders,” she said during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the review would be a “deep dive” that would look for a pattern of such behaviour over several years during election time, dating as far back as the 2008 presidential election.
He noted that Mr. Obama wanted the review completed under his watch. “This is a major priority,” Mr. Schultz said.
During his campaign for the White House, President-elect Donald Trump called on Russia to dig up missing emails from his opponent, Hillary Clinton, from her time as Secretary of State under Mr. Obama.
He has said he is not convinced Russia was behind the attacks.
“I don’t believe they interfered,” Mr. Trump told Time magazine about Russia in an interview published this week. “That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, ‘Oh, Russia interfered.’”
Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
