Putin on DNC breach: ‘Does it even matter who hacked this data?’

Russian leader Vladimir Putin denied that his country had any involvement in the email hacks and WikiLeaks releases that led to the resignations of several Democratic Party officials. 

{mosads}”There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it,” Putin said in an interview with Bloomberg. 

“But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.”

Putin accused presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump of playing “the anti-Russian card” and called the hacked Democratic National Committee emails uninteresting.

“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data? The important thing is the content that was given to the public,” Putin said. 

Putin and Russia have taken an unprecedented and unusual position in the U.S. presidential election. Both Trump and Clinton have accused the other of having secret ties to the country, and Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, resigned following reports questioning his ties to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. 

U.S. security experts have said Russia could be behind the cyberattacks on Democratic organizations, including one that targeted the Clinton campaign. 

In addition to the DNC hack, which led to the resignation of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has also been targeted. Wasserman Schultz, who won the Democratic primary for her House seat this week, stepped down after WikiLeaks posted documents that showed DNC bias in favor of Clinton over her challenger for the presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.).