Trump on FBI-DNC spat: ‘What is going on?’

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday questioned why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would not fully cooperate with the FBI’s investigation of hacks into its servers.

While the DNC says the FBI never requested access to its servers after they were breached, a senior law enforcement official said the FBI repeatedly asked for access, “only to be rebuffed.” 

If the FBI itself never examined DNC servers, Trump wrote on Twitter, “how and why are they so sure about hacking”? 

“What is going on?” Trump added.

The Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

{mosads}DNC spokesman Eric Walker told BuzzFeed this week that while the DNC had several meetings with FBI agents, FBI officials “never requested access” to DNC servers.

“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (D.C.) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices,” he said, adding, “the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers.”

And according to BuzzFeed, no U.S. intelligence agency has done an independent forensics analysis on the servers. Instead, the FBI has relied on an analysis from CrowdStrike, the third-party security firm that investigated the DNC breach.

However, a senior law enforcement official on Thursday disputed the DNC’s characterization that the FBI never requested access to its servers.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,” the official said.

“This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”