Washington - The FBI has no evidence that
Russia successfully hacked President-elect Donald Trump's
campaign or the Republican National Committee (RNC), Federal
Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said on Tuesday.
Testifying before Congress for the first time since Trump
defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, Comey declined to
answer a question about whether the FBI was investigating the
possibility of links between Trump associates and Russia.
US intelligence agencies on Friday released an assessment
that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help
Republican Trump's electoral chances by discrediting Clinton in
the 2016 campaign.
The report, which omitted classified details, was the U.S.
government's starkest public description of what it says was an
Russian campaign to manipulate the American electoral process.
Russian authorities have denied interfering in the election.
"We did not develop any evidence that the Trump campaign, or
the current RNC, was successfully hacked," Comey told lawmakers.
He said there was evidence Russia hacked Republican
state-level political campaigns and "old" email domains that the
RNC was no longer using. While it collected some information
from these hacks, Russia did not publicly release it, he said.
In contrast, Friday's report assessed that Russian military
intelligence used intermediaries such as WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com
and the Guccifer 2.0 "persona" to release emails that it had
acquired from the Democratic National Committee and top
Democrats as part of the effort to help Trump and harm Clinton.