In a press conference in Florida Wednesday, Donald Trump called on Russia to find and release emails from rival presidential candidate Hillary Clinton‘s private servers, The Guardian reports.
“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Just moments prior to this, Trump had questioned allegations that Russia was involved in hacking the email servers of the Democratic National Committee, which lead to the release of several thousand emails last week. But if they were involved, he said, it indicated that the Russian government has little respect for the US or its leadership.
“[Vladimir Putin] will respect me. He doesn’t respect our president,” Trump claimed. “If it is Russia, which it’s probably not, nobody knows who it is…it shows how little respect they have for our country when they would hack into a major party and get everything.”
Donald Trump: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”https://t.co/XHc9hh4gBt
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 27, 2016
Responding to a follow-up question as to whether Trump had any qualms about asking a foreign government to hack into servers in the US and find emails belonging to a presidential candidate, Trump contradicted his earlier statement that Russia likely was not involved, saying, “Well, they probably have them. I’d like to have them released.”
Trump is referring to several thousand emails which were deleted by Clinton and her lawyers before the launch of an investigation as to whether or not classified information had been illegally mishandled by the former Secretary of State on her private server.
Clinton claimed that the deleted emails were personal in nature and did not need to be turned over along with the other half of the roughly 60,000 emails on the server.
However, the FBI has since recovered some of the deleted emails from devices and inboxes of those who Clinton and her aides corresponded with. They concluded their investigation without recommending that any criminal charges be filed.
The emails have been turned over to the Department of State and made public in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Shortly after Trump’s comments, his running mate Mike Pence issued a more tempered statement which avoided calls for foreign espionage against a presidential candidate. “The FBI will get to the bottom of who is behind the hacking,” Pence wrote. “If it is Russia and they are interfering in our elections, I can assure you both parties and the United States government will ensure there are serious consequences.”
After the press conference, Trump reiterated this call for foreign hackers to release emails from Clinton’s private server on Twitter:
If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2016
Clinton campaign policy director Jake Sullivan later issued a response to Trump’s comments, saying, “This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
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