Trump dismisses Russian ties to DNC email leak

Donald Trump called it laughable that Russia would aid his presidential campaign by leaking a trove of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails.

The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2016

WikiLeaks published 20,000 internal DNC emails last Friday, with some showing top officials seemingly working to undermine Bernie Sanders in his race against Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination.

{mosads}Sanders’s camp has repeatedly accused DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who announced she would resign after this week’s Democratic National Convention, of giving Clinton in an edge. 

In one May 21 email, DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote to communications director Luis Miranda about reaching out to reporters and telling them Sanders’s campaign was a “mess.”

“Specifically, [Wasserman Schultz] had to call Bernie directly in order to get the campaign to do things because they’ve either ignored or forgotten to do something critical. It’s not a DNC conspiracy, it’s because they never had their act together.”

Clinton’s campaign manager on Sunday questioned whether Russia may have been involved in the hack that stole the emails.

“What’s disturbing about this entire situation is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, took all those emails and are now leaking them out through these websites,” Robby Mook said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“It’s troubling that some experts are telling us this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” he added.

The leak comes ahead of the party’s national convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton is expected to accept the presidential nomination.