Trump says email hacking during election ‘could’ve been China’ or other groups

President Trump raised questions about who hacked Democrats’ email accounts in the 2016 presidential election during an interview that aired Sunday morning, suggesting it is difficult to uncover hackers unless they are caught at the time.

“Knowing something about hacking, if you don’t catch a hacker, OK, in the act, it’s very hard to say who did the hacking,” the president said on CBS’s “Face The Nation” when talking about the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race.

“With that being said, I’ll go along with Russia. Could’ve been China, could’ve been a lot of different groups.”

{mosads}During the interview, host John Dickerson asked Trump about his comments that reports of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election are a “phony story.”

“The concept of Russia with respect to us is a total phony story,” he said during the interview. “Of course, it’s a total phony story.”

Trump was further pressed on whether he thinks it’s “phony” that Russians tried to meddle in the presidential race. 

“You believe that?” Dickerson asked.

“That, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Trump responded.

“That you don’t know or you do know?” Dickerson further questioned.

“Well, I have a problem. You have [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta, who, by the way, I understand has a company with his brother in Russia. Hillary’s husband makes speeches in Russia. Hillary did a uranium deal with Russia,” he said.