Former Trump campaign adviser says he believes Russia meddled in 2016 election

A former campaign manager of US President Donald has revealed that he believes Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential elections which brought his former boss to power.

In a exclusive interview with Al Jazeera JD Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump campaign national security director conceded that Russia interfered with the polls.

“I do believe that the Russian Government interfered in the US election, so that is not a hoax to investigate that,” Gordon told Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan in front of a live audience at the Oxford Union.

“I think that Hillary Clinton as secretary of state was trying to destabilise Russia in 2014. I think that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] saw her as an enemy, and I think that he felt he wanted to attack the United States, and this is the way they did it,” Gordon said during the interview, which airs Friday at 20:00GMT.

It was “cheaper than fighting a war” with the US, he added.

However, Gordon said he does not believe Russia impacted the election as far as “swinging the vote”.

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He insisted that accusations of collusion between Russia and US President Donald Trump himself were “a hoax” and referred to it as the “witch-hunt of the century”.

“You had people doing things they should not have been doing, taking meetings they shouldn’t have taken, travelling to places they should not have travelled to, but that’s not collusion; it is poor judgment, but it’s not collusion,” Gordon said.

Trump was recently forced to eat his words after he admitted that he actually misspoke on Russian election meddling.

Trump said he accepts conclusion by intelligence officials that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election which brought him into power but he maintains that Russia’s actions had no impact on the election result.

 

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