John Bolton: Russian Hacks Might Be ‘False Flag’

John Bolton, the hawkish former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations expected to be announced as Trump’s pick for deputy secretary of State, questioned this weekend whether the reports of pre-election hacking attacks on the Democratic National Committee were a “false flag” operation. “It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the [Republican National Committee] was not a false-flag operation,” he told Fox News host Eric Shawn on Sunday. “We just don’t know,” he continued when asked if he was accusing the U.S. government of involvement. “I believe that intelligence has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree,” he added. Later in the day, Bolton reiterated his claims, telling Fox News’s Harris Faulkner it might’ve been a false flag “in the sense that the conclusion that the Russians did it is arrived at too easily.” The following morning, on Fox & Friends, Bolton repeated once again: “I think it’s at least a question to be asked, whether or not this was a false-flag operation with some foreign government other than Russia.” He now suggested that maybe China could’ve planted the hack to blame Russia, later adding the possibilities of Iran, North Korea, or, as host Brian Kilmeade suggested, “a 400-pound guy in his bed in his basement.”