says US could strike back on cyber

presidential election, his strongest suggestion to date that Putin had been well aware of campaign email hacking.

they do to us, we can potentially do to them, Obama declared.

Caught in the middle of a post election controversy over Russian hacking, Obama strongly defended his administration response, including his refusal before the voting to ascribe motive to the meddling or to discuss now what effect it might have had. intelligence assessments say it was aimed at least in part on helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, and some Democrats say it may well have tipped the results in his favor. elections. will be vulnerable to foreign influence.

Reagan would roll over in his grave, Obama said as he closed out the year at a White House news conference. Afterward he left for the family annual vacation in Hawaii.

Obama declined to state explicitly that Putin knew about the email hacking that roiled the presidential race, but he left no doubt who he felt was responsible. intelligence assessment this happened at the highest levels of the Russian government. said he confronted Putin in September, telling the former KGB chief to it out. publicly pointed the finger at Russia. not see further tampering after that date.

The president has promised a yet unspecified response to the hacking of the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign chairman. Emails stolen during the campaign were released in the final weeks by WikiLeaks. On Friday, CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to employees that the FBI agrees with the CIA conclusion that Russia goal was to help Trump win.

Trump has dismissed the CIA assessment and talk about Russian hacking as while arguing both Democrats and the CIA are trying to undermine the legitimacy of his victory. He made no mention of the hacking or of Obama during the cheap jerseys latest stop on his you tour in Orlando, Florida, Friday night.

Clinton has even more directly cited Russian interference. She said Thursday night, Putin himself directed the covert cyberattacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me. Senate intelligence committee said Friday that it will conduct a bipartisan investigation and hold hearings about what led the intelligence agencies finding. committee will follow the intelligence wherever it leads, said chairman Sen.

At the same time, Rep. Devin Nunes, R Calif., chairman of the House intelligence committee, complained that his committee oversight into the hacking has been stymied because the intelligence agencies have not provided information to the committee.

Obama said he leave it to political pundits to debate the question of whether the hacking swayed the election outcome. He did, however, chide the media for that he called an with the emails that were made public during the election final stretch. response to Russia reflected a need to retaliate a thoughtful, methodical way. idea that somehow public shaming is gonna be effective, I think doesn read the thought process in Russia very well, Obama said.

Accusations of Russian election interference have heightened the already tense relationship between Washington and Moscow. Separately, Obama has blamed Russia for standing in the way of international efforts to stop the civil war in Syria, where government forces have beaten back rebels in Aleppo.

Obama said he feels for some of the suffering in Syria, but he defended his decision to avoid significant military action there. He said that while military options short of invasion were tempting, it was to do this on the cheap. he pinned the bulk of the blame on Russia, as well as Iran, for propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad.

blood and these atrocities are on their hands, he said.

Meanwhile, the president rejected any notion that the dispute over hacking was disrupting efforts to smoothly transfer power to Trump. Despite fiercely criticizing each other during the election, Obama and Trump have spoken multiple times since the campaign ended.

In a moment of self reflection, Obama http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ acknowledged he had not been able to transfer his own popularity and electoral success to other Democrats. His party is now reeling from the White House loss and failure to win back either the House or Senate.

is not something that I been able to transfer to candidates in midterms or build a sustaining organization around, Obama said. something I would have liked to have done more of, but it kind of hard to do when you dealing with a whole bunch of issues here in the White House. (c) 2017 The Associated Press. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.).