Republican presidential candidate has been accused of encouraging Russian espionage against the United States
DONALD Trump has been accused of treason after he called on Russian hackers to take down his opponent Hillary Clinton during a bizarre press conference.
Staring directly into the television cameras, the Republican Party’s candidate in the race for the White House made an appeal to Russia.
Referring to the emails that were not handed over to investigators from his rival’s private email server, he said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
“I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
When asked if he was concerned that he was seemingly encouraging another nation to cyberspy on an American political party, he said: “It gives me no pause. If Russia or China or any of those country gets those emails, I’ve got to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.”
Clinton's campaign claims what Donald Trump said today about Russia hacking into his rival's emails is a national security issue
His call for a Russian cyberstrike at a press conference in Miami comes just days after Russia was accused of meddling in the American presidential election.
Shortly after his press conference event ended, Trump repeated his call on Twitter.
As we reported on Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer servers have been hacked in recent weeks by two cyber-espionage groups.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which investigated the breach, linked both groups to the Russian military-intelligence world.
Following the breaches almost 20,000 emails, where officials discussed undermining Bernie Sanders, were published by Wikileaks.
Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook claims Russian hackers leaked the emails critical of her former rival to help Donald Trump win the presidential election.
Later in today’s press conference he was asked if he was really urging a foreign nation to hack into the private email server of Clinton, or at least meddle in the nation’s elections.
Instead of answering New York Times reports he dismissed the question.
Trump said: “That’s up to the president,” before telling the questioner to “be quiet — let the president talk to them.”
The Clinton campaign has accused him of both encouraging Russian espionage against the United States and meddling in domestic politics.
Clinton’s chief foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: “This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent.
“This has gone from being a mattter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”
Trump dismissed the idea of Russia being behind the DNC hack as a conspiracy theory.
But he refused to call on the Russian president Vladimir Putin to not get involved in the American presidential election.
He said: “I’m not going to tell Putin what to do.
“Why should I tell Putin what to do?”
He said if Russia, or any other foreign government, is, in fact, behind the hack, it shows how little respect other countries have for the current government.
