Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Friday that it is possible that Russia sent out forged documents to undermine reporting on Russian hacking.
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported Thursday night that she received a seemingly official top secret document with explosive information about Russian hacking, but she said its legitimacy is suspect. She floated the possibility that Russians were putting out such documents to discredit reporting on Russia's actions and the investigation into potential Russian collusion with President Donald Trump's campaign team. Clapper granted that as a possibility Friday.
"That's certainly possible. It's well within their bag of tricks of something they might try to do," Clapper told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell.
He added that it would be in line with Russia's actions during the 2016 presidential campaign. Clapper said that he did not have any specific knowledge about the document Maddow discussed, but added that propagating phony information has been part of Russia's recent activities.
"That was one of the things they did quite aggressively in the run-up to the election, was fake news, social media trolls and the like," he said. "I don't know the source of this document. All I know about it is what I've read in the media, but that's within the realm of possibility that it came from the Russians."
The CIA, FBI, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence have said that Russia was behind hacking attacks into the Democratic National Committee and former Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's email account. Trump has downplayed the role of Russia, but he did say that he recognizes Russia was involved in some way.