President-elect Donald Trump ended the year by once again raising doubts about the country’s intelligence community and claims that Russia was responsible for the election-season hacking and said he would reveal some inside knowledge on the issue this week. Speaking to reporters before a New Year’s party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Trump said he wants to be sure intelligence agencies get to the bottom of the situation, noting they had been wrong in the past. “I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” Trump said. “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong.”
The president-elect then went on to repeat what he has said many times before—it could have been somebody else. The difference is that this time he seemed to suggest he had some new information that could shed some light on what happened. “I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation,” he said. When he was asked what it was that he knew that others don’t, Trump urged patience: “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.” He did not elaborate but the president-elect is scheduled to meet with intelligence community leaders this upcoming week to discuss the hacking, although he has previously said the country needs to “move on to bigger and better things.”
Trump also expressed broad skepticism of the safety of online communications as a whole, saying that no one should think anything they do on a computer is safe. “You know, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way,” Trump said. “Because I’ll tell you what: No computer is safe.”
Before the 800-person bash at Mar-a-Lago, Trump spent the last day of 2016 ditching the press to go play golf and wishing a “Happy New Year to all,” including his enemies and “those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.”
Trump later tweeted a far more upbeat New Year’s message in which he said he was looking forward to a “wonderful & prosperous 2017 as we work together to #MAGA.”
