The Slatest

Trump Administration Hasn’t Finished, or Started, Russian Hacking Report It Said Would Be Done by Now

Donald Trump with New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft at the White House on Wednesday.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

After a much-hyped Jan. 6 meeting with U.S. intelligence officials to discuss Russia’s purported involvement in hacking Hillary Clinton-related emails, then-president-elect Trump released a statement promising that he would appoint a team that, within 90 days of his taking office, would release a plan to “aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks.” On Jan. 13, he sent some tweets suggesting that this plan would also be a “report” that got to the bottom of Russia’s role in the hacking:

It’s now been 90 days since Trump took office, so Politico checked in on the matter. They found that not only is there no report, but that neither the White House national security team nor Trump cybersecurity adviser Rudy Giuliani appear to have even been working on one:

The National Security Council would normally be involved in creating such a report. But on Wednesday, a NSC spokesperson told POLITICO that he was unaware if the NSC was in charge of compiling it, or if that responsibility fell to Giuliani — or if the report exists.

Giuliani is continuing his work talking to the private sector, but a spokesperson for the former New York City mayor confirmed that he is not involved in any 90-day report.

A White House spokeswoman claimed to Politico that “a diverse set of executives with both government and private sector expertise” are “currently are working to deliver an initial cybersecurity plan” in an effort supervised by both the NSC and—prepare yourself—vaunted Trump son-in-law/super-adviser Jared Kushner, whose portfolio also purportedly includes Iraq, Israel/Palestine, criminal justice reform, the opioid crisis, veterans’ health care, infrastructure development, and streamlining the federal bureaucracy.

The one concrete achievement the Trump administration can point to on the hacking front is this image of Giuliani at a March 7 cybersecurity event:

Ah, the ol’ Wobbly Four-Tiered Triangle of Online Impenetrability. At least we can be assured that Rudy knows his stuff.