On Friday the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) leaked a "secret assessment" of the 2016 election campaign, in which the agency alleged that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency.
The CIA has not divulged any proof to back up its claim, nor has US law enforcement arrested anybody in connection with the allegations.
Former UK diplomat Craig Murray, a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Radio Sputnik that the claim is a spurious attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the President-elect.
"There is no connection. From the Wikileaks side there is no connection to Russia whatsoever. Nothing came to Wikileaks from the Russian government or from any proxy for the Russian government. It's simply completely and utterly untrue."
"These weren't hacks, they were leaks by an insider, not somebody outside hacking in," Murray said.
"It's very important that those points are very clearly understood. It wasn't Russia, it was an insider who was disgusted with the corruption of the Clinton circle. Why they refuse to accept it, I'm not sure. They appear to be in complete denial. The Democratic establishment was so sure that Hillary would get in, it seems they are simply unable to come up with a rational reaction to their loss and are instead coming up with this absolute nonsense."
"If you think about it, if they really did know who the hackers are, if it was a hack, they would be taking action against these people."
For example, anonymous sources have claimed that a reputed hacker who goes by the name Guccifer 2.0, based in London, was the source of the Democratic National Convention email leak that revealed the party's nomination process was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.
"He wasn't the source of the leak, he is said to be in London. If he was the source of the leak, and was in London then by now the Americans would have had him arrested and subject to an extradition warrant as they did to Gary McKinnon and numerous other British alleged hackers recently."
"They plainly have no idea what's happening or they would be taking action against people. So the CIA is simply lying about knowing what's happening and knowing who the people are. They don't know, if they knew they would act."
"The FBI has rather more integrity. It's a domestic law enforcement agency and putting out total lies is not in the normal FBI playbook. I'm not saying it's never happened, but it's not normally how it operates whereas of course, lies and deceit are stock-in-trade for the CIA."
"It is extremely amusing for the CIA to be accusing another country of interfering in domestic elections, when interfering in other country's domestic elections on scores of occasions is what the CIA has done to effect regime change for the last 70 years so really; this is almost beyond satire."
