Jeremy Bash: Trump Rewarded Russia for Hacking U.S. Federal Agencies, Private Companies

EXCERPT:

BASH: "First they’ll have to do a comprehensive damage assessment. That can’t be done in hours or days. That will take weeks and months to figure out exactly what the Russians now have their hands on. And it's complicated by the fact that the Russians will be watching every single move we make in our network. They’ll literally be reading the e-mails of the I.T. and security professionals who will be responsible for this. Second, they'll have to figure out how to kick the Russians out of the network, that could take years. And third, they'll have to re-establish deterrence, Willie, because the Russians, if they have learned nothing else over four years, is that they don’t pay any consequences when they attack and Trump is on the watch. I mean think about it, Willie. They attacked the 2016 election, they paid no price. In fact, I think Trump welcomed it and I think he rewarded Russia for it. The Russians tried to attack or contemplated attacking American troops in Afghanistan, there were intelligence briefings about it, Donald Trump said absolutely nothing about it and again, he said nothing about this. So I think we have a lot of deterrence to re-establish before we try to figure out how to solve this immediate crisis."