"If the facts are incontrovertible, then of course he'll accept that and he'll denounce it,” Anthony Scaramucci said | AP Photo Trump adviser: Trump will denounce Russian hacking if there's 'incontrovertible' proof

Americans can expect President-elect Donald Trump to denounce Russian cyberattacks launched against the U.S. electoral system, but only if the intelligence community presents “incontrovertible” proof, transition team executive committee member Anthony Scaramucci said Friday.

Trump has thus far refused to accept the consensus view of all 17 federal intelligence agencies that Russia sought to undermine last month’s presidential election with a string of cyberattacks against U.S. political targets. He and his surrogates have dismissed that assessment, made public in early October, and said that the source of those attacks remains an open question within the intelligence community. In a “Fox News Sunday” interview last weekend, Trump said the perpetrator could be Russia or China or “somebody sitting in a bed someplace.”


“I think that once we have a little bit more immersion into these details, if the facts are incontrovertible, then of course he'll accept that and he'll denounce it,” Scaramucci said in a Friday afternoon interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “Now, you tell me after more intelligence briefings and more understanding from the intelligence community that this is 100 percent true, you can be sure that there will be a denunciation by the new administration about these acts. So I’m not sure how we could be more clear about that.”

Scaramucci said Trump is “miffed” by the notion that Russian cyberattacks played any role in his surprise Election Day victory and that is why he has pushed back against reporting about it on Twitter multiple times this week. The Trump executive committee member suggested that the leaked CIA assessment that Russia sought specifically to aid Trump’s candidacy with its cyberattacks could have come from a source in the White House or elsewhere in the Democratic Party.

“We'll have time plenty of time to, if everything that's being said is 100 percent true, we'll have plenty of time to denounce it,” Scaramucci said. “I get why this is a news story. I also understand why the president-elect is miffed by it, because he’s basically saying ‘hey, we won fair and square.’ Even if they tried to hack our system, or do something to influence the election, we won anyways and it didn’t really have an impact in terms of the victory.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has said in October that President Barack Obama would retaliate against Russia for its malicious cyber activity but has declined to say whether or not that response has been carried out or to offer specifics of what is was or will be. Scaramucci said that should Obama opt to retaliate against Russia, he would only do so after informing and consulting with the president-elect.

“Here is the good news for the American people: The relationship that’s been developing between the current president and the president-elect is nothing short of fantastic. These guys actually get along well,” he said. “my guess is if there is a retaliation, the president-elect will know about it. He'll probably be offering his own advice as to what that retaliation should be and the measure of it… I'm sure that the response will be something that’s measured and appropriate to what has actually gone on.”