Carter Page, John Bolton and more bolstered president-elect’s claims, saying US intelligence agencies’ findings were ‘a lot of speculation’ and could be a ‘false flag’

Some Donald Trump loyalists have bolstered the president-elect’s unsupported claims that US intelligence agencies could be perpetuating a “conspiracy theory” after they reportedly concluded that Russia interfered with the presidential election and strengthened Trump’s run for the White House.

CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election, say reports Read more

On Sunday, Trump dismissed reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times, which stated the CIA had “high confidence” that Russia had interfered with the election, as “ridiculous” and “another excuse” for his surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in November.

The president-elect followed up these remarks with a series of tweets, in which he argued: “Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!”

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!

On Monday, Carter Page, a former foreign affairs adviser to Trump who was reportedly investigated by the FBI over his close ties to the Russian government, told an audience at the Sputnik news agency headquarters in Moscow that such claims were “a lot of speculation”.

Answering questions after a presentation titled “Departing from hypocrisy: potential strategies in the era of global economic stagnation, security threats and fake news”, Page said: “Although there’s a lot of purported evidence that may or may not be out there, there’s nothing hard that really pointed in that direction.

“And the security experts, having worked in the Pentagon and knowing a lot of people both from the technology standpoint but also from a national security standpoint and discussing this issue with them, it’s very easy to make it look exactly like it was country X, in this case Russia, that did this, but so I think that’s very much overestimated.”

Asked if he was suggesting the hacks were a setup made to look as if Russia was behind it, Page said: “It very well could have been.”

“I’ve talked with various IT experts that suggest that that could be a serious possibility, and these guys are pros that can make certain paths that can mislead, and we’ve seen many mistakes from an intelligence standpoint previously,” he said.

Page’s comments were mirrored by John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and one of those reportedly in the running to become secretary of state in the Trump administration, who told Fox News on Sunday that claims Russia had interfered with the election could be a “false flag”.

“It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC was not a false flag operation,” Bolton said.

Bolton continued then hinted, without citing any evidence, that the Obama administration could be responsible for perpetuating the claim.

“I believe that intelligence has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree,” Bolton added.

Mitch McConnell backs Russia election hack inquiry, but scope remains vague Read more

Alex Jones, the notorious conspiracy theorist who has claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” and that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, also lent support to Trump’s claims on Monday. The InfoWars founder, whose support the president-elect actively sought during the campaign, tweeted: “Absolutely no evidence has been produced to substantiate the conspiracy theory,” with a link to an article on his website, written by a contributor, which argued the CIA’s conclusions were an “ongoing effect by detractors on the left”.

On Monday, the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, opened the door to a bipartisan congressional investigation into Russia’s alleged interference, which Senate Democrats and some in the GOP have been pushing for.

“Any foreign breach of our cybersecurity measures is disturbing and I strongly condemn any such efforts,” McConnell said. “This simply cannot be a partisan issue.”

But the senator from Kentucky refused to engage with Trump’s attack on the CIA and did not offer clear details of what the inquiry would entail.