A New York Times story published Monday on the Russian sanctions deal made in Congress over the weekend — and President Trump's response to it — relays an anecdote from an unnamed White House aide which sees Trump accepting an argument from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow could not be responsible for 2016 election meddling because Russian hackers are too competent to have their work discovered.
When "Mr. Trump met Mr. Putin in Hamburg, Germany, two weeks ago," the Times reports, Trump "emerged to tell his aides that the Russian president had offered a compelling rejoinder: Moscow's cyberoperators are so good at covert computer-network operations that if they had dipped into the Democratic National Committee's systems, they would not have been caught."
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