Donald Trump says the DNC actually hacked itself

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Branden Camp/Getty Images)

A cybersecurity firm says the Democratic National Committee's server was hacked by people connected to Russian intelligence, but Donald Trump thinks it was an inside job.

"We believe it was the DNC that did the 'hacking' as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader," the presumptive Republican nominee said in a statement. Security experts and the DNC said the hack took place sometime in the last year, and targeted opposition research on Trump. On Wednesday, Gawker published a copy of what appears to be the DNC's anti-Trump playbook, sent to the company by a hacker who said it was one of thousands of files he took from the DNC's network.

The document is more than 200 pages long, and among other things, calls Trump a "bad businessman" and "misogynist in chief" and says he has crafted "dangerous and irresponsible policies." The information in the report "has been out there for many years," Trump said in his statement, and "much of it is false and/or entirely inaccurate."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.