Expelled Russian diplomats leave the U.S.

A plane waits to take Russian diplomats out of the U.S.
(Image credit: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Thirty-five Russian diplomats expelled on suspicion of spying left the U.S. on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported. One of President-elect Donald Trump's top aides, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer, said Sunday that the Obama administration's decision to kick out the officials and impose sanctions might have been an excessive response to Russia's suspected hacking of Democrats during the presidential election campaign. Spicer's comments on ABC's This Week came a day after Trump said he was skeptical about intelligence reports linking Russia to the cyberattacks, and that the Obama administration's retaliation was "unfair" if somebody else was behind the hacking.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.