"If you listen to what Mr. Trump had to say on the stump all the time, he invoked WikiLeaks dozens and dozens of times to try to suggest that WikiLeaks said there were things that Hillary Clinton was doing or had done that were untoward," CNN's Jake Tapper said to Kellyanne Conway, incoming White House counselor, in an interview Sunday. "So I guess what I'm confused about is how can you say that the hacking had no impact on the election when Mr. Trump kept invoking WikiLeaks, which was printing, publishing things that the Russians had hacked? Obviously he thought it was going to have an effect on the election."
Conway deflected, arguing President-elect Donald Trump did not and could not know the source of the leaks he cited during the campaign, and that the issue is irrelevant anyway because the leaks did not successfully influence the vote. "Even if you read The New York Times and The Washington Post, cyber experts are saying that WikiLeaks did not succeed," she said. Finally, Conway added, "with all due respect to Hillary Clinton, we didn't need WikiLeaks to convince the American people they didn't like her, didn't trust her, didn't find her to be honest. She did that all on her own."
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