We’ve heard just about every excuse under the sun since the election regarding the Russian hacking of Democratic computers to help assure Donald Trump would be elected, and yesterday Trump spokesperson Sean Spicer even had the nerve to suggest that the media is jumping to conclusions on the matter.

So today on CNN, former CIA operative Philip Mudd told host Chris Cuomo that no one in the intelligence community doubts Russia is behind the hacking, and specifically referred to Spicer by saying:

“What the hell is that dude talking about?! His boss has come out and already drawn conclusions and said I don’t believe them. Meanwhile, on the other side, Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the intelligence community have come out and said with high confidence we say that the Russians hacked information related to the elections. I agree with the judgment and it’s not clear why they did this or that this had anything to do with swaying the election, but to say either from the Trump camp or from the government camp that we don’t know what happened and we’re going to wait for the report, do we ignore history here? I don’t get it, Chris. This is ridiculous.”

As for Trump’s assertion that “anyone” could have been behind the electronic intrusions, Mudd said that statement is also destroyed by looking at the facts:

“We’ve seen reporting, some of the hacks were seen in real time. They didn’t just gather fingerprints after the event. They were watching Russian entities or people hired by the Russians during the event. This combination of factors, passwords, language, code allowed them to go back and say we’ve seen this before. This is the Russians.”

What Trump and his lying minions are attempting to do is delegitimize the work of American intelligence agencies. But each time they try to do that they only prove their own election victory is totally illegitimate.

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org