Trump on Election Hacking: ‘Could’ve Been China’

President Donald Trump appeared to cast doubt on the allegations that Russia was definitively behind the hacking incidents thought to have influenced the U.S. elections.

In a pre-recorded interview with CBS News’ John Dickerson that aired Sunday morning on “Face the Nation,” Dickerson asked the president if he believed that Russia was indeed responsible for alleged hacks into the DNC and Clinton campaign.

“If you don’t catch a hacker in the act, it’s very hard to say who did the hacking.”

“That, I don’t know,” said Trump.

“I have a problem [with that explanation],” said Trump. First of all, “You have [John] Podesta, who by the way I understand has a company with his brother in Russia … the FBI was not allowed by Podesta to go in and check all the records and their servers,” noted Trump.

“Number two, knowing something about hacking, if you don’t catch a hacker in the act, it’s very hard to say who did the hacking,” said President Trump. “With that being said, I’ll go along with Russia [as a possibility], could’ve been China, could’ve been a lot of different groups,” Trump said.

“We have to find out what happened, I’d love to find out what happened,” said Trump. “I can tell you one thing, it had nothing to do with us,” Trump continued. “Even my enemies on your show have said we haven’t found anything that the Trump campaign did wrong.”

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Trump’s comments came in response to Dickerson’s inquiry about a remark Trump made on Fox in which he said “Russia is a phony story.” When asked by Dickerson to clarify on Sunday, Trump responded, “the concept of Russia with respect to us is a total phony story.”

Dickerson noted that “there is agreement in the intelligence communities and other places and in investigative communities on the Hill that Russia was involved in the election.” Trump, however, did not seem entirely convinced.

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“I’m okay with that,” responded Trump. “But why didn’t Podesta and the Democrats, why didn’t they allow the FBI to inspect their server?” Not only did they refuse to allow the FBI to investigate properly, they also “hired some company, who somebody said some pretty bad things about, to go and check their server and give the information,” Trump observed.

“So they were hacked,” said Trump. “Why wouldn’t they let the FBI go in and check?”