White House suggests Donald Trump benefited from Russian election hacking

Press secretary's claim follows suggestion by ex-ambassador John Bolton the hack could have been a false flag

Barack Obama's White House has suggested that Donald Trump benefited from Russian interference in the presidential election.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said "you didn't need a security clearance" to conclude the magnate had gained from "malicious Russian cyber activity" and recalled that Mr Trump had urged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails during his campaign.

Mr Trump later clarified that he was being sarcastic.

Mr Earnest said on CNN: "He called on Russia to hack Secretary Clinton. So he certainly had a pretty good sense of whose side this cyber activity was coming down on.

"The last several weeks of the election were focused on a discussion of emails that had been hacked and leaked by the Russians.

"It was the President-elect who over the course of the campaign indicated that he thought that President Putin was a strong leader,.

"The President-elect's team, his campaign, did not make any effort to obscure this."

And after Mr Trump's team dismissed the CIA's claim that Russia was behind the election hack, Mr Earnest added: "The 17 intelligence agencies have come forward with unanimous assessment about Russia's malicious cyberactivity. I'll let you and the American people judge who's in a better position".

On Sunday John Bolton, a former US Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed that the hack could have been a false-flag operation conducted by an American source to frame Russia.

Intelligence had become "politicised" under Mr Obama, he said.