Trump Shrugs Off New Suspected Hack of Documents by Russia

President Donald Trump was asked on Wednesday about the recent hack of a computer system that holds highly sensitive federal court documents. Russia is suspected to be behind the attack, as the New York Times first reported on Tuesday. But Trump doesn’t seem to think it was a big deal, even as the president prepares to meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Trump was asked by a reporter if he would bring up the hack when he meets Putin in Alaska on Friday. “I guess I could,” Trump replied without committing to anything. “Are you surprised, you know? Are you surprised they hack in? That’s what they do.”

Trump went on to say, “They’re good at it. We’re good at it. We’re actually better at it, but, no, I have heard about it. I have heard about it.” The president has a long history of brushing off attacks on the U.S. as insignificant because America has done the same kinds of things to its adversaries. And while that’s true, it’s not the kind of thing U.S. presidents typically say to excuse attacks on the U.S. and subsequent inaction.

Trump recently went so far as to admit that he gave Iran permission to bomb a U.S. base in Qatar, suggesting that’s just the kind of thing that should be allowed. “They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine,” Trump said during a press conference in June. “And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners.” It’s easy to imagine how Republicans would’ve responded if a president like Barack Obama or Joe Biden gave another country a green light to attack the U.S.

The New York Times describes the hack of the federal court records as a “yearslong effort,” and it’s not clear which specific entity may have been involved. It’s also not clear if any countries besides Russia or known hacking groups may have contributed to the effort. An internal memo to the U.S. Department of Justice from system administrators of the system, known as PACER, describes the hack as “persistent and sophisticated,” compromising “sealed records” that are not otherwise available to the public.

The compromised records come from court districts in a variety of states, including New York, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Arkansas, according to the Times. The attempts to infiltrate the federal court records system date to at least January 2021, according to a press release from that era. That release was published on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of Trump’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol, though it’s not clear if the attacks are in any way related to Russia’s preference for Trump as president. Russia was not named as the entity trying to access sensitive court documents at the time, but the Times reports that federal law enforcement officials believed Russia was behind it.

Trump is scheduled to meet with Putin on Friday, though he accidentally said he was going to Russia during a press conference on Tuesday: “You know, I’m going to see Putin. I’m going to Russia on Friday. I don’t like being up here, talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once-beautiful capital [is].”

Trump, whose mind often seems to be slipping (he referred to St. Petersburg as “Leningrad” on Wednesday), is actually meeting the Russian leader at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. The presidents will be discussing ways to end the war in Ukraine, which has been raging ever since Russia first invaded in early 2022. Trump promised to stop the war even before he was sworn into office, though that obviously didn’t happen.

Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would request that Putin stop bombing civilians, to which he replied “No,” insisting that he’d already had that discussion with the Russian leader. President Trump instead insisted that he was just going to end the war, something he described as “Biden’s war,” as he often does to escape accountability for his failure to bring an end to the conflict.

Trump then pivoted to talking about what he called the “Russia hoax,” a reference to the extensive contacts his campaign had with Russian operatives in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election and subsequent investigations. By his own admission, Putin wanted Trump to become president, something Trump has denied so frequently that many apolitical observers assume it must be true. Trump had even publicly encouraged Putin to hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails in July of 2016, something the Russians eventually did successfully.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had a call with Trump and European leaders on Wednesday morning before Trump’s press conference at the Kennedy Center. Zelensky has been excluded from the Friday meeting with Putin, but Trump said that he’ll include Ukraine in the discussions if it goes well.

“If the first one goes okay, we’ll have a quick second one,” Trump said. “I would like to do it almost immediately, and we’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky, and myself, if they’d like to have me there.”