Russia trying to influence or elections dates back to the Soviet Union, what they did here, hacking some emails and releasing them, is not a particularly fancy brand of espionage or propaganda. We were, frankly, more concerned in the run-up to the election to the possibilities of vote tampering, which we did not see evidence of and were confident that we could guard against. In the same interview, President Obama took the Russian hacking idea even further by alleging that Donald Trump in any way has direct ties to Russia.