WASHINGTON �� Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump's repeated praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his reaction to the hack of Democratic Party computer systems, including some attacks tied to Russia, raises national security issues and show he's unfit to be president.
Trump backed away from his remarks, including a suggestion that Russian intelligence agencies look for emails from Clinton's private server, only after a backlash from national figures in both parties, the Democratic presidential nominee said in a recorded interview shown on Fox News Sunday.
"Laying out the facts raises serious issues about Russian interference in our elections, in our democracy. We would not tolerate that from any other country, particularly one with which we have adversarial position," Clinton said. "And for Trump to both encourage that and to praise Putin despite what appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect the election, I think raises national security issues."
Hacking attacks on Democratic organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, have roiled the 2016 campaign. The disclosure by WikiLeaks of purloined party emails forced Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the DNC, to resign as Democrats gathered for their presidential convention last week. The breach has stirred allegations that Russia is seeking to meddle in the U.S. election, an assertion Russian officials have repeatedly denied.
Clinton laid blame for the hack directly on Russia: "We know that Russian intelligence services, which are part of the Russian government �� which is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin �� hacked into the DNC. And we know that they arranged for a lot of those e-mails to be released," she said.
Trump last week urged Russia to make public "30,000 emails that are missing" from the private server that Clinton maintained when she was secretary of state. He later said he was being "sarcastic."
Clinton said Trump has "shown a very troubling" tendency to praise Putin and noted that he's also suggested that as president he might not come to the aid of NATO allies that aren't fulfilling their defense commitments. Trump has also said he would look at lifting sanctions against Russia imposed after its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.
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(Anna Edney contributed to this report.)
