Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Thursday echoed President Donald Trump's insistence that Russia did not seek to aid his White House bid in 2016 _ a claim directly contradicting the U.S. intelligence community's assessment of the Kremlin's election interference.
"I haven't seen any evidence" that Russian meddling was intended to help Trump, Nielsen said during an interview with NBC News' Peter Alexander at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.
Nielsen's stunning claim comes days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said outright he wanted Trump to beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because he believed the political neophyte's policies would be more friendly to the Kremlin.
Nielsen said she had not seen any evidence that Russian hackers' intentions were "to favor a particular political party."
However, the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian operatives reporting directly to Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump.
The CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency released a damning report in January 2017 that outlined the Kremlin's clear favoritism for Trump.
Putin "ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election" aiming to "denigrate Secretary Clinton" and showing a "clear preference for President-elect Trump," according to the report.
It's not the first time that Nielsen has claimed she wasn't aware of Russia's love of Trump.
In May, she said she was unaware of intelligence assessments concluding that the Kremlin was clearly playing favorites.
Nielsen on Thursday attempted to clarify her remarks, saying that Russia's efforts against the 2016 election were to "attack certain political parties ... more than others."
When pressed by Alexander, she said she agreed with the intelligence community's assessment "full stop."
"I agree with the intel community's assessment full stop _ any attack on democracy, which is what that was, whether it is successful or it is unsuccessful, is unacceptable," Nielsen said.
The DHS chief also admitted that Russia still poses a threat, especially in the upcoming midterm elections.
"I think we would be foolish to think they're not. They have the capability, they have the will. We've got to be prepared," she added.
Russia wasn't the only hot topic that Nielsen backed the President on as Alexander pressed her about the Trump administration's response to the threat of white supremacist violence.
"DHS has made a priority to focus on all forms of violence," Nielsen said, before echoing the president's much-maligned "both sides" comment regarding violent white nationalists who held a rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year that resulted in the death of a counterprotester.
"We saw, and I think we continue to learn, maybe there was different, whether it was foreign influence or different purposeful attempts to get both sides, if you will, aggressively pitted against each other," she said.
Asked whether Trump's comments drawing a moral equivalency between white nationalists and protesters made her job harder, Nielsen essentially repeated the President's controversial claim.
"It's not that one side is right, one side is wrong. Anybody that is advocating violence, we need to work to mitigate," she added.
