Could the key to the election be through the keyboard? NBC confirms a Washington Post report that the CIA believes Russian hackers tried to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump.
"It's a new kind of problem," Dr. Norman Provizer, Metropolitan State University of Denver political science professor said.
According to NBC News, hackers from Russia stole and distributed information taken from computers within the Democratic National Headquarters. NBC News reports that the hackers also obtained information from the Republican National Headquarters, but did not distribute it.
"The irony is computers have made us very strong and very vulnerable all at the same time," Provizer said.
A source told NBC news the CIA reports are based on intercepted communications, tips from sources, and computer forensics.
Provizer says there's real way to tell if anything like this could have changed the results of the election.
"But. it's something clearly you'd want to look into. It has enormously serious implications," Provizer said.
Trump responded by blasting the intelligence community.
"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Trump said in a statement. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again'."
Provizer says Trump's response is intriguing.
"It's kind of demeaning the agencies that are producing the information by bringing up past failures and that's very typical," Provizer said. "And, this election was one of the greatest electoral colleges in history? Nothing could be further from the truth."
Russian President Vladimir Putin denies the allegations that his government was involved in any of this. Provizer says whether or not the CIA reports are true, he believes the threat of "cyber warfare" is very real.
"Hacking is a part of life and there's no reason to believe that it wouldn't enter into the political sphere as well as the business sphere," Provizer said. "And, if you have concentrated efforts from major actors, you've got a serious issue."
Leaders from both the Democratic and Republican parties have called for a full-scale investigation into these allegations.
