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AARON MATÃ"degrees: In the empirical world in the indictment, Mifsud claims that he has ... Or Papadopoulos says that Mifsud claims he had Russian government ties, but that doesn't mean it's true.
LUKE HARDING: Well no, but a lot of very good journalists both in the U.S. and elsewhere have obviously tried to get in touch with Mr. Mifsud to kind of try and talk to him. We haven't had kind of much luck, but I think you have to kind of understand the context which is that what happened in the U.S. last year isn't divorced from other kind of Russian influence operations particularly where I sit in Europe.This is not a new move; it's kind of an old move. There's been quite a lot of Russian intelligence activity over the years including most spectacularly the murder in 2006 of a Russian dissident called Alexander Litvinenko with a radioactive cup of tea. I read a book about this case which came out in the U.S. earlier this year with a huge public inquiry. There's a sort of volume of evidence -- forensic, scientific, intelligence -- to support this. I think that this is-
AARON MATÃ"degrees: Whoa. Wait. Sorry. I'm sorry. Support what?
LUKE HARDING: To support the fact that essentially the level of espionage from Russia at the moment is comparable to Cold War levels, and I think in some ways it's going beyond. What happen [inaudible 00:08:14] influence operation [inaudible 00:08:17] how effective it was whether it pushed Donald Trump over the line but he was going to win anyway and so on. I think that Russia played role in last year's election is a matter of fact. I mean it's certainly what U.S. intelligence agencies believe. Practically everybody recognizes it apart from Donald Trump who equivocates on the subject.
AARON MATÃ"degrees: I have to tell you just because U.S. intelligence agencies say something ... And by the way, it's not even all the intelligence agencies; it's a handpicked group assembled under the outgoing president, Barack Obama, by James Clapper. They say something, but speaking of empirical evidence, they presented no empirical evidence and they still haven't. I don't understand why we're supposed to take that on faith.
LUKE HARDING: Well I mean you don't take anything on faith. I mean obviously you seek to verify and to be evidential and to kind of follow leads wherever they go, but when writing my book, I talked a lot of people, one of whom was Steele, but I talked to other sources as well. I think people who are sort of skeptical about the whole kind of Russia thesis and it sounds to me like you are one of those people-
AARON MATÃ"degrees: I am. Yes, I am.
LUKE HARDING: Yeah. Right. Don't kind of quite appreciate the nature of Vladimir Putin's state. I mean I lived there for four years. I was there for between 2007 and 2011. I was eventually kind of kicked out for writing stories about kleptocracy, about Putin's fortune, about human rights, about journalists. I'm not sure if you know, but some of my friends in Moscow who are journalists have been murdered. This is not a nice or benign regime. It's-
AARON MATÃ"degrees: [crosstalk 00:10:04] I'm certainly not arguing that Vladimir Putin is a nice person or that he has great policies, but to me though, that doesn't automatically mean that he waged a massive influence campaign that got Donald Trump elected. Part of the reason why I'm skeptical of that is that, again, there still is actual ... There's zero evidence so far. There's a lot of supposition and innuendo.
LUKE HARDING: Well I'm a journalist. I'm a storyteller. I'm not head of the CIA or the NSA, but what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France most recently when President Macron was elected.
AARON MATÃ"degrees: Well actually, Luke, that's not true. That's actually ... That's straight up not true. The French ... After that election, the French cyber intelligence agency came out and said it could have been virtually anybody.
LUKE HARDING: Yeah, if you'd let me finish, there have been attacks on the German parliament.
AARON MATÃ"degrees: Okay. [crosstalk 00:13:13] but wait, Luke. Do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed didn't happen?
LUKE HARDING: That it didn't happen? Sorry?
AARON MATÃ"degrees: Do you concede that the France, that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just claimed actually is not true?
LUKE HARDING: Well I mean that it's not true? I meant the French report was inconclusive, but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We've seen other attacks on European states as well from Russia, that they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.
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