THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT FOR 'THIS WEEK' on December 18, 2016 and it will be updated.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC HOST: Let’s take that straight to Donna Brazile, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, which took the brunt of Russia’s cyber hack. Donna, your party was hacked, some of your e-mails were included in that. Do you buy the president’s argument, or do you think he let Democrats down by not taking a stronger approach?
DONNA BRAZILE, INTERIM DNC CHAIR: Well, first of all, I’m gratified that after seven months, when it was confirmed by our side with security experts, as well as the FBI, that everyone is now taking it seriously.
This was a very intrusive process. The president’s party was hacked. Not the Democratic Party -- the president -- he is a Democrat. His party was hacked. The e-mails were weaponized. The release of stolen, hacked e-mails caused a lot of confusion and of course it disrupted our daily campaign life.
RADDATZ: So did he let Democrats down by not taking a stronger approach as it was happening?
BRAZILE: I think the Obama administration -- FBI, the various other federal agencies -- they informed us, they told us what was happening. We knew as of May. But in terms of helping us to fight -- we were fighting foreign adversary in the cyber space. The Democratic National Committee, we were not match. And yet we fought constantly. That’s why I think it’s important that Congress takes a very open approach to looking at what happened, how it evolved, what was Russia’s motives.
RADDATZ: You’re sending a letter to Congress.
BRAZILE: Yes. The Democratic Party would like to see an open independent bipartisan investigation.
RADDATZ: President Obama also said Friday that the cyber attacks stopped after he warned Putin at an international conference in September. You’ve been briefed on the party’s computer system. Is that right? They stopped?
BRAZILE: No, they did not stop. They -- they came after us absolutely every day until the end of the election. They tried to hack into our system repeatedly. We put up the very best cyber security -- what I call infrastructure to stop them, but they constantly --
RADDATZ: So why do you think the president would say that?
BRAZILE: Look, I think the president is right to call for a full investigation. Every federal agency involved should be -- should put everything on the table, and the Democratic Party will put everything on the table. They came after us daily. Hourly. And there were times when we thought they would penetrate us and we would have another breach, but we had a great --
RADDATZ: Do you think the president didn’t know they were continuing? You said they were continuing.
BRAZILE: No, when I saw the president, I was a little disappointed that, you know, we were under constant attack. We never felt comfortable. We didn’t know what was coming next. And, you know, this is not just about computers; this is harassment of individuals, it’s harassment of our candidates, harassment of our donors. We had stolen information, personal information. People were personally harassed.
RADDATZ: So are you disappointed in the president’s response?
BRAZILE: I am disappointed that we went through this process. The country went through this process --
RADDATZ: But are you disappointed in his response?
BRAZILE: You know, Martha, I don’t personally -- this was -- we were attacked by a foreign adversary, and I think it’s the responsibility of the government to help individual citizens as well as institutions, non-profits, corporations, to protect us. To help protect us.
RADDATZ: So how do you think the FBI should have handled it? "The New York Times" reported this week that the FBI reached out to the DNC starting in September 2015. So the calls weren’t even --
BRAZILE: They reached out -- it’s like going to Best Buy. You get the Geek Squad, and they’re great people by the way. They reached out to our IT vendors. But they reached us, meaning senior Democratic officials, by then it was -- you know, the Russians had been involved for a long time.
Look, we had two sitting members of Congress -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tulsi Gabbard. They are sitting members of Congress. Tulsi sets on the Armed Services. They could have easily have reached them.
RADDATZ: Do you bear any responsibilities, and the Democratic National Committee bear any responsibility because they weren’t prepared for something like this? Or even have a chain of command going from, as you say, the Geek Squad up to more senior leadership?
BRAZILE: There’s no question; I took full responsibility. Martha, I went to the Democratic convention. I spent the entire month of July, all of August, apologizing because of the leaks, stolen e-mails. I had no idea the extent of the cyber intrusion. I -- no one. Look, I didn’t grow up knowing about Fancy Bear (ph) and these other Russian actors, but once I found out, we -- we not only initiated a full and thorough investigation internally, we hired Crowdstrike, the former number three at the FBI. We instituted better cyber management within the party. So we took appropriate steps, not just to protect our infrastructure but to also warn others about what was happening to us in real time. And we also warned the Republicans.
RADDATZ: I want to turn to President-Elect Trump. In his response to this latest hack reporting this week, President-Elect Trump tweeted, "Are we talking about the same cyber attack where it was revealed that the head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?" Obviously a reference to the charge that you gave the Clinton folks questions in advance of a CNN town hall, and a CNN debate.
BRAZILE: Allegations from stolen hacked e-mails. And I have said repeatedly, CNN did not provide me with any questions, nor by the way did you provide me with any questions showing up this morning. But, again, when you think how this information was used, how the stolen hacked e-mails -- my e-mails were not hacked, by the way. I had a DNC address but my e-mails were not hacked. John Podesta’s e-mails were hacked. They were used, they were weaponized for -- to sow misinformation and to sow discord between the Clinton and Sanders campaign.
Unfortunately it happened but we should learn from this. This is why the president should tell us more before he leaves office, and also then Congress bears an enormous responsibility as well to inform the American people on this -- the involvement of the Russian government in our election process.
RADDATZ: And Donna, given that all you’ve -- all you’ve said about this hack, do you think Donald Trump’s win was legitimate?
BRAZILE: No, I was involved a close election in 2000. And it was an election where we believed that every vote should count, and every voter should matter. At the end of the day, the electors had an obligation to do their job. And George Bush won the election, and Al Gore had the most electoral -- I mean, the most popular vote.
Donald Trump used this information in ways to also sow division. I was very disappointed in his repeated usage some of the stolen information. He used it as if he received daily talking points. But that’s politics; it’s behind us. What we should focus on now is how do we protect our country from foreign intrusion? How do we protect and strengthen our democratic institutions? And how do we protect our (INAUDIBLE).
RADDATZ: Was the election legit?
BRAZILE: The election is -- was tainted by this intrusion, but --
RADDATZ: Would Hillary Clinton have own without it? Do you think?
BRAZILE: You know, I’m not going to sugarcoat what happened on Election Day. We, the Democratic Party has a lot of things that we have to do. Donald Trump cracked the blue wall, OK? He cracked the blue wall. We had a blue wall; we should’ve maintained it. We should’ve kept it. There’s no question that having a foreign adversary, a foe, interfere and to use hacked stolen e-mails and weaponize them against the Democrats, not the Republicans, not Trump, but against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the president’s party, we should be outraged by it. I know I’m still outraged by it. But I want to make sure that this never happens again, because this country deserves to have the kind of cyber security experts involved to make sure that our homeland is protected. At every stage.
RADDATZ: Thanks very much, Donna.
BRAZILE: Thank you, ma’am.
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