NEW YORK (AA) – Donald Trump may have become the first U.S. presidential candidate to invite cyber-spying by a foreign power when he urged Russia on Wednesday to retrieve his opponent's emails.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said in a press conference in Florida, according to media reports. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The Republican presidential nominee then repeated his request on Twitter, albeit a toned-down version: "If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!" he tweeted.
Trump has repeatedly harped on Clinton for her use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State from 2009-2013, describing her as untrustworthy.
An FBI investigation earlier this month ended with a decision not to charge the Democratic nominee in the case.
A separate email controversy took shape last week when correspondence between staff members of the Democratic Party leaked ahead of the group’s convention suggested the party’s administration was biased against Bernie Sanders, who ran unsuccessfully against Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
News reports quoted several security firms as saying they had evidence the hack, which involved external users breaking into Democratic party servers and collecting information for months, was carried out by Russian hacker groups.
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks that revealed the emails, on Monday rejected the allegations, accusing the Clinton campaign of "diversion".