US blames Russia for hacking political groups

WASHINGTON -- The United States on Friday blamed Russia for hacking US political sites, an accusation immediately dismissed as "nonsense" by Moscow.

Shortly after the White House claimed in a statement that the US intelligence community was "confident" that Russia was behind recent hacking of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly dismissed the US accusation.

"Every day there are tens of thousands of attacks on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's website. Many of the attacks can be traced to the US. We're not blaming the White House or Langley every time," Peskov told Russia's Interfax news agency.

WikiLeaks in July disclosed a trove of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) staff's email accounts which appeared to discredit Democratic Party establishment's claim of neutrality in the primary season.

According to contents from the almost 20,000 emails, DNC officials who are supposed to remain neutral during the primary contest appeared to conspire against Hillary Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders, who had championed a "political revolution" electrifying millions of Democratic and independent supporters.

After the disclosure, the DNC blamed Russia for the hack of emails despite the fact that a hacker, with the name of "Guccifer 2.0" claimed responsibility for the cyber attack.