Former UN ambassador in the Trump cabinet mix insists he never said Obama administration planned 'false flag' hacks to implicate Russia

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A former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is in line to be deputy secretary of state fired back on Monday against news reports that he claimed the Obama administration was secretly behind political hacking later blamed on Russia

'There are reports out that I said on Fox yesterday that I thought the Obama administration had conducted the hack into the RNC and the DNC, John Bolton said on 'Fox & Friends,' referring to the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee.

'It's typical bad reporting. I've never believed that. I didn't believe that yesterday. I don't believe it today.'

Following stories in more than a dozen other news outlets, Bolton's spokesman insisted Monday afternoon that his boss was pointing a finger at rogue nations, not a rogue White House. 

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Former UN Ambassador John Bolton (left) insisted Monday that he never pointed fingers at the Obama administration when he suggested that Russia may have been falsely implicated in a series of political hacks before the November 8 presidential election

Bolton insisted Monday afternoon that his boss was pointing a finger at rogue nations, not a rogue White House: 'It's typical bad reporting. I've never believed that'

'The Ambassador did not suggest that the Obama administration could have been behind the alleged Russian election hack,' Garrett Marquis said in a statement. 'To assume otherwise is simply an assumption and is false.'

'He has made it unambiguously clear that "false flag" is a reference to foreign entities such as China, North Korea, Iran, etc.'

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday afternoon that he could 'rule out that the United States in any way engaged in the kind of false-flag operation that a wide range of irresponsible conspiracy theorists have put forward. So we can dispense with that.'

A 'false flag' is a military or intelligence operation that is carefully crafted in order to throw suspicion on the wrong person, group or country.

A series of sophisticated hacks this year hit DNC computers, the personal email of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, and at least one email account linked to a former RNC employee.

Bolton said of the idea on Sunday: 'We just don't know. But I believe that the intelligence community has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree'

Bolton said Sunday on Fox News that 'it's not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation.'

Bolton called for a comprehensive investigation – a probe more sophisticated than a report ordered last week by President Barack Obama and expected before he leaves office on January 20.

He also insisted that telltale signs of Russian involvement in the DNC and RNC hacks were actually good reasons to believe someone else was responsible.

Bolton pointed to Hillary Clinton's infamous email server as an example.

'Let's remember what FBI Director James Comey said dealing with Hillary's home-brewed server. He said we found no direct evidence of foreign intelligence service penetration, but given the nature of this, we didn't expect to,' he said Sunday.

'Meaning, a really sophisticated foreign intelligence service would not leave any cyber fingerprints. And yet, people say they did leave cyber fingerprints in the hacks regarding our election.'

'So the question that has to be asked is, Why did the Russians run their smart intelligence service against Hillary's server, but their dumb intelligence services against the election?' he asked.

Bolton is in line to be the number-two diplomat at the State Department if current predictions hold

When the Fox interviewer asked Bolton if he was 'actually accusing someone here in this administration [...] in the intelligence community of trying to throw something,' Bolton answered: 'We just don't know.'

Then he accused the Obama White House of politicizing its intelligence operations – a claim he repeated Monday morning.

'What I do think the administration has done consistently for eight years is politicize intelligence,' he said on 'Fox & Friends.'

'As with Benghazi, where they tried to twist it that it was the Muhammad video instead of terrorists. As in the efforts in the Central Command to have junior intelligence officers modify their reports to fit the Obama narrative about terrorism.'

Bolton added on Sunday: 'I think the whole thing is called into question, which is why the notion of some kind of independent investigation becomes extremely important.

'I do think it's critical to answer the question I posed. If you think the Russians did this, then why did they leave fingerprints?'

'We would want to know who else might want to influence the election and why they would leave fingerprints that point to the Russians,' he said.

'That's why I say until we know more about how the intelligence community came to this conclusion, we don't know whether it's Russian inspired or a false flag.'