The

Russian government The Government of Russia exercises executive power in the Russian Federation. The members of the government are the prime minister, the deputy prime ministers, and the federal ministers. It has its legal basis in the Constitution of the Russia ...

interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

, boosting the candidacy of

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the

U.S. intelligence community The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, the operation—code named Project Lakhta—was ordered directly by Russian president

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates. The

Internet Research Agency The Internet Research Agency (IRA; russian: Агентство интернет-исследований, translit=Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy), also known as ''Glavset'' (russian: link=no, Главсеть) and known in Russian Internet sla ...

(IRA), based in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and described as a

troll farm A troll farm or troll factory is an institutionalised group of internet trolls that seeks to interfere in political opinions and decision-making. One study showed that 30 governments worldwide (out of 65 covered by the study) paid keyboard armies ...

, created thousands of

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

accounts that purported to be Americans supporting radical political groups and planned or promoted events in support of Trump and against Clinton. They reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017. Fabricated articles and disinformation were spread from Russian government-controlled media, and promoted on social media. Additionally,

computer hackers A security hacker is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge ...

affiliated with the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) infiltrated information systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Clinton campaign officials, notably chairman

John Podesta John David Podesta Jr. (born January 8, 1949) is an American Political consulting, political consultant who has served as Senior Advisor to the President of the United States, Senior Advisor to President Joe Biden for clean energy innovation an ...

, and publicly released stolen files and emails through

DCLeaks DCLeaks (also known as DC Leaks) was a website that was established in June 2016. It was responsible for publishing leaks of emails belonging to multiple prominent figures in the United States government and military. Cybersecurity research firms d ...

Guccifer 2.0 "Guccifer 2.0" is a persona which claimed to be the hacker(s) who gained unauthorized access to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network and then leaked its documents to the media, the website WikiLeaks, and a conference event. S ...

and

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...

during the election campaign. Several individuals connected to Russia contacted various Trump campaign associates, offering business opportunities to the

Trump Organization Trump most commonly refers to: * Donald Trump (born 1946), 45th president of the United States (2017–2021) * Trump (card games), any playing card given an ad-hoc high rank Trump may also refer to: Businesses and organizations * Donald J. ...

and proffering damaging information on Clinton. Russian government officials have denied involvement in any of the hacks or leaks. Russian interference activities triggered strong statements from

United States intelligence agencies United may refer to: Places * United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community Arts and entertainment Films * ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film * ''United'' (2011 film), a BBC Two f ...

, a direct warning by then-U.S. president

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

to Russian president

, renewed

economic sanctions Economic sanctions are commercial and financial penalties applied by one or more countries against a targeted self-governing state, group, or individual. Economic sanctions are not necessarily imposed because of economic circumstances—they ma ...

against Russia, and closures of Russian diplomatic facilities and expulsion of their staff. The

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

and

House Intelligence Committee The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Adam Schiff. It is the primary committ ...

s conducted their own investigations into the matter. Trump denied the interference had occurred, contending that it was a "hoax" perpetrated by the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

to explain Clinton's loss. The

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

(FBI) opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Russian interference in July 2016, including a special focus on links between Trump associates and Russian officials and suspected coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Russian attempts to interfere in the election were first disclosed publicly by members of the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

in September 2016, confirmed by US intelligence agencies in October 2016, and further detailed by the Director of National Intelligence office in January 2017. The

dismissal of James Comey James Comey, the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump on May 9, 2017. Comey had been criticized in 2016 for his handling of the FBI's investigation of the Hillary Clinton email ...

, the FBI director, by President Trump in May 2017, was partly because of Comey's investigation of the Russian interference. The FBI's work was taken over in May 2017 by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who led a

Special Counsel investigation In the United States, a special counsel (formerly called special prosecutor or independent counsel) is a lawyer appointed to Criminal investigation, investigate, and potentially prosecution, prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing fo ...

until March 2019. Mueller concluded that Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he indicted twenty-six Russian citizens and three Russian organizations. The investigation also led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans, on unrelated charges. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019. The committee concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed". The first volume also concluded that the assessment was "proper", learning from analysts that there was "no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions". The final and fifth volume, which was the result of three years of investigations, was released in August 2020, ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries." The Committee report found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers. In November 2020, newly released passages from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report indicated that "Although WikiLeaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone—a close associate to Donald Trump—appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators ‘did not have sufficient evidence’ to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing."

Background and Russian actors

Prior Russian election interference in Ukraine

The May 2014

Ukrainian presidential election Ukrainian presidential elections determine who will serve as the President of Ukraine for the next five years. Since the establishment of the position of the President of Ukraine in 1991, the presidential elections have taken place seven times: i ...

was disrupted by cyberattacks over several days, including the release of hacked emails, attempted alteration of vote tallies, and distributed denial-of-service attacks to delay the final result. They were found to have been launched by pro-Russian hackers. Malware that would have displayed a graphic declaring far-right candidate

Dmytro Yarosh Dmytro Anatoliyovych Yarosh ( uk, Дмитро Анатолійович Я́рош; born 30 September 1971) is a Ukrainian activist, politician, nationalist and military commander who is the main commander of the Right Sector's Ukrainian Vol ...

the electoral winner was removed from Ukraine's Central Election Commission less than an hour before polls closed. Despite this,

Channel One Russia Channel One ( rus, Первый канал, r=Pervyy kanal, p=ˈpʲervɨj kɐˈnal, t=First Channel) is a Russian state-controlled television channel. It is the first television channel to broadcast in the Russian Federation. Its headquarters ...

falsely reported that Yarosh had won, broadcasting the same fake graphic that had been planted on the election commission's website. Political scientist Peter Ordeshook said in 2017, "These faked results were geared for a specific audience in order to feed the Russian narrative that has claimed from the start that ultra-nationalists and

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

were behind the revolution in Ukraine." The same Sofacy malware used in the Central Election Commission hack was later found on the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Around the same time as Russia's attempt to hack the 2014 elections, the Obama administration received a report suggesting that the

Kremlin The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of th ...

was building a disinformation program which could be used to interfere in Western politics.

Vladimir Putin

In December 2016, two unidentified senior intelligence officials told several U.S. news media outlets that they were highly confident that the operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election was personally directed by

. Under Putin's direction, the goals of the operation are reported to have evolved from first undermining American trust in their own democracy to undermining Clinton's campaign, and by the fall of 2016 to directly helping Trump's campaign, possibly because Putin believed Trump would ease

. Her presidential campaign's Russia policy advisor was Richard Lourie. The officials believe Putin became personally involved after Russia accessed the DNC computers, because such an operation would require high-level government approval. White House Press Secretary

Josh Earnest Joshua Ryan Henry Earnest
''

and Obama foreign policy advisor and speechwriter Ben Rhodes agreed with this assessment, with Rhodes saying operations of this magnitude required Putin's consent. In January 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, delivered a declassified report, (representing the work of the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

, the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

and the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

) with a similar conclusion:

President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for president-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

Putin blamed Clinton for the 2011–2012 mass protests in Russia against his rule, according to the report (Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State at the time)."The top four reasons Vladimir Putin might have a grudge against Hillary Clinton"
''

National Post The ''National Post'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper available in several cities in central and western Canada. The paper is the flagship publication of Postmedia Network and is published Mondays through Saturdays, with ...

''. December 16, 2016. FBI Director

James Comey James Brien Comey Jr. (; born December 14, 1960) is an American lawyer who was the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2013 until his dismissal in May 2017. Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adul ...

also has testified that Putin disliked Clinton and preferred her opponent, and Clinton herself has accused Putin of having a grudge against her.

Michael McFaul Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963) is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul is currently the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studi ...

, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia, said the operation could be a retaliation by Putin against Clinton."Why Putin hates Hillary"
''

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...

''. July 26, 2016. Russian security expert

Andrei Soldatov Andrei Alekseyevich Soldatov (russian: Андрей Алексеевич Солдатов, born 4 October 1975 in Moscow, Russia) is a Russian investigative journalist and Russian security services expert. Together with fellow journalist Irina B ...

has said, " he Kremlinbelieves that with Clinton in the White House it will be almost impossible to lift sanctions against Russia. So it is a very important question for Putin personally. This is a question of national security." Russian officials have denied the allegations multiple times. In June 2016, Kremlin spokesman

Dmitry Peskov Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov ( rus, Дмитрий Сергеевич Песков, p=pʲɪˈskof; born 17 October 1967) is a Russian diplomat and the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin.DNC hacks. In December 2016, when U.S. intelligence officials publicly accused Putin of being directly involved in the covert operation, Russian Foreign Minister

Sergey Lavrov Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (russian: Сергей Викторович Лавров, ; born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat and politician who has served as the Foreign Minister of Russia since 2004. Lavrov served as the Permanent Represe ...

said he was "astonished" by this "nonsense". Putin also has denied any Kremlin involvement in the election campaign, though in June 2017 he told journalists that "patriotically minded" Russian

hackers A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

may have been responsible for the campaign cyberattacks against the U.S., and in 2018 he stated that he had wanted Trump to win the election "because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."

U.S. counter-disinformation team

The

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other n ...

planned to use a unit formed with the intention of combating

disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...

from the

, but it was disbanded in September 2015 after department heads missed the scope of propaganda before the 2016 U.S. election. The unit had been in development for eight months prior to being scrapped. Titled the Counter-Disinformation Team, it would have been a reboot of the

Active Measures Working Group The Interagency Active Measures Working Group was a group led by the United States Department of State and later by the United States Information Agency (USIA). The group was formed early during the Reagan administration, in 1981, as an effort to co ...

set up by the

Reagan Administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over D ...

. It was created under the Bureau of International Information Programs. Work began in 2014, with the intention of countering propaganda from Russian sources such as TV network RT (formerly called Russia Today). A beta website was ready, and staff were hired by the U.S. State Department for the unit prior to its cancellation.

U.S. Intelligence The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

officials explained to former

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

analyst and

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

officer John R. Schindler writing in ''

The New York Observer ''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper printed from 1987 to 2016, when it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainmen ...

'' (published at the time by

Jared Kushner Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to 45th U.S. president Donald Trump, his father-in-law. Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a pri ...

) that the Obama Administration decided to cancel the unit, as they were afraid of antagonizing Russia. A State Department representative told the ''International Business Times'' after being contacted regarding the closure of the unit, that the U.S. was disturbed by propaganda from Russia, and the strongest defense was sincere communication. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy

Richard Stengel Richard Allen Stengel (born May 2, 1955) is an American editor, author, and former government official. He was ''Time'' magazine's 16th managing editor from 2006 to 2013. He was also chief executive of the National Constitution Center from 2004 ...

was the point person for the unit before it was canceled. Stengel had written in 2014 that RT was engaged in a disinformation campaign about Ukraine.

Russian Institute for Strategic Studies

In April 2017,

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

cited several unnamed U.S. officials as having stated that the

Russian Institute for Strategic Studies The Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) or (RISI) or (RISY) (russian: Российский институт стратегических исследований (РИСИ)) is a Russian research and analytical center formed by decree ...

(RISS) had developed a strategy to sway the U.S. election to Donald Trump and, failing that, to disillusion voters. The development of strategy was allegedly ordered by Putin and directed by former officers of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), retired SVR general

Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov ( rus, Леонид Петрович Решетников}; (born 6 February 1947, Potsdam) is a Soviet and Russian secret service agent, Lieutenant-General of Foreign Intelligence Service, director of the Russian ...

being head of the RISS at the time. The Institute had been a part of the SVR until 2009, whereafter it has worked for the

Russian Presidential Administration The Presidential Executive Office of Russia or the Presidential Administration of Russia ( rus, Администрация Президента Российской Федерации, Administratsiya Prezidenta Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is the ex ...

. The U.S. officials said the propaganda efforts began in March 2016. The first set of recommendations, issued in June 2016, proposed that Russia support a candidate for U.S. president more favorable to Russia than Obama had been, via Russia-backed news outlets and a social media campaign. It supported Trump until October, when another conclusion was made that Hillary Clinton was likely to win, and the strategy should be modified to work to undermine U.S. voters′ faith in their electoral system and a Clinton presidency by alleging voter fraud in the election. RISS director

Mikhail Fradkov Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov ( rus, Михаи́л Ефи́мович Фрадко́в, p=mʲɪxɐˈil jɪˈfʲiməvʲɪtɕ frɐtˈkof; born 1 September 1950) is a Russian politician who served as Prime Minister of Russia from 2004 to 2007. An In ...

and Kremlin spokesman

Dmitry Peskov Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov ( rus, Дмитрий Сергеевич Песков, p=pʲɪˈskof; born 17 October 1967) is a Russian diplomat and the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin. hundreds of email, PayPal and bank accounts and fraudulent driver's licenses were created for fictitious Americans—and sometimes real Americans whose Social Security numbers had been stolen.

Social media and Internet trolls

According to the special counsel investigation's Mueller Report (officially named "Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election"), the first method of Russian interference used the

(IRA), a Kremlin-linked

, to wage "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton". The Internet Research Agency also sought to "provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States". By February 2016, internal IRA documents showed an order to support the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, while IRA members were to "use any opportunity to criticize" Hillary Clinton and the rest of the candidates. From June 2016, the IRA organized election rallies in the U.S. "often promoting" Trump's campaign while "opposing" Clinton's campaign. The IRA posed as Americans, hiding their Russian background, while asking Trump campaign members for campaign buttons, flyers, and posters for the rallies. Mark Zuckerberg F8 2019 Keynote (32830578717) (cropped)

Mark Zuckerberg F8 2019 Keynote (32830578717) (cropped)

Russian use of social media to disseminate propaganda content was very broad. Facebook and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

were used, but also

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

Pinterest Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...

Medium Medium may refer to: Science and technology Aviation *Medium bomber, a class of war plane *Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Communication * Media (communication), tools used to store and deliver information or data * Medium of ...

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

Vine A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themselv ...

, and

Google+ Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google p ...

(among other sites).

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

was by far the most used platform, and one that largely remained out of the public eye until late 2018. The Mueller report lists IRA-created groups on Facebook including "purported conservative groups" (e.g. 'Tea Party News'), "purported Black social justice groups" (e.g. 'Blacktivist') "LGBTQ groups" ('LGBT United'), and "religious groups" ('United Muslims of America'). The IRA Twitter accounts included @TEN_GOP (claiming to be related to the Tennessee Republican Party), @jenn_abrams and @Pamela_Moore13; both claimed to be Trump supporters and both had 70,000 followers. Several Trump campaign members ( Donald J. Trump Jr.,

Eric Trump Eric Frederick Trump (born January 6, 1984) is an American businessman, activist, and former reality television presenter. He is the third child and second son of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and his fir ...

Kellyanne Conway Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway (née Fitzpatrick; born January 20, 1967) is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previous ...

, Brad Parscale and Michael T. Flynn) linked or reposted material from the IRA's @TEN_GOP Twitter account listed above. Other people who responded to IRA social media accounts include

Sean Hannity Sean Patrick Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an American talk show host, conservative political commentator, and author. He is the host of '' The Sean Hannity Show'', a nationally syndicated talk radio show, and has also hosted a commen ...

Roger Stone Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist. Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea ...

and Michael Flynn Jr. Advertisements bought by Russian operatives for the Facebook social media site are estimated to have reached 10 million users. But many more Facebook users were contacted by accounts created by Russian actors. 470 Facebook accounts are known to have been created by Russians during the 2016 campaign. Of those accounts six generated content that was shared at least 340 million times, according to research done by Jonathan Albright, research director for

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Tow Center for Digital Journalism The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism sc ...

. The most strident Internet promoters of Trump were paid Russian propagandists/trolls, who were estimated by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' to number several thousand. (By 2017 the U.S. news media was focusing on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter and Russian operatives moved on to Instagram.) The Mueller Report found the IRA spent $100,000 for more than 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements. In comparison, Clinton and Trump campaigns spent $81 million on Facebook ads. Fabricated articles and disinformation were spread from Russian government-controlled outlets, RT and Sputnik to be popularized on pro-Russian accounts on Twitter and other social media. Researchers have compared Russian tactics during the 2016 U.S. election to the "active measures" of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

, but made easier by the use of social media. Monitoring 7,000 pro-Trump social media accounts over a -year period, researchers J. M. Berger, Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts found the accounts denigrated critics of Russian activities in Syria and propagated falsehoods about Clinton's health. Watts found Russian propaganda to be aimed at fomenting "dissent or conspiracies against the U.S. government and its institutions", and by autumn of 2016 amplifying attacks on Clinton and support for Trump, via social media, Internet trolls,

botnet A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...

s, and websites. 55 Savushkina Street

Monitoring news on Twitter directed at one state (Michigan) prior to the election,

Philip N. Howard Philip N. Howard is a sociologist and communication researcher who studies the impact of information technologies on democracy and social inequality. He studies how new information technologies are used in both civic engagement and social contr ...

found about half of it fabricated or untrue; the other half came from real news sources. In continued analysis after the election, Howard and other researchers found the most prominent methods of misinformation were ostensibly "organic posting, not advertisements", and influence operation activity increased after the 2016 and was not limited to the election. Facebook originally denied that fake news on their platform had influenced the election and had insisted it was unaware of any Russian-financed advertisements but later admitted that about 126 million Americans may have seen posts published by Russia-based operatives. Criticized for failing to stop fake news from spreading on its platform during the 2016 election,

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

originally thought that the fake-news problem could be solved by engineering, but in May 2017 it announced plans to hire 3,000 content reviewers. According to an analysis by '' BuzzFeed News'', the "20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook." In September 2017,

told congressional investigators it had discovered that hundreds of fake accounts linked to a Russian

had bought $100,000 in advertisements targeting the 2016 U.S. election audience. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, primarily focused on divisive social issues; roughly 25% were geographically targeted. Facebook has also turned over information about the Russian-related ad buys to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Approximately 3,000 adverts were involved, and these were viewed by between four and five million Facebook users prior to the election. On November 1, 2017, the

released a sample of Facebook ads and pages that had been financially linked to the Internet Research Agency. A 2019 analysis by ''The Washington Post'''s "Outlook" reviewed a number of troll accounts active in 2016 and 2018, and found that many resembled organic users. Rather than wholly negative and obvious, many confirmed troll accounts deployed humor and were "astute in exploiting questions of culture and identity and are frequently among the first to push new divisive conversations" even "picked up by mainstream print media."

Cyberattack on Democrats

According to the Mueller Report, the second method of Russian interference saw the Russian intelligence service, the

GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...

, hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman

, and also hacking into "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)". As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the WikiLeaks organization and also GRU's personas "

" and "

".
Mueller Report
', vol. I, p. 4: "At the same time that the IRA operation began to focus on supporting candidate Trump in early 2016, the Russian government employed a second form of interference: cyber intrusions (hacking) and releases of hacked materials damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU) carried out these operations. In March 2016, the GRU began hacking the email accounts of Clinton Campaign volunteers and employees, including campaign chairman John Podesta. In April 2016, the GRU hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The GRU stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks. Around the time that the DNC announced in mid-June 2016 the Russian government's role in hacking its network, the GRU began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitious online personas 'DCLeaks' and 'Guccifer 2.0'. The GRU later released additional materials through the organization WikiLeaks." Starting in March 2016, the Russian military intelligence agency GRU sent " spearphishing" emails targeted more than 300 individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party or the Clinton campaign, according to the Special Counsel's July 13, 2018 Indictment. Using malware to explore the computer networks of the DNC and DCCC, they harvested tens of thousands of emails and attachments and deleted computer logs and files to obscure evidence of their activities. These were saved and released in stages to the public during the three months before the 2016 election. Some were released strategically to distract the public from media events that were either beneficial to the Clinton campaign or harmful to Trump's. The first tranche of 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments was released on July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. The resulting news coverage created the impression that the Democratic National Committee was biased against Clinton's Democratic primary challenger

Bernie Sanders Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007. He was the U.S. representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007 ...

(who received 43% of votes cast in the Democratic presidential primaries) and forced DNC Chairwoman

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Deborah Wasserman Schultz (née Wasserman; born September 27, 1966) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative from , first elected to Congress in 2004. A member of the Democratic Party, she is a former chair of the Democrat ...

to resign, disrupting the plans of the Clinton campaign. A second tranche was released on October 7, a few hours after the Obama Administration released a statement by the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

and the director of National Intelligence accusing the Russian government of interfering in the election through hacking, and just 29 minutes after ''The Washington Post'' reported on the Access Hollywood videotape where Trump boasted about grabbing women "by the pussy". The stolen documents effectively distracted media and voter attention from both stories."18 revelations from Wikileaks' hacked Clinton emails"
BBC News. October 27, 2016. Stolen emails and documents were given both to platforms created by hackers—a website called DCLeaks and a persona called Guccifer 2.0 claiming to be a lone hacker—and to an unidentified organization believed to be WikiLeaks. (The Russians registered the domain dcleaks.com, using principally

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

to pay for the domain and the hosting.)

Podesta hack

, Chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, received a

phishing Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwa ...

email on March 19, 2016, sent by Russian operatives purporting to alert him of a "compromise in the system", and urging him to change his password "immediately" by clicking on a link. This allowed Russian hackers to access around 60,000 emails from Podesta's private account. John Podesta, later told ''

Meet the Press ''Meet the Press'' is a weekly American television news/interview program broadcast on NBC. It is the longest-running program on American television, though the current format bears little resemblance to the debut episode on November 6, 1947. ' ...

'' that the FBI spoke to him only once regarding his hacked emails and that he had not been sure what had been taken until a month before the election on October7 "when ikiLeaks' JulianAssange... started dumping them out and said they would all dump out, that's when I knew that they had the contents of my email account." The WikiLeaks October 7 dump started less than an hour after ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' released the Donald Trump and Billy Bush recording ''Access Hollywood'' tape, WikiLeaks announced on Twitter that it was in possession of 50,000 of Podesta's emails, and a few hours after the Obama Administration released a statement by the

and the director of National Intelligence stating "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations." It initially released 2,050 of these. The cache included emails containing transcripts of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street banks, controversial comments from staffers about Catholic voters, infighting among employees of the Clinton campaign, as well as potential vice-presidential picks for Clinton. The Clinton campaign did not confirm or deny the authenticity of the emails but emphasized they were stolen and distributed by parties hostile to Clinton and that "top national security officials" had stated "that documents can be faked as part of a sophisticated Russian misinformation campaign." Podesta's e-mails, once released by WikiLeaks, formed the basis for

Pizzagate "Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police. In March 2016, the p ...

, a debunked

conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * * * * The term has a nega ...

that falsely posited that Podesta and other Democratic Party officials were involved in a child trafficking ring based out of pizzerias in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

DNC hack

The United States Intelligence Community concluded by January 2017 that the GRU (using the names

Cozy Bear Cozy Bear, classified by the United States federal government as advanced persistent threat APT29, is a Russian hacker group believed to be associated with one or more intelligence agencies of Russia. The Dutch General Intelligence and Securi ...

and Fancy Bear) had gained access to the computer network of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—the formal governing body of the Democratic Party—in July 2015 and maintained it until at least June 2016, when they began leaking the stolen information via the

online persona, DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks.

resigned as DNC chairwoman following the release of e-mails by WikiLeaks that showed DNC officials discussing Bernie Sanders and his presidential campaign in a derisive and derogatory manner. Emails leaked included personal information about Democratic Party donors, with credit card and Social Security numbers,Andrea Peterson
Snowden and WikiLeaks clash over leaked Democratic Party emails
''Washington Post'' (July 28, 2016). emails by Wasserman Schultz calling a Sanders campaign official a "damn liar". Following the July 22 publication of a large number of hacked emails by

, the FBI announced that it would investigate the theft of DNC emails.

Intelligence analysis of attack

In June and July 2016,

cybersecurity Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, t ...

experts and firms, including

CrowdStrike CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides cloud workload and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services. The company has been involved in inves ...

, Fidelis,

FireEye Trellix (formerly FireEye and McAfee Enterprise) is a privately held cybersecurity company founded in 2022. It has been involved in the detection and prevention of major cyber attacks. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigat ...

Mandiant Mandiant is an American cybersecurity firm and a subsidiary of Google. It rose to prominence in February 2013 when it released a report directly implicating China in cyber espionage. In December 2013, Mandiant was acquired by FireEye for $1 bi ...

, SecureWorks, Symantec and

ThreatConnect ThreatConnect is a cyber-security firm based in Arlington, Virginia. They provide a Threat Intelligence Platform for companies to aggregate and act upon threat intelligence. History The firm was founded in 2011 as Cyber Squared Inc. by Adam Vinc ...

, stated the DNC email leaks were part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC committed by two Russian intelligence groups, called Fancy Bear and

, also known respectively as

APT Apt. is an abbreviation for apartment. Apt may also refer to: Places * Apt Cathedral, a former cathedral, and national monument of France, in the town of Apt in Provence * Apt, Vaucluse, a commune of the Vaucluse département of France * A ...

28 and APT29 / The Dukes. ThreatConnect also noted possible links between the

DC Leaks DCLeaks (also known as DC Leaks) was a website that was established in June 2016. It was responsible for publishing leaks of emails belonging to multiple prominent figures in the United States government and military. Cybersecurity research firms d ...

project and

Russian intelligence The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation ( rus, Служба внешней разведки Российской Федерации, r=Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii , p=ˈsluʐbə ˈvnʲɛʂnʲɪj rɐˈzvʲɛ ...

operations because of a similarity with Fancy Bear attack patterns. SecureWorks added that the actor group was operating from Russia on behalf of the Russian government. ''

de Volkskrant ''de Volkskrant'' (; ''The People's Paper'') is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. Founded in 1919, it has a nationwide circulation of about 250,000. Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, ''de Volkskrant'' today is a medium-sized c ...

'' later reported that Dutch intelligence agency

AIVD The General Intelligence and Security Service ( nl, Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, AIVD; ) is the intelligence and security agency of the Netherlands, tasked with domestic, foreign and signals intelligence and protecting national s ...

had penetrated the Russian hacking group

in 2014, and observed them in 2015 hack the State Department in real time, while capturing pictures of the hackers via a security camera in their workspace. American, British, and Dutch intelligence services had also observed stolen DNC emails on Russian military intelligence networks.

Intelligence reaction and indictment

On October 7, 2016, Secretary Johnson and Director Clapper issued a joint statement that the intelligence community is confident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, and that the disclosures of hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks are consistent with the Russian-directed efforts. In the July 2018 indictment by the Justice Department of twelve Russian

intelligence officials posing as "a Guccifer 2.0 persona" for conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections was for hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, state election boards, and secretaries of several states. The indictment describes "a sprawling and sustained cyberattack on at least three hundred people connected to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign". The leaked stolen files were released "in stages," a tactic wreaking "havoc on the Democratic Party throughout much of the election season." One collection of data that hackers obtained and that may have become a "devastating weapon" against the Clinton campaign was the campaign's data analytics and voter-turnout models, extremely useful in targeting messages to "key constituencies" that Clinton needed to mobilize. These voters were later bombarded by Russian operatives with negative information about Clinton on social media.

WikiLeaks

In April 2017, CIA Director

Mike Pompeo Michael Richard Pompeo (; born December 30, 1963) is an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served under President Donald Trump as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United State ...

said

was a hostile intelligence agency aided by foreign states including Russia, and that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded that Russia's "propaganda outlet," RT, had conspired with WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks and its founder Julian AssangeAlex Johnson
"WikiLeaks' Julian Assange: 'No Proof' Hacked DNC Emails Came From Russia"

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

(July 25, 2016). have made a number of statements denying that the Russian government was the source of the material. However, an anonymous CIA official said that Russian officials transferred the hacked e-mails to WikiLeaks using "a circuitous route" from Russia's military intelligence services (GRU) to WikiLeaks via third parties. In a leaked private message on Twitter, Assange wrote that in the 2016 election "it would be much better for GOP to win," and that Hillary Clinton was a "sadistic sociopath".

Hacking of Congressional candidates

Hillary Clinton was not the only Democrat attacked. Caches of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee documents stolen by "Guccifer 2.0" were also released to reporters and bloggers around the U.S. As one Democratic candidate put it, "Our entire internal strategy plan was made public, and suddenly all this material was out there and could be used against me." The New York Times noted, "The seats that Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country."

= Hacking of Republicans

= On January 10, 2017,

FBI Director The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a United States' federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI Director is appointed for a single ...

told the

Senate Intelligence Committee The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (sometimes referred to as the Intelligence Committee or SSCI) is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of ...

that Russia succeeded in "collecting some information from Republican-affiliated targets but did not leak it to the public". In earlier statements, an FBI official stated Russian attempts to access the RNC server were unsuccessful, or had reportedly told the RNC chair that their servers were secure, but that email accounts of individual Republicans (including Colin Powell) were breached. (Over 200 emails from Colin Powell were posted on the website

DC Leaks DCLeaks (also known as DC Leaks) was a website that was established in June 2016. It was responsible for publishing leaks of emails belonging to multiple prominent figures in the United States government and military. Cybersecurity research firms d ...

.)cf. One state Republican Party (Illinois) may have had some of its email accounts hacked.

= Civil DNC lawsuit against Russian Federation

= On April 20, 2018, the Democratic National Committee filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in New York, accusing the Russian Government, the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks, and others of conspiracy to alter the course of the 2016 presidential election and asking for monetary damages and a declaration admitting guilt. The lawsuit was dismissed by the judge, because New York "does not recognize the specific tort claims pressed in the suit"; the judge did not make a finding on whether there was or was not "collusion between defendants and Russia during the 2016 presidential election".

= Calls by Trump for Russians to hack Clinton's deleted emails

= At a news conference on July 27, 2016, Trump publicly called on Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton's deleted emails from her private server during her tenure in the

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

. Trump's comment was condemned by the press and political figures, including some Republicans; he replied that he had been speaking sarcastically. Several Democratic Senators said Trump's comments appeared to violate the

Logan Act The Logan Act (, , enacted ) is a United States federal law that criminalizes negotiation by unauthorized American citizens with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. The intent behind the Act is to prevent unauthorized nego ...

, and

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

professor

Laurence Tribe Laurence Henry Tribe (born October 10, 1941) is an American legal scholar who is a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He previously served as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School. A constitutional law sc ...

added that Trump's call could be

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

ous. The July 2018 federal indictment of Russian GRU agents said that the first attempt by Russian hackers to infiltrate the computer servers inside Clinton's offices took place on the same day (July 27, 2016) Trump made his "Russia if you're listening" appeal. While no direct link with Trump's remark was alleged in the indictment, journalist

Jane Mayer Jane Meredith Mayer (born 1955) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1995. She has written for the publication about money in politics; government prosecution of whistleblowers; the Uni ...

called the timing "striking". Trump asserted in March 2019 that he had been joking when he made the remark.

Katy Tur Katherine Bear Tur (born October 26, 1983) is an American author and broadcast journalist working as a correspondent for NBC News. Tur is an anchor for MSNBC Reports, where since 2021 she has hosted ''Katy Tur Reports'' on MSNBC. She has also re ...

of NBC News had interviewed Trump immediately after the 2016 remark, noting she gave him an opportunity to characterize it as a joke, but he did not.

Targeting of important voting blocs and institutions

In her analysis of the Russian influence on the 2016 election,

Kathleen Hall Jamieson Kathleen Hall Jamieson (born November 24, 1946) is an American professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded FactCheck.org, and she is an author, most recently ...

argues that Russians aligned themselves with the "geographic and demographic objectives" of the Trump campaign, using trolls, social media, and hacked information to target certain important constituencies.

Attempts to suppress African American votes and spread alienation

According to '' Vox'', the Russian

(IRA) focused on the culture of Muslims, Christians, Texas, and

LGBTQ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is ...

people, to engage those communities as part of a broader strategy to deepen social and political divisions within the U.S., but no other group received as much attention as Black Americans, whose voter turnout has been historically crucial to the election of Democrats. Russia's influence campaign used an array of tactics aiming to reduce their vote for Hillary Clinton, according to a December 2018 report (''The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency'')The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency

Renée DiResta Renée DiResta is a writer and research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO). DiResta has written about pseudoscience, conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare. She has also served as in advisor to the U.S. Congres ...

, Dr. Kris Shaffer, Becky Ruppel, David Sullivan, Robert Matney, Ryan Fox (New Knowledge); Dr. Jonathan Albright (Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University); Ben Johnson (Canfield Research, LLC commissioned by the

. A total 30 Facebook pages targeting Black Americans and 10 YouTube channels that posted 571 videos related to police violence against African-Americans. The covertly Russian Instagram account @blackstagram had more than 300,000 followers. A variety of Facebook pages targeting African Americans and later determined to be Russian amassed a total of 1.2 million individual followers, the report found. The Facebook page for (the Russian) Blacktivist, garnered more hits than Black Lives Matter's (non-Russian) Facebook page. Influence operations included recruiting typically unknowing assets who would stage events and spread content from Russian influencers, spreading videos of police abuse and spreading misleading information about how to vote and whom to vote for. The attempt to target Black Americans has been compared to the KGB's attempt to foster racial tensions during

Operation INFEKTION Operation INFEKTION was an active measure disinformation campaign run by the KGB in the 1980s to plant the idea that the United States had invented HIV/AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Historian ...

Arousing conservative voters

At least 25 social media pages drawing 1.4 million followers were created by Russian agents to target the American political right and promote the Trump candidacy. An example of the targeting was the adding of

Blue Lives Matter Blue Lives Matter (also known as Police Lives Matter) is a countermovement in the United States advocating that those who are prosecuted and convicted of killing law enforcement officers should be sentenced under hate crime statutes. It was ...

material to social media platforms by Russian operatives after the

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...

movement moved to the center of public attention in America and sparked a pro-police reaction. Jamieson noted there was reason to believe Donald Trump would under-perform among two normally dependable conservative Republican voting blocs—churchgoing Christians and military service members and their families. It was thought pious Christians were put off by Trump's lifestyle as a Manhattan socialite, known for his three marriages and many affairs but not for any religious beliefs, who had boasted of groping women. Military personnel might lack enthusiasm for a candidate who avoided service in Vietnam but who described himself as a "brave soldier" in having to face his "personal Vietnam" of the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, and who mocked Gold Star parents and former prisoner of war

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a United States senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms ...

. To overcome Trump's possible poor reputation among evangelicals and veterans, Russian trolls created memes that exploited typical conservative social attitudes about

people of color The term "person of color" ( : people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the U ...

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...

, and

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...

. One such meme juxtaposed photographs of a homeless veteran and an undocumented immigrant, alluding to the belief that undocumented immigrants receive special treatment. CNN exit polls showed that Trump led Clinton among veterans by 26 percentage points and won a higher percentage of the evangelical vote than either of the two previous Republican presidential nominees, indicating that this tactic may have succeeded.

Intrusions into state election systems

A 2019 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found "an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure" by Russian intelligence in 2016. The activity occurred in "all 50 states" and is thought by "many officials and experts" to have been "a trial run... to probe American defenses and identify weaknesses in the vast back-end apparatus—voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, electronic poll books and other equipment" of state election systems. The report warned that the United States "remains vulnerable" in the 2020 election. Of "particular concern" to the committee report was the Russians' hacking of three companies "that provide states with the back-end systems that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters' identities and registration status."

Intrusions into state voter-registration systems

During the summer and fall of 2016, Russian hackers intruded into voter databases and software systems in 39 different states, alarming Obama administration officials to the point that they took the unprecedented step of contacting Moscow directly via the

Moscow–Washington hotline The Moscow–Washington hotline (formally known in the United States as the Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link; rus, Горячая линия Вашингтон — Москва, r=Goryachaya liniya Vashington–Moskva) is a system t ...

and warning that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict. As early as June 2016, the FBI sent a warning to states about "bad actors" probing state-elections systems to seek vulnerabilities.Tal Kopan
FBI director: Hackers 'poking around' voter systems
CNN (September 28, 2016). In September 2016, FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI was investigating Russian hackers attempting to disrupt the 2016 election and that federal investigators had detected hacker-related activities in state voter-registration databases,U.S. official: Hackers targeted voter registration systems of 20 states
Associated Press (September 30, 2016). which independent assessments determined were soft targets for hackers.Robert Windrem, William M. Arkin, and Ken Dilanian
Russians Hacked Two U.S. Voter Databases, Officials Say
NBC News (August 30, 2016). Comey stated there were multiple attempts to hack voter database registrations. Director of National Intelligence

James Clapper James Robert Clapper Jr. (born March 14, 1941) is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and former Director of National Intelligence. Clapper has held several key positions within the United States Intelligence Community. H ...

attributed Russian hacking attempts to

.Mike Levine & Pierre Thomas
Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4
ABC News (September 29, 2016). In August 2016, the FBI issued a nationwide "flash alert" warning state election officials about hacking attempts. In September 2016, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials and the

National Association of Secretaries of State The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), founded in 1904, is the oldest non-partisan professional organization of public officials in the United States, composed of the secretaries of state of U.S. states and territories. Currentl ...

announced that hackers had penetrated, or sought to penetrate, the voter-registration systems in more than 20 states over the previous few months. Federal investigators attributed these attempts to Russian government-sponsored hackers, and specifically to Russian intelligence agencies. Four of the intrusions into voter registration databases were successful, including intrusions into the Illinois and Arizona databases. Although the hackers did not appear to change or manipulate data, Illinois officials said information on up to 200,000 registered voters was stolen. The FBI and DHS increased their election-security coordination efforts with state officials as a result. Homeland Security Secretary

Jeh Johnson Jeh Charles Johnson ( "Jay"; born September 11, 1957) is an American lawyer and former government official. He was United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017. From 2009 to 2012, Johnson was the general counsel of the Departm ...

reported that 18 states had requested voting-system security assistance from DHS. The department also offered risk assessments to the states, but just four states expressed interest, as the election was rapidly approaching. The reports of the database intrusions prompted alarm from

Senate Minority Leader The positions of majority leader and minority leader are held by two United States senators and members of the party leadership of the United States Senate. They serve as the chief spokespersons for their respective political parties holding ...

Harry Reid Harry Mason Reid Jr. (; December 2, 1939 – December 28, 2021) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Nevada from 1987 to 2017. He led the Senate Democratic Caucus from 2005 to 2017 and was the Sena ...

, Democrat of Nevada, who wrote to the FBI saying foreign attempts to cast doubt on

free and fair elections A free and fair election is defined by political scientist Robert Dahl as an election in which " coercion is comparatively uncommon". A free and fair election involves political freedoms and fair processes leading up to the vote, a fair count of ...

was a danger to democracy not seen since the

. On September 22, 2017, federal authorities notified the election officials of 21 states that their election systems had been targeted. "In most cases, states said they were told the systems were not breached." Over a year after the initial warnings, this was the first official confirmation many state governments received that their states specifically had been targeted. Moreover, top elections officials of the states of Wisconsin and California have denied the federal claim. California Secretary of State

Alex Padilla Alejandro Padilla ( ; born March 22, 1973) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from California since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Padilla served as the 30th secretary of state of California from 2015 ...

said, "California voters can further rest assured that the California Secretary of State elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors... Our notification from DHS last Friday was not only a year late, it also turned out to be bad information." In May 2018, the

released its interim report on election security.Karoun Demirjian
Senate Intelligence Committee releases interim report on election security
''Washington Post'' (May 8, 2018). The committee concluded, on a bipartisan basis, that the response of the

U.S. Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

to Russian government-sponsored efforts to undermine confidence in the U.S. voting process was "inadequate". The committee reported that the Russian government was able to penetrate election systems in at least 18, and possibly up to 21, states, and that in a smaller subset of states, infiltrators "could have altered or deleted voter registration data," although they lacked the ability to manipulate individual votes or vote tallies. The committee wrote that the infiltrators' failure to exploit vulnerabilities in election systems could have been because they "decided against taking action" or because "they were merely gathering information and testing capabilities for a future attack". To prevent future infiltrations, the committee made a number of recommendations, including that "at a minimum, any machine purchased going forward should have a voter-verified paper trail and no WiFi capability".

Investigation into financial flows

By January 2017, a multi-agency investigation, conducted by the FBI, the

, the

Justice Department A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

, the

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and international money laundering, terr ...

and representatives of the DNI, was underway looking into how the Russian government may have secretly financed efforts to help Trump win the election had been conducted over several months by six federal agencies. Investigations into

Carter Page Carter William Page (born June 3, 1971) is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign. Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy C ...

Paul Manafort Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American lobbyist, political consultant, and attorney. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served ...

and

were underway on January 19, the eve of the presidential inauguration.

Money funneled through the NRA

By January 2018, the FBI was investigating the possible funneling of illegal money by Aleksandr Torshin, a deputy governor of the

Central Bank of Russia The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR; ), doing business as the Bank of Russia (russian: Банк России}), is the central bank of the Russian Federation. The bank was established on July 13, 1990. The predecessor of the bank can ...

, through the

National Rifle Association The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent Gun politics in the United States, gun rights ...

, which was then used to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Torshin is known to have close connections both to Russia's president Vladimir Putin and to the NRA, and he has been charged with money laundering in other countries. The NRA reported spending $30 million to support the 2016 Trump campaign, three times what it spent on

Mitt Romney Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer serving as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts f ...

in 2012, and spent more than any other independent group including the leading Trump superPAC. Sources with connections to the NRA have stated that the actual amount spent was much higher than $30 million. The subunits within the organization which made the donations are not generally required to disclose their donors. Spanish special prosecutor José Grinda Gonzalez has said that in early 2018 the Spanish police gave wiretapped audio to the

of telephone discussions between Torshin, and convicted money launderer and mafia boss Alexander Romanov. Torshin met with

Donald Trump Jr. Donald John Trump Jr. (born December 31, 1977) is an American political activist, businessman, author, and former television presenter. He is the eldest child of Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and his firs ...

at an NRA event in May 2016 while attempting to broker a meeting between Donald Trump and

Maria Butina Maria Valeryevna Butina (russian: Мари́я Вале́рьевна Бу́тина, sometimes transliterated as Mariya Butina; born November 10, 1988) is a Russian politician, political activist and former entrepreneur who was convicted in 20 ...

, a Russian anti-gun control activist who has served as a special assistant to Torshin and came to the U.S. on a student visa to attend university classes in Washington, claimed both before and after the election that she was part of the Trump campaign's communications with Russia. Like Torshin, she cultivated a close relationship with the NRA. In February 2016, Butina started a consulting business called Bridges LLC with Republican political operative Paul Erickson. During Trump's presidential campaign Erickson contacted Rick Dearborn, one of Trump's advisors, writing in an email that he had close ties both to the NRA and to Russia, and asking how a back-channel meeting between Trump and Putin could be set up. The email was later turned over to federal investigators as part of the inquiry into Russia's meddling in the presidential election. On July 15, 2018, Butina was arrested by the

and charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered Russian agent who had attempted to create a backchannel of communications between American Republicans/conservatives and Russian officials by infiltrating the National Rifle Association, the

National Prayer Breakfast The National Prayer Breakfast is a yearly event held in Washington, D.C., usually on the first Thursday in February. The founder of this event was Abraham Vereide. The event—which is actually a series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners—has ...

, and conservative religious organizations.

Money from Russian oligarchs

As of April 2018, Mueller's investigators were examining whether

Russian oligarch Russian oligarchs ( Russian: олигархи, romanized: ''oligarkhi'') are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth in the 1990s via the Russian privatisation that followed the dissolution of the Sovi ...

s directly or indirectly provided illegal cash donations to the Trump campaign and

inauguration In government and politics, inauguration is the process of swearing a person into office and thus making that person the incumbent. Such an inauguration commonly occurs through a formal ceremony or special event, which may also include an inaugu ...

. Investigators were examining whether oligarchs invested in American companies or think tanks having political action committees connected to the campaign, as well as money funneled through American straw donors to the Trump campaign and inaugural fund. At least one oligarch,

Viktor Vekselberg Viktor Felixovich Vekselberg (russian: Виктор Феликсович Вексельберг, uk, Віктор Феліксович Вексельберг; born April 14, 1957) is a Ukrainian-born Russian–Israeli-Cyprus oligarch, billion ...

, was detained and his electronic devices searched as he arrived at a New York area airport on his private jet in early 2018. Vekselberg was questioned about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made to Michael Cohen after the election, through Columbus Nova, the American affiliate of Vekselberg's Renova Group. Another oligarch was also detained on a recent trip to the United States, but it is unclear if he was searched. Investigators have also asked a third oligarch who has not traveled to the United States to voluntarily provide documents and an interview.

Intelligence analysis and reports

Non-U.S. intelligence

In part because U.S. intelligence agencies cannot surveil U.S. citizens without a warrant, they were slow to recognize the pattern of Russia's efforts. From late 2015 until the summer of 2016, during routine surveillance of Russians, several countries discovered interactions between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The UK, Germany, Estonia, Poland, and Australia (and possibly the Netherlands and France) relayed their discoveries to the U.S. Because the materials were highly sensitive,

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Unit ...

director

Robert Hannigan Robert Peter Hannigan CMG (born 1965) is a cybersecurity specialist who has been Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, since 2021. He was a senior British civil servant who previously served as the director of the signals intelligence and cryptog ...

contacted CIA director

John O. Brennan John Owen Brennan (born September 22, 1955) is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from March 2013 to January 2017. He served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. Presi ...

directly to give him information. Concerned, Brennan gave classified briefings to U.S. Congress' " Gang of Eight" during late August and September 2016. Referring only to intelligence allies and not to specific sources, Brennan told the Gang of Eight he had received evidence that Russia might be trying to help Trump win the U.S. election. It was later revealed that the CIA had obtained intelligence from "sources inside the Russian government" that stated that Putin gave direct orders to disparage Clinton and help Trump. On May 23, 2017, Brennan stated to the

that Russia "brazenly interfered" in the 2016 U.S. elections. He said he first picked up on Russia's active meddling "last summer", and that he had on August 4, 2016, warned his counterpart at Russia's FSB intelligence agency,

Alexander Bortnikov Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov (russian: Алексaндр Васильевич Бoртников; born 15 November 1951) is a Russian intelligence officer who has served as the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) since 20 ...

, against further interference. The first public U.S. government assertion of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election came in a joint statement on September 22, 2016, by Senator

Dianne Feinstein Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein ( ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman; June 22, 1933) is an American politician who serves as the senior United States senator from California, a seat she has held since 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, she was ...

and Representative

Adam Schiff Adam Bennett Schiff (born June 22, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who has served as a U.S. representative since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he has represented since 2013. Schiff's district (numbered as the 2 ...

, the top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively.

October 2016 ODNI / DHS joint statement

At the Aspen security conference in summer 2016, Director of National Intelligence

said Vladimir Putin wanted to retaliate against perceived U.S. intervention in Russian affairs with the 2011–13 Russian protests and the ousting of

Viktor Yanukovych Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych ( uk, Віктор Федорович Янукович, ; ; born 9 July 1950) is a former politician who served as the fourth president of Ukraine from 2010 until he was removed from office in the Revolution of Di ...

in the

Revolution of Dignity The Revolution of Dignity ( uk, Революція гідності, translit=Revoliutsiia hidnosti) also known as the Maidan Revolution or the Ukrainian Revolution,

. In July 2016, consensus grew within the CIA that Russia had hacked the DNC. In a joint statement on October 7, 2016, the

and the

Office of the Director of National Intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior, cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Comm ...

expressed confidence that Russia had interfered in the presidential election by stealing emails from politicians and U.S. groups and publicizing the information. On December 2, intelligence sources told

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

they had gained confidence that Russia's efforts were aimed at helping Trump win the election. On October 7, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of hacking the DNC's computer networks to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with the help of organizations like WikiLeaks. The Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security claimed in their joint statement, "The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts." This was corroborated by a report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in conjunction with the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA on January 6, 2017.

December 2016 CIA report

On December 9, the CIA told U.S. legislators the

U.S. Intelligence Community The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

had concluded, in a consensus view, that Russia conducted operations to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency, stating that "individuals with connections to the Russian government", previously known to the intelligence community, had given

hacked emails from the DNC and

. The agencies further stated that Russia had hacked the RNC as well, but did not leak information obtained from there. These assessments were based on evidence obtained before the election.

FBI inquiries

FBI has been investigating the Russian government's attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election—including whether campaign associates of Donald Trump's were involved in Russia's efforts—since July 31, 2016. Following the July 22 publication of a large number of emails by

, the FBI announced that it would investigate the theft of DNC emails. An earlier event investigated by the FBI was a May 2016 meeting between the Donald Trump campaign foreign policy advisor,

George Papadopoulos George Demetrios Papadopoulos (; born August 19, 1987) is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of maki ...

, and

Alexander Downer Alexander John Gosse Downer (born 9 September 1951) is an Australian former politician and diplomat who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1994 to 1995, Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2007, and High Commissioner to the United King ...

in a London wine bar, where Papadopoulos disclosed his inside knowledge of a large trove of

emails that could potentially damage her campaign. Papadopoulos had gained this knowledge on March 14, 2016, when he held a meeting with

Joseph Mifsud Joseph Mifsud (born 1960) is a Maltese academic. In 2016, he became involved with George Papadopoulos, an advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and was later accused of being a link between that campaign and Russia. In 2018, he wa ...

, who told Papadopoulos the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of thousands of stolen emails. This occurred before the hacking of the DNC computers had become public knowledge, and Papadopoulos later bragged "that the Trump campaign was aware the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton". In February 2019, Michael Cohen implicated Trump before the U.S. Congress, writing that Trump had knowledge that

was communicating with WikiLeaks about releasing emails stolen from the DNC in 2016.

later testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that in April 2016, the DNC did not know their computers had been hacked, leading Adam Schiff to state: "So if the campaign wasn't aware in April that the hacking had even occurred, the first campaign to be notified the Russians were in possession of stolen emails would have been the Trump campaign through Mr. Papadopoulos." In June 2016, the FBI notified the Illinois Republican Party that some of its email accounts may have been hacked. In December 2016, an FBI official stated that Russian attempts to access the RNC server were unsuccessful. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...

, RNC chair Reince Priebus stated they communicated with the FBI when they learned about the DNC hacks, and a review determined their servers were secure. On January 10, 2017,

told the

that Russia succeeded in "collecting some information from Republican-affiliated targets but did not leak it to the public". On October 31, 2016, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said the FBI had been examining possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but did not find any clear links. At the time, FBI officials thought Russia was motivated to undermine confidence in the U.S. political process rather than specifically support Trump. During a

hearing in early December, the CIA said it was certain of Russia's intent to help Trump. On December 16, 2016,

CIA Director The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) is a statutory office () that functions as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, which in turn is a part of the United States Intelligence Community. Beginning February 2017, the D ...

sent a message to his staff saying he had spoken with FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence

, and that all agreed with the CIA's conclusion that Russia interfered in the presidential election with the motive of supporting Donald Trump's candidacy. On December 29, 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an unclassified report that gave new technical details regarding methods used by Russian intelligence services for affecting the U.S. election, government, political organizations and private sector."Joint DHS, ODNI, FBI Statement on Russian Malicious Cyber Activity"
FBI National Press Office (December 29, 2016). The report included malware samples and other technical details as evidence that the Russian government had hacked the Democratic National Committee. Alongside the report, DHS published

Internet Protocol address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

es, malware, and files used by Russian hackers. An article in the ''

Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of SZ is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat. History ...

'' discussed the difficulty of proof in matters of cybersecurity. One analyst told the ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' that U.S. intelligence services could be keeping some information secret to protect their sources and analysis methods. Clapper later said the classified version contained "a lot of the substantiation that could not be put in the ublicreport". On March 20, 2017, during public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, FBI director

confirmed the existence of an

investigation into Russian interference and Russian links to the Trump campaign, including the question of whether there had been any coordination between the campaign and the Russians. He said the investigation began in July 2016. Comey made the unusual decision to reveal the ongoing investigation to Congress, citing benefit to the public good. On October 7, 2016, Secretary Johnson and Director Clapper issued a joint statement that the intelligence community is confident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, and that the disclosures of hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks are consistent with the Russian-directed efforts. The statement also noted that the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia to influence public opinion there. On December 29, 2016, DHS and FBI released a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) which further expands on that statement by providing details of the tools and infrastructure used by Russian intelligence services to compromise and exploit networks and infrastructure associated with the recent U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities.

January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment

On January 6, 2017, after briefing the president, the president-elect, and members of the Senate and House, the

(ODNI) released a de-classified version of the report on Russian activities. The intelligence community assessment (ICA), produced by the

, the

, and the ODNI, asserted that Russia had carried out a massive cyber operation ordered by Russian president Putin with the goal to sabotage the 2016 U.S. elections. The agencies concluded that Putin and the Russian government tried to help Trump win the election by discrediting Hillary Clinton and portraying her negatively relative to Trump, and that Russia had conducted a multipronged cyber campaign consisting of hacking and the extensive use of social media and trolls, as well as open propaganda on Russian-controlled news platforms. The ICA contained no information about how the data was collected and provided no evidence underlying its conclusions. Clapper said the classified version contained substantiation that could not be made public. A large part of the ICA was dedicated to criticizing Russian TV channel

RT America RT America was a U.S.-based news channel headquartered in Washington, D.C. Owned by TV Novosti and operated by production company T&RProductions, it was a part of the RT network, a global multilingual television news network based in Moscow fund ...

, which it described as a "messaging tool" for a "Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the U.S. Government and fuel political protest." On March 5, 2017, James Clapper said, in an interview with

Chuck Todd Charles David Todd (born April 8, 1972) is an American television journalist who is the 12th and current moderator of NBC's ''Meet the Press''. He also hosts ''Meet the Press Now'', its daily edition on NBC News Now and is the Political Directo ...

on ''

'' that the January 2017 ICA did not have evidence of collusion, but that it might have become available after he left the government. He agreed with Todd that the "idea of collusion" was not proven at that time. On May 14, 2017, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Clapper explained more about the state of evidence for or against any collusion at the time of the January IC assessment, saying "there was no evidence of any collusion included in that report, that's not to say there wasn't evidence". He also stated he was also unaware of the existence of the formal investigation at that time. In November 2017, Clapper explained that at the time of the Stephanopoulos interview, he did not know about the efforts of

to set up meetings between Trump associates and Kremlin officials, nor about the meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer. In June 2017,

E. W. Priestap Edward William Priestap, also known as Bill Priestap (born April 5, 1969) is an American attorney and United States intelligence official. He was the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division from 2015 to 2018. Education Priesta ...

, the assistant director of the

FBI Counterintelligence Division The Counterintelligence Division (CD) is a division of the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The division protects the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage. It accomplishes its miss ...

, told the ''

PBS Newshour ''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virg ...

'' program that Russian intelligence "used fake news and propaganda and they also used online amplifiers to spread the information to as many people as possible" during the election.

James Comey testimony

In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, former FBI Director James Comey said he had "no doubt" Russia interfered in the 2016 election and that the interference was a hostile act. Concerning the motives of his dismissal, Comey said, "I take the president at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. Something about the way I was conducting it, the president felt, created pressure on him he wanted to relieve." He also said that, while he was director, Trump was not under investigation.

U.S. government response

At least 17 distinct investigations were started to examine aspects of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

U.S. Senate

Members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee traveled to Ukraine and Poland in 2016 and learned about Russian operations to influence their elections. Senator McCain called for a special select committee of the U.S. Senate to investigate Russian meddling in the election, and called election meddling an "act of war". The Senate Intelligence Committee began work on its bipartisan inquiry in January 2017. In May, the committee voted unanimously to give both chairmen solo subpoena power. Soon after, the committee issued a subpoena to the Trump campaign for all Russia-related documents, emails, and telephone records. In December, it was also looking at the presidential campaign of Green Party's

Jill Stein Jill Ellen Stein (born May 14, 1950) is an American physician, activist, and former political candidate. She was the Green Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 and 2016 elections and the Green-Rainbow Party's candidat ...

for potential "collusion with the Russians". In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the interim findings of their bipartisan investigation, finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump gain the presidency, stating: "Our staff concluded that the ntelligence community'sconclusions were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton."Karoun Demirjian
Russia favored Trump in 2016, Senate panel says, breaking with House GOP
''Washington Post'' (May 16, 2018). On January 10, 2018, Senator

Ben Cardin Benjamin Louis Cardin (born October 5, 1943) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Maryland, a seat he has held since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously was the U.S. representat ...

of the

United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the U.S. Senate charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. It is generally responsible for overseeing and funding foreign aid pr ...

released, "Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security." The report said the interference in the 2016 United States elections was a part of Putin's "asymmetric assault on democracy" worldwide, including targeting elections in a number of countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, by "Moscow-sponsored hacking, internet trolling and financing for extremist political groups".

2018 committee reports

The Senate Intelligence Committee commissioned two reports that extensively described the Russian campaign to influence social media during the 2016 election. One report (''The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency'') was produced by the New Knowledge cybersecurity company aided by researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. Another (''The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018'') by the Computational Propaganda Project of

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

along with the social media analysis company Graphika. The New Knowledge report highlighted "the energy and imagination" of the Russian effort to "sway American opinion and divide the country", and their focus on African-Americans. The report identified more than 263 million "engagements" (likes, comments, shares, etc.) with Internet Research Agency content and faulted U.S. social media companies for allowing their platforms to be co-opted for foreign propaganda". Examples of efforts included "campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016", "encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational", and "spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum."

2020 committee report

On April 21, 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a unanimous, heavily redacted report reviewing the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian interference. The committee felt that the assessment brought a "coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election", specifically that the interference was unprecedented in its "manner and aggressiveness". The Senate committee heard "specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump", and that Putin "approved and directed" the interference. The committee praised the assessment as an "impressive accomplishment", noting that the assessment "reflects proper analytic tradecraft" despite a limited timeframe. The committee also stated that "interviews with those who drafted and prepared the ICA affirmed that analysts were under no political pressure to reach specific conclusions." A disagreement between the CIA and the NSA of the agencies' confidence level of Russia's preference for Trump "was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated among the agencies and analysts." Additionally, the committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments". On August 17, 2020, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume of their 996-page report, ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries." The Committee report, which was based on three years of investigations, found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some members of Trump's own advisers. Volume 5 said the Trump administration had used "novel claims" of executive privilege to obstruct the inquiry. The report said that Trump's 2016 campaign staff were eager to accept Russia's help, however after the release of the report, acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Marco Rubio issued a statement stating the committee "found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."

U.S. House of Representatives

After bipartisan calls to action in December 2016, the

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Adam Schiff. It is the primary committ ...

launched an investigation in January 2017 about Russian election meddling, including possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia. The

launched its own parallel probe in January as well. Fifteen months later, in April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee's Republican majority released its final report, amid harsh criticism from Democratic members of the committee. The report found "no evidence" of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. On February 24, 2017, Republican Congressman

Darrell Issa Darrell Edward Issa ( ; born November 1, 1953) is an American businessman and politician who has served as the U.S. representative for California's 50th congressional district since 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served ...

called for a

special prosecutor In the United States, a special counsel (formerly called special prosecutor or independent counsel) is a lawyer appointed to investigate, and potentially prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing for which a conflict of interest exis ...

to investigate whether Russia meddled with the U.S. election and was in contact with Trump's team during the presidential campaign, saying it would be improper for Trump's appointee, former Attorney General

Jeff Sessions Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (born December 24, 1946) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 84th United States Attorney General from 2017 to 2018. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as United States ...

, to lead the investigation. In March 2017, Democratic ranking committee member

said there was sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation, and claimed to have seen "more than circumstantial evidence" of collusion. On April 6, 2017, Republican committee chairman

Devin Nunes Devin Gerald Nunes (; born October 1, 1973) is an American businessman and politician who is chief executive officer of the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Before resigning from the House of Representatives and joining TMTG, Nunes was ...

temporarily recused himself from the investigation after the House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate accusations that he had disclosed classified information without authorization. He was replaced by Representative

Mike Conaway Kenneth Michael Conaway (born June 11, 1948) is an American politician who was the U.S. representative for from 2005 to 2021. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district Conaway represented is located in West Texas and includes Midland ...

. Nunes was cleared of wrongdoing on December 8, 2017 The committee's probe was shut down on March 12, 2018, acknowledging that Russians interfered in the 2016 elections through an active measures campaign promoting propaganda and

fake news Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue.Schlesinger, Robert (April 14, 2017)"Fake news in reality ...

, but rejecting the conclusion of intelligence agencies that Russia had favored Trump in the election (although some Republican committee members distanced themselves from this assertion). The committee's report did not find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government's efforts; Conaway said they had uncovered only "perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings". Democrats on the committee objected to the Republicans' closure of the investigation and their refusal to press key witnesses for further testimony or documentation which might have further established complicity of the Trump campaign with Russia. Schiff issued a 21-page "status report" outlining plans to continue the investigation, including a list of additional witnesses to interview and documents to request.

Obama administration

U.S. president Obama and Vladimir Putin had a discussion about

computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...

issues in September 2016, which took place over the course of an hour and a half. During the discussion, which took place as a side segment during the then-ongoing G20 summit in China, Obama made his views known on cyber security matters between the U.S. and Russia. Obama said Russian hacking stopped after his warning to Putin. One month after that discussion the email leaks from the DNC cyber attack had not ceased, and President Obama decided to contact Putin via the

, commonly known as the red phone, on October 31, 2016. Obama emphasized the gravity of the situation by telling Putin: "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace." On December 9, 2016, Obama ordered the

to investigate Russian interference in the election and report before he left office on January 20, 2017. U.S. Homeland Security Advisor and chief counterterrorism advisor to the president

Lisa Monaco Lisa Oudens Monaco (born February 25, 1968) is an American attorney, former federal prosecutor and national security official who has served as the 39th deputy attorney general of the United States since April 2021. Monaco previously served as ...

announced the study, and said foreign intrusion into a U.S. election was unprecedented and would necessitate investigation by subsequent administrations. The intelligence analysis would cover malicious

cyberwarfare Cyberwarfare is the use of cyber attacks against an enemy state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, manipulation or economic war ...

occurring between the 2008 and 2016 elections. A senior administration official said the White House was confident Russia interfered in the election.Elise Labott
"Official: Probe 'solely about lessons learned' on foreign hacking"

(December 10, 2016). The official said the order by President Obama would be a

lessons learned Lessons learned (American English) or lessons learnt (British English) are experiences distilled from past activities that should be actively taken into account in future actions and behaviors. There are several definitions of the concept. The ...

report, with options including sanctions and covert cyber response against Russia. On December 12, 2016, White House Press Secretary

Josh Earnest Joshua Ryan Henry Earnest
''

that Russia used cyberattacks to influence the election.

United States Secretary of State The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...

John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party (Unite ...

spoke on December 15, 2016, about President Obama's decision to approve the October 2016 joint statement by the

and the

. Obama said the U.S. government would respond to Russia via overt and covert methods, in order to send an unambiguous symbol to the world that any such interference would have harsh consequences in a December 15, 2016, interview by

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

journalist Steve Inskeep. He added that a

motive Motive(s) or The Motive(s) may refer to: * Motive (law) Film and television * ''Motives'' (film), a 2004 thriller * ''The Motive'' (film), 2017 * ''Motive'' (TV series), a 2013 Canadian TV series * ''The Motive'' (TV series), a 2020 Israeli T ...

behind the Russian operation could better be determined after completion of the intelligence report he ordered. Obama emphasized that Russian efforts caused more harm to Clinton than to Trump during the campaign. At a press conference the following day, he highlighted his September 2016 admonition to Putin to cease engaging in cyberwarfare against the U.S. Obama explained that the U.S. did not publicly reciprocate against Russia's actions due to a fear such choices would appear partisan. President Obama stressed cyber warfare against the U.S. should be a bipartisan issue. In the last days of the Obama administration, officials pushed as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses and attempted to keep reports at relatively low classification levels as part of an effort to widen their visibility across the federal government. The information was filed in many locations within federal agencies as a precaution against future concealment or

destruction of evidence Tampering with evidence, or evidence tampering, is an act in which a person alters, conceals, falsifies, or destroys evidence with the intent to interfere with an investigation (usually) by a law-enforcement, governmental, or regulatory authority. ...

in the event of any investigation.

Punitive measures imposed on Russia

On December 29, 2016, the U.S. government announced a series of punitive measures against Russia. The Obama administration imposed sanctions on four top officials of the

and declared '' persona non grata'' 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying; they were ordered to leave the country within 72 hours. On December 30, two waterfront compounds used as retreats by families of Russian embassy personnel were shut down on orders of the U.S. government, citing spying activities: one in

Upper Brookville, New York Upper Brookville is a village located within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 1,698 at the 2010 census. History The village is named for the brook which ...

, on

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

, and the other in

Centreville, Maryland Centreville is an incorporated town in Queen Anne's County, Maryland, United States on the Delmarva Peninsula. Incorporated in 1794, it is the county seat of Queen Anne's County. The population was 4,285 at the 2010 census. The ZIP code is 216 ...

, on the Eastern Shore. Further sanctions against Russia were undertaken, both overt and covert. A White House statement said that cyberwarfare by Russia was geared to undermine U.S. trust in democracy and impact the election. President Obama said his decision was taken after previous warnings to Russia. In mid-July 2017, the Russian foreign ministry said the U.S. was refusing to issue visas to Russian diplomats to allow Moscow to replace the expelled personnel and get its embassy back up to full strength. Initially Putin refrained from retaliatory measures to the December 29 sanctions and invited all the children of the U.S. diplomats accredited in Russia to New Year's and Christmas celebrations at the

. He also said that steps for restoring Russian-American relations would be built on the basis of the policies developed by the

Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory ...

. Later in May 2017, Russian banker

Andrey Kostin Andrey Leonidovich Kostin (russian: Андрей Леонидович Костин; born September 21, 1956) is a Russian banker who is chairman of the VTB Management board since June 10, 2002. Education and career In 1973, Kostin began stud ...

, an associate of President Vladimir Putin, accused "the Washington elite" of purposefully disrupting the presidency of

Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act

In June 2017, the Senate voted 98 to2 for a bill that had been initially drafted in January by a bipartisan group of senators over Russia's continued involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria and its meddling in the 2016 election that envisaged sanctions on Russia as well as Iran, and North Korea; the bill would expand the punitive measures previously imposed by executive orders and convert them into law. An identical bill, introduced by Democrats in the House in July, passed 419 to3. The law forbids the president from lifting earlier sanctions without first consulting Congress, giving them time to reverse such a move. It targets Russia's defense industry by harming Russia's ability to export weapons, and allows the U.S. to sanction international companies that work to develop Russian energy resources. The proposed sanctions also caused harsh criticism and threats of retaliatory measure on the part of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

.Germany's Angela Merkel slams planned US sanctions on Russia
.

Deutsche Welle Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...

. June 16, 2017. On January 29, 2018, the Trump administration notified Congress that it would not impose additional sanctions on Russia under 2017 legislation designed to punish Moscow's meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. The administration insisted that the mere threat of the sanctions outlined in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act would serve as a deterrent, and that implementing the sanctions would therefore be unnecessary.

Counter-sanctions by Russia

On July 27, as the sanctions bill was being passed by the Senate, Putin pledged a response to "this kind of insolence towards our country". Shortly thereafter, Russia's foreign ministry

demanded that the U.S. reduce its diplomatic and technical personnel in the Moscow embassy and its consulates in St Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and Vladivostok to 455 persons—the same as the number of Russian diplomats posted in the U.S, and suspended the use of a retreat compound and a storage facility in Moscow. Putin said he had made this decision personally, and confirmed that 755 employees of the U.S. diplomatic mission must leave Russia.

Impact on election result

As of October 2018, the question of whether Donald Trump won the 2016 election ''because'' of the Russian interference had not been given much focus—being declared impossible to determine, or ignored in favor of other factors that led to Trump's victory.

Joel Benenson Joel Benenson (born July 24, 1952) is an American pollster and consultant known for his role as a strategist for Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. He was the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. ...

, the Clinton campaign's pollster, said we probably will never know, while

Richard Burr Richard Mauze Burr (born November 30, 1955) is an American businessman and politician who is the senior United States senator from North Carolina, serving since 2005. A member of the Republican Party, Burr was previously a member of the United S ...

, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said "we cannot calculate the impact that foreign meddling and social media had on this election". Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the NSA, believes that although the Russian attacks were "the most successful covert influence operation in history," what impact they had is "not just unknown, it's unknowable." Statistician

Nate Silver Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics), basketball, and elections (see psephology). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of ''FiveThirtyEight' ...

, writing in February 2018, described himself as "fairly agnostic" on the question, but notes "thematically, the Russian interference tactics were consistent with the reasons Clinton lost." Clinton supporters have been more likely to blame her defeat on campaign mistakes, Comey's reopening of the criminal investigation into her emails, or to direct attention to whether Trump colluded with Russia. In their book ''Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign'', reporters Jonathan J.M. Allen and Amie Parnes report that

Robby Mook Robert E. Mook (; born December 3, 1979) is an American political strategist. He was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Mook worked on state campaigns and on Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. He then ...

and John Podesta decided to emphasize right after the election that Russian hacking, rather than the email scandal or campaign mistakes, was the unreported story of the campaign and the real reason for the defeat. Several high-level Republicans believe Russian interference did not determine the election's outcome, including those who would have benefited from Russia's efforts. President Trump has asserted that "the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever", and Vice President Pence has claimed "it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election." Secretary of State

also said "the intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election". In fact, the official intelligence assessment of January 2017 did not evaluate whether Russian activities had any impact on the election's outcome, and CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said Pompeo's remark was erroneous. Paul Ryan also claimed it is "clear" that the Russian interference "didn't have a material effect on our elections." On the other hand, a number of former intelligence and law enforcement officials, at least one political scientist and one former U.S. president argue that Russian interference was decisive because of the sophistication of the Russian propaganda on social media, the hacking of Democratic Party emails and the timing of their public release, the small shift in voter support needed to achieve victory in the electoral college, and the relatively high number of undecided voters (who may be more readily influenced).

, the former director of National Intelligence, told

, "it stretches credulity to think the Russians didn't turn the election... I think the Russians had more to do with making Clinton lose than Trump did." Ex-FBI agent, Clint Watts, writes that "without the Russian influence... I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day." Former president

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he previously served as th ...

has publicly said he believes Trump would not have gotten elected without the Russian interference. Carter believes "that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf." When questioned, he agreed that Trump is an "illegitimate president". Three states where Trump won by very close margins—margins significantly less than the number of votes cast for third-party candidates in those states—gave him an electoral college majority. Mayer writes that if only 12% of these third-party voters "were persuaded by Russian propaganda—based on hacked Clinton-campaign analytics—not to vote for Clinton", this would have been enough to win the election for Trump. Political scientist

, in a detailed forensic analysis concludes that Russian trolls and hackers persuaded enough Americans "to either vote a certain way or not vote at all", thus impacting election results. Specifically, Jamieson argues that two events that caused a drop in intention to vote for Clinton reported to pollsters can be traced to Russian work: the publicizing of excerpts of speeches by Clinton made to investment banks for high fees stolen from campaign emails during the presidential debates, and the effect of Russian disinformation on FBI head Comey's public denunciation of Clinton's actions as "extremely careless" (see above).

2017 developments

Dismissal of FBI Director James Comey

On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed Comey, attributing his action to recommendations from

United States Attorney General The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...

and

Deputy Attorney General The Deputy Attorney General (DAG) is the second-highest-ranking official in a department of justice or of law, in various governments of the world. In those governments, the deputy attorney general oversees the day-to-day operation of the departme ...

Rod Rosenstein Rod Jay Rosenstein (; born January 13, 1965) is an American attorney who served as the 37th United States deputy attorney general from April 2017 until May 2019. Prior to his appointment, he served as a United States attorney for the District ...

. Trump had been talking to aides about firing Comey for at least a week before acting, and had asked Justice Department officials to come up with a rationale for dismissing him. After he learned that Trump was about to fire Comey, Rosenstein submitted to Trump a memo critical of Comey's conduct in the investigation about Hillary Clinton's emails. Trump later confirmed that he had intended to fire Comey regardless of any Justice Department recommendation. Trump himself also tied the firing to the Russia investigation in a televised interview, stating, "When I decided to

ire Comey Ire or IRE may refer to: Ire * Extreme anger; intense fury * Irē, the Livonian name for Mazirbe, Latvia * A town in Oye, Nigeria * ''Ire'' (album), a 2015 album by the Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive * Ire (Iliad), a town mentioned in t ...

I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. The dismissal came as a surprise to Comey and most of Washington, and was described as immediately controversial and having "vast political ramifications" because of the Bureau's ongoing investigation into Russian activities in the 2016 election. It was compared to the

Saturday Night Massacre The Saturday Night Massacre was a series of events that took place in the United States on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal. U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire ...

President Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

's termination of special prosecutor

Archibald Cox Archibald Cox Jr. (May 17, 1912 – May 29, 2004) was an American lawyer and law professor who served as U.S. Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy and as a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal. During his career, he was ...

, who had been investigating the

Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...

, and to the dismissal of Sally Yates in January 2017. Comey himself stated "It's my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted." During a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister

and Ambassador

Sergey Kislyak Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak ( rus, Серге́й Ива́нович Кисля́к, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ kʲɪˈslʲak; born 7 September 1950) is a Russian senior diplomat and politician. Since September 2017, he has represented Mo ...

on May 10, 2017, in the

Oval Office The Oval Office is the formal working space of the President of the United States. Part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, it is located in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C. The oval-shaped room ...

, Trump told the Russian officials that firing the F.B.I. director, James Comey, had relieved "great pressure" on him, according to a White House document. Trump stated, "I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job... I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off." In 2019, ''The Washington Post'' revealed that Trump also told Lavrov and Kislyak during this meeting that he wasn't concerned about Russia interfering in American elections.

Investigation by special counsel

On May 17, 2017,

appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to direct FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors investigating election interference by Russia and related matters. As special counsel, Mueller has the power to issue

subpoena A subpoena (; also subpœna, supenna or subpena) or witness summons is a writ issued by a government agency, most often a court, to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of ...

s, hire staff members, request funding, and prosecute federal crimes in connection with his investigation. Mueller assembled a legal team. Trump engaged several attorneys to represent and advise him, including his longtime personal attorney

Marc Kasowitz Marc Elliot Kasowitz (; born June 28, 1952) is an American trial lawyer and partner of the New York-based law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres, which he co-founded in 1993. He has represented companies such as TPG, Douglas Elliman Realty, Teva Pharmac ...

as well as

Jay Sekulow Jay Alan Sekulow (; born June 10, 1956) is an American lawyer, radio, television talk show host and politically conservative media personality. He has been chief counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) since 1991. As a member of Pr ...

, Michael Bowe, and

John M. Dowd John Maguire Dowd (born November 2, 1941) is an American attorney, former attorney for the United States Department of Justice, and former United States Marine Corps Judge Advocate Division, Marine Corps Judge Advocate. Dowd was employed by seve ...

. All but Sekulow have since resigned. In August 2017 Mueller was using a

grand jury A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a pe ...

2017 charges

In October 2017 Trump campaign adviser

pleaded guilty earlier in the month to making a false statement to FBI investigators about his connections to Russia. In the first guilty plea of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, George Papadopoulos admitted lying to the FBI about contact with Russian agents who offered the campaign "thousands" of damaging emails about Clinton months before then candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to "find" Hillary Clinton's missing emails. His plea agreement said a Russian operative had told a campaign aide "the Russians had emails of Clinton". Papadopoulos agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of the plea bargain. Later that month, former Trump campaign chairman

surrendered to the FBI after being indicted on multiple charges. His business associate Rick Gates was also indicted and surrendered to the FBI. The pair were indicted on one count of conspiracy against the United States, one count of conspiracy to launder money, one count of being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, one count of making false and misleading FARA statements, and one count of making false statements. Manafort was charged with four counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts while Gates was charged with three. All charges arise from their consulting work for a pro-Russian government in

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

and are unrelated to the campaign. It was widely believed that the charges against Manafort are intended to pressure him into becoming a cooperating witness about Russian interference in the 2016 election. In February 2018, Gates pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges and agreed to testify against Manafort. In April 2018, when Manafort's lawyers filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained during the July 26 raid on Manafort's home, the warrants for the search were revealed and indicated that, in addition to seeking evidence related to Manafort's work in Ukraine, Mueller's investigation also concerned Manafort's actions during the Trump campaign including the meeting with a Russian lawyer and a counterintelligence officer at the

Trump Tower meeting Trump most commonly refers to: * Donald Trump (born 1946), 45th president of the United States (2017–2021) * Trump (card games), any playing card given an ad-hoc high rank Trump may also refer to: Businesses and organizations * Donald J. T ...

on June 9, 2016. In March 2018 the investigation revealed that the prosecutors have established links between Rick Gates and an individual with ties to Russian intelligence which occurred while Gates worked on Trump's campaign. A report filed by prosecutors, concerning the sentencing of Gates and Manafort associate

Alex van der Zwaan Alex Rolf van der Zwaan (; born September 1984) is a Belgian-born Dutch attorney formerly with the London branch of New York-based international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. On 20 February 2018, he pleaded guilty to one count ...

who lied to Mueller's investigators, alleges that Gates knew the individual he was in contact with had these connections.

2018 developments

2018 indictments

On February 16, 2018, a Federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges of

conspiracy to defraud the United States Conspiracy against the United States, or conspiracy to defraud the United States,§ 92318 U.S.C. § 371—Conspiracy to Defraud the United States U.S. Department of Justice's ''United States Attorneys' Manual''. is a federal offense in the United ...

, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, and fraud with identification documents, in connection with the 2016 United States national elections. The 37-page indictment cites the illegal use of social media "to sow political discord, including actions that supported the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and disparaged his opponent,

." On the same day, Robert Mueller announced that Richard Pinedo had pleaded guilty to using the identities of other people in connection with unlawful activity. Lawyers representing Concord Management and Consulting appeared on May 9, 2018, in federal court in Washington, to plead not guilty to the charges. The prosecutors subsequently withdrew the charges. On July 13, 2018, Deputy Attorney General

released indictments returned by a grand jury charging twelve Russian intelligence officials, who work for the Russian intelligence agency

, with conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections. The individuals, posing as "a Guccifer 2.0 persona", are accused of hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, as well as state election boards and secretaries of several states. In one unidentified state, the Russians stole information on half a million voters. The indictment also said a Republican congressional candidate, also unidentified, had been sent campaign documents stolen by the group, and that a reporter was in contact with the Russian operatives and offered to write an article to coincide with the release of the stolen documents.

Claims by Anastasia Vashukevich

In March 2018,

Anastasia Vashukevich Anastasia Vashukevich (russian: Анастасия Вашукевич; born 27 February 1990, Babruysk, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian SSR), also known as Nastya Rybka (russian: Настя Рыбка, link=no), is a Belarusi ...

, a Belarusian national arrested in Thailand, said she had over 16 hours of audio recordings that could shed light on possible Russian interference in American elections. She offered the recordings to American authorities in exchange for asylum, to avoid being extradited to Belarus. Vashukevich said she was close to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin and business links to

, and asserted the recordings included Deripaska discussing the 2016 presidential election. She said some of the recorded conversations, which she asserted were made in August 2016, included three individuals who spoke fluent English and who she believed were Americans. Vashukevich's claims appeared to be consistent with a video published in February 2018 by

Alexei Navalny Alexei Anatolievich Navalny ( rus, links=no, Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, , ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj; born 4 June 1976) is a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption act ...

, about a meeting between Deripaska and Russian Deputy Prime Minister

Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko ; 12 January 1957 – 26 January 2021) was a Russian politician and diplomat. From May 2013 to May 2018, he was Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev's Cabinet. He was engaged in international cooperation of the Cabinet. He served as the First ...

. In the video, Navalny claims Deripaska served as a liaison between the Russian government and Paul Manafort in connection with Russian interference efforts. In August 2018, Vashukevich said she no longer has any evidence having sent the recordings to Deripaska without having made them public, hoping he would be able to gain her release from prison, and has promised Deripaska not to make any further comment on the recordings' contents.

2019 developments

On March 24, Attorney General Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress regarding the Special Counsel's findings regarding Russian interference and obstruction of justice. Barr said that on the question of Russian interference in the election, Mueller detailed two ways in which Russia attempted to influence the election in Trump's favor, but "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr said that Mueller wrote "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." "The Special Counsel's decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it 'to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime... Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense." On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of the final Mueller Report was released to the public. The Mueller Report found that the Russian government interfered in the election in "sweeping and systematic fashion" and violated U.S. criminal laws. On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. He reiterated that his report did not exonerate the president and that legal guidelines prevented the indictment of a sitting president, stating that "the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing." Saying, "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. He emphasized that the central conclusion of his investigation was "that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American." Soon after the release of the Mueller Report, Trump began urging an investigation into the origins of the Russian investigation, wanting to "investigate the investigators". In April 2019, Attorney General

William Barr William Pelham Barr (born May 23, 1950) is an American attorney who served as the 77th and 85th United States attorney general in the administrations of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Donald Trump. Born and raised in New York City, Barr ...

announced that he had launched a review of the origins of the FBI's investigation. The origins of the probe were already being investigated by the Justice Department's inspector general and by

U.S. attorney United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States' chief federal ...

John Huber, who was appointed in 2018 by Jeff Sessions. He assigned U.S. Attorney

John Durham John Henry Durham (born March 16, 1950) is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut (D. Conn.) from 2018 to 2021. By April 2019, he had been assigned to investigate the origins of the Federal ...

to lead it. Durham was given the authority "to broadly examin the government's collection of intelligence involving the Trump campaign's interactions with Russians," reviewing government documents and requesting voluntary witness statements. Trump directed the American intelligence community to "promptly provide assistance and information" to Barr, and delegated to him the "full and complete authority" to declassify any documents related to his probe. In September 2019, it was reported that Barr has been contacting foreign governments to ask for help in this mission. He personally traveled to the United Kingdom and Italy to seek information, and at Barr's request Trump phoned the prime minister of Australia about the subject.

2020 developments

On November 2, the Special Counsel's office released previously redacted portions of the Mueller report. In September, a federal judge ordered the passages disclosed in response to a

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Australian act * ...

(FOIA) lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed News and the advocacy group

Electronic Privacy Information Center Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is an independent nonprofit research center in Washington, D.C. EPIC's mission is to focus public attention on emerging privacy and related human rights issues. EPIC works to protect privacy, freedom ...

, while allowing other portions to remain redacted. In summary, per Buzzfeed: "Although Wikileaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone — a close associate to Donald Trump — appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators 'did not have sufficient evidence' to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing. In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump's election chances ..." The newly released material also stated: "While the investigation developed evidence that the GRU's hacking efforts in fact were continuing at least at the time of the July 2016 WikiLeaks dissemination, ... the Office did not develop sufficient admissible evidence that WikiLeaks knew of — or even was willfully blind to — that fact." As reported by Buzzfeed, "Likewise, prosecutors faced what they called factual hurdles in pursuing Stone for the hack." On November 2, 2020, the day before the presidential election, ''New York'' magazine reported that:

2022 developments

In November 2022, Russian oligarch

Yevgeny Prigozhin Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (russian: link=no, Евгений Викторович Пригожин; born 1 June 1961) is a Russian oligarch and close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin was called "Putin's chef" because h ...

admitted to Russian interference in U.S. elections. CNN reported that "his statement appeared to be the first admission of a high-level Russian campaign to interfere in US elections from someone close to the Kremlin." In 2018, Prigozhin had been indicted along with 12 other Russian nationals and 3 Russian firms, as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference. In 2020, the Justice department had dismissed the indictments against Prigozhin's catering firm

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...

, because the inability to punish the indicted would possibly lead to the exposure of law enforcement techniques in the process of trial. In July 2022 the State Department offered a $10 million reward for information on Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency among other Russian interference mechanisms. Prigozhin's admission of election interference in November followed his admission of funding the Kremlin-linked far-right mercenary

Wagner Group The Wagner Group (russian: Группа Вагнера, Gruppa Vagnera), also known as PMC Wagner ( «Вагнер», ChVK «Vagner»; ), is a Russian paramilitary organization. It is variously described as a private military company (PMC), a ...

in September 2022. He had also been placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list in 2021. U.S. officials were left unsurprised by the Russian oligarch's confession, which was phrased as a vague threat. "Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere... Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once." Long sanctioned by the United States, the timing and vagueness of Prigozhin's admission could include elements of disinformation, with White House Press Secretary

Karine Jean-Pierre Karine Jean-Pierre (born August 13, 1974) is a French-American political advisor and has served as the White House press secretary since May 13, 2022. She is the first Black person and the first openly lesbian woman to be White House press secre ...

describing it as one of many Russian narratives "aimed at undermining democracy". She stated the oligarch's comments "do not tell us anything new or surprising." State Department spokesman

Ned Price Edward "Ned" Price (born November 22, 1982) is an American political advisor and former intelligence officer serving as spokesman for the United States Department of State since 2021. He worked at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2006 ...

said that "His bold confession, if anything, appears to be just a manifestation of the impunity that crooks and cronies enjoy under President Putin and the Kremlin... As you know, we have sanctioned this individual, Yevgeny Prigozhin, since 2018 for his interference with our election processes and institutions.” On November 17, 2022, Republican political operative

Jesse Benton Jesse Reeves Benton (born October 4, 1977) is an American political operative, convicted felon, writer, and entrepreneur. Benton is closely associated with the Paul family, having served as a campaign manager for both Ron Paul and Rand Paul. He ...

was convicted by a federal jury for a 2016 scheme to funnel Russian money to the Donald Trump campaign. According to court documents, Benton caused a Russian foreign national to wire $100,000 to his consulting firm, of which $25,000 of the money from the Russian national was contributed to the Trump campaign.

Links between Trump associates and Russian officials

During the course of the 2016 presidential campaign and up to his inauguration, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had numerous contacts with Russian nationals, with WikiLeaks, or with intermediaries between the two. As of January 28, ''

'' had tallied more than a hundred in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter between the Trump Campaign and Russians or WikiLeaks. In spring of 2015, U.S. intelligence agencies started overhearing conversations in which Russian government officials discussed associates of Donald Trump. British and the Dutch intelligence have given information to United States intelligence about meetings in European cities between Russian officials, associates of Putin, and associates of then-president-elect Trump. American intelligence agencies also intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates. Multiple Trump associates were reported to have had contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016, although in February 2017 U.S. officials said they did not have evidence that Trump's campaign had co-operated with the Russians to influence the election. , the FBI was investigating Russian involvement in the election, including alleged links between Trump's associates and the Russian government. Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak 2016

In particular, Russian Ambassador

has met several Trump campaign members and administration nominees; the people involved have dismissed those meetings as routine conversations in preparation for assuming the presidency. Trump's team has issued at least twenty denials concerning communications between his campaign and Russian officials; several of these denials turned out to be false. In the early months of 2017, Trump and other senior White House officials asked the Director of National Intelligence, the NSA director, the FBI director, and two chairs of congressional committees to publicly dispute the news reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia.

Paul Manafort

Trump campaign chairman

had several contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016, which he denied. Intercepted communications during the campaign show that Russian officials believed they could use Manafort to influence Trump. The Mueller investigation and the

found that, as Trump's campaign manager in August 2016, Manafort shared Trump campaign internal polling data with Ukrainian political consultant

Konstantin Kilimnik uk, Костянтин Килимник , birth_date = , birth_place = Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, Soviet Union , death_date = , death_place = , citizenship = UkraineRussiaSoviet Union , oc ...

, whom the Mueller Report linked to Russian intelligence, while the Intelligence Committee characterized him as a "Russian intelligence officer." Manafort gave Kilimnik data for Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states the Russian

specifically targeted for social media and ad campaigns. Trump won those three states by narrow margins and they were key to his election. In 2017 Manafort was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on various charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of

before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014, as well as in the Eastern District of Virginia for eight charges of tax and bank fraud. He was convicted of the fraud charges in August 2019 and sentenced to 47 months in prison by Judge T.S. Ellis. Although all the 2017 charges arose from the Special Counsel investigation, none of them were for any alleged collusion to interfere with U.S. elections. On March 13, 2019, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to an additional 43 months in prison. That day, New York state prosecutors also charged Manafort with sixteen state felonies. On December 18, 2019, the state charges against him were dismissed because of the doctrine of

double jeopardy In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence (primarily in common law jurisdictions) that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare case ...

. On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement due to the threat of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. On December 23, 2020, U.S. president

pardon A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the ju ...

ed Manafort.

Michael Flynn

In December 2015, retired Army general

Michael Flynn Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist who was the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration. He resigned in light of ...

was photographed at a dinner seated next to Vladimir Putin. He was in Moscow to give a paid speech which he failed to disclose as is required of former high-ranking military officers. Also seated at the head table are

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation f ...

presidential candidate

and members of Putin's inner circle, including

Sergei Ivanov Sergei Borisovich Ivanov ( rus, Сергей Борисович Иванов, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej bɐˈrʲisəvʲɪtɕ ɪvɐˈnof; born 31 January 1953) is a Russian senior official and politician who has served as the Special Representative of ...

Dmitry Peskov Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov ( rus, Дмитрий Сергеевич Песков, p=pʲɪˈskof; born 17 October 1967) is a Russian diplomat and the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin.Alexey Gromov Alexey Alexeyevich Gromov (russian: Алексей Алексеевич Громов; born 31 May 1960) is a Russian politician. He is First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia. Biography Gromov was born in 1960 ...

. In February 2016, Flynn was named as an advisor to Trump's presidential campaign. Later that year, in phone calls intercepted by U.S. intelligence, Russian officials were overheard claiming they had formed a strong relationship with Trump advisor Flynn and believed they would be able to use him to influence Trump and his team. In December 2016 Flynn, then Trump's designated choice to be National Security Advisor, and

met with Russian ambassador to the United States

and requested him to set up a direct, encrypted line of communication so they could communicate directly with the Kremlin without the knowledge of American intelligence agencies. Three anonymous sources claimed that no such channel was actually set up. On December 29, 2016, the day President Obama announced sanctions against Russia, Flynn discussed the sanctions with Kislyak, urging that Russia not retaliate. Flynn initially denied speaking to Kislyak, then acknowledged the conversation but denied discussing the sanctions. When it was revealed in February 2017 that U.S. intelligence agencies had evidence, through monitoring of the ambassador's communications, that he actually had discussed the sanctions, Flynn said he couldn't remember if he did or not. Upon Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017, he appointed Flynn his

National Security Advisor A national security advisor serves as the chief advisor to a national government on matters of security. The advisor is not usually a member of the government's cabinet but is usually a member of various military or security councils. National sec ...

. On January 24, Flynn was interviewed by the FBI. Two days later, acting Attorney General

Sally Yates Sally Quillian Yates (born Sally Caroline Quillian; August 20, 1960) is an American lawyer. From 2010 to 2015, she was United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In 2015, she was appointed United States Deputy Attorney General b ...

informed the White House that Flynn was "compromised" by the Russians and possibly open to blackmail. Flynn was forced to resign as national security advisor on February 13, 2017. On December 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to a single felony count of making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak. His plea was part of a plea bargain with special counsel Robert Mueller, under which Flynn also agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation which lead to his sentencing being postponed several times. In June 2019, Flynn fired his initial counsel from the firm

Covington and Burling Covington & Burling LLP is an American multinational law firm. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the firm advises clients on transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters. In 2021, Vault.com ranked Covington & Burling as ...

and hired Sidney Powell. Powell moved to compel production of additional

Brady material ''Brady'' disclosure consists of exculpatory or impeaching information and evidence that is material to the guilt or innocence or to the punishment of a defendant. The term comes from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ''Brady v. Maryland'', in ...

and newly discovered

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...

in October 2019, which was denied by Sullivan in December 2019. Flynn then moved to withdraw his guilty plea in January 2020, claiming that the government had acted in bad faith and

breached Breached was a Canadian rock band from Toronto, Ontario, active from 2010 to 2015. Its members were Bobby Noakes (vocals), Mike Diesel (guitar/vocals), Ryan Alexander (bass), and Neil Uppal (drums). Mike Diesel was a member of the band Age o ...

the plea agreement. In May 2020, the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

(DOJ) filed a

motion to dismiss In United States law, a motion is a procedural device to bring a limited, contested issue before a court for decision. It is a request to the judge (or judges) to make a decision about the case. Motions may be made at any point in administrati ...

the charge against Flynn

with prejudice Prejudice is a legal term with different meanings, which depend on whether it is used in criminal, civil, or common law. In legal context, "prejudice" differs from the more common use of the word and so the term has specific technical meanings. ...

, asserting that it no longer believed it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Flynn had made false statements to the FBI or that the statements, even if false, were materially false in regards to the FBI's investigation. Sullivan then appointed an amicus, John Gleeson, to prepare an argument against dismissal. Sullivan also allowed amici to file briefs regarding the dismissal motion. Powell filed an emergency

petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offici ...

for a

writ of mandamus (; ) is a judicial remedy in the form of an order from a court to any government, subordinate court, corporation, or public authority, to do (or forbear from doing) some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do (or refrain from ...

in the

Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit may refer to: Science and technology Electrical engineering * Electrical circuit, a complete electrical network with a closed-loop giving a return path for current ** Analog circuit, uses continuous signal levels ** Balanced circu ...

, asking (1) that Judge Sullivan be ordered to grant the government's motion to dismiss, (2) for Sullivan's amicus appointment of Gleeson to be

vacated A vacated judgment (also known as vacatur relief) makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court, which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court. ...

, and (3) for the case be assigned to another judge for any additional proceedings. The appellate court panel assigned to the case ordered Sullivan to respond, and briefs were also filed by the DOJ and amici. In June 2020, the appeals court panel ruled 2–1 in favor of Flynn on the first two requests, and the panel unanimously rejected the third request. Judge Sullivan petitioned the Court of Appeals for an

en banc In law, an en banc session (; French for "in bench"; also known as ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank'') is a session in which a case is heard before all the judges of a court (before the entire bench) rather than by one judge or a smaller ...

rehearing, a request opposed by Flynn and the DOJ. The appellate court granted Sullivan's petition in an 8-2 decision and vacated the panel's ruling. The case was ultimately dismissed as moot on December 8, 2020, after President Trump pardoned Flynn on November 25, 2020.

George Papadopoulos

In March 2016 Donald Trump named

, an oil, gas, and policy consultant, as an unpaid foreign policy advisor to his campaign. Shortly thereafter Papadopoulos was approached by

, a London-based professor with connections to high-ranking Russian officials. Mifsud told him the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails" "apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign". The two met several times in March 2016. In May 2016 at a London wine bar, Papadopoulos told the top Australian diplomat to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, that Russia "had a dirt file on rival candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked Democratic Party emails". After the DNC emails were published by WikiLeaks in July, the Australian government told the FBI about Papadopoulos' revelation, leading the FBI to launch a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, known by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane, which has been criticized by Trump as a "witch hunt." Papadopoulos' main activity during the campaign was attempting, unsuccessfully, to set up meetings between Russian officials (including

) and Trump campaign officials (including Trump himself). In pursuit of this goal he communicated with multiple Trump campaign officials including

Sam Clovis Samuel Harvey Clovis Jr. (born September 18, 1949) is a former United States Air Force officer, talk radio host, and political figure. Clovis is currently retired in Iowa. Clovis unsuccessfully ran for Iowa state treasurer in the 2014 election ...

, Rick Gates, and

Corey Lewandowski Corey R. Lewandowski (; born September 18, 1973) is an American political operative, lobbyist, political commentator and author who is politically associated primarily with Donald Trump. He was the first campaign manager of Trump's 2016 presi ...

. On January 27, 2017, Papadopoulos was interviewed by FBI agents. On July 27, he was arrested at Washington-Dulles International Airport, and he has since been cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation. On October 5, 2017, he pleaded guilty to one felony count of making false statements to FBI agents relating to contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos's arrest and guilty plea became public on October 30, 2017, when court documents showing the guilty plea were unsealed. Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison, 12 months supervised release, 200 hours of community service and was fined $9,500, on September 7, 2018. He was later pardoned by Trump in December 2020.

Veselnitskaya meeting

In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian attorney

Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya ( rus, Ната́лья Влади́мировна Весельни́цкая, p=nɐˈtalʲjə vʲɪsʲɪlʲˈnʲitskəjə; born 22 February 1975 Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union) is a R ...

, who was accompanied by some others, including Russian-American lobbyist

Rinat Akhmetshin Rinat Rafkatovitch Akhmetshin (russian: Ринат Рафкатович Ахметшин, born 1967) is a Russian-American

, after Trump Jr. was informed that Veselnitskaya could supply the Trump campaign with incriminating information about

such as her dealings with the Russians. The meeting was arranged following an email from British music publicist

Rob Goldstone Robert Ian Goldstone (born 3 December 1960) is a British publicist, music manager, and former tabloid journalist who gained international attention for his activities during the 2016 American presidential election campaign. Early life and ca ...

who was the manager of

Emin Agalarov Emin Aras oghlu Agalarov ( az, Emin Araz oğlu Ağalarov, russian: Эмин Аразович Агаларов; born December 12, 1979), also known as Emin Arazovich Agalarov, is an Azerbaijani-Russian singer and businessman. He writes and perfo ...

, son of Russian tycoon

Aras Agalarov Aras Iskanderovich Agalarov ( az, Araz İsgəndəroviç Ağalarov; russian: link=no, Ара́з Исканде́рович Агала́ров; born 8 November 1955) is an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire real estate developer. Several sources ha ...

. In the email, Goldstone said the information had come from the Russian government and "was part of a Russian government effort to help Donald Trump's presidential campaign". Trump Jr. replied with an e-mail saying "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer" and arranged the meeting. Trump Jr. went to the meeting expecting to receive information harmful to the Clinton campaign, but he said none was forthcoming, and instead the conversation then turned to the

Magnitsky Act The Magnitsky Act, formally known as the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, is a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in D ...

and the adoption of Russian children. The meeting was disclosed by ''

'' on July 8, 2017. On the same day, Donald Trump Jr. released a statement saying it had been a short introductory meeting focused on adoption of Russian children by Americans and "not a campaign issue". Later that month ''

'' revealed that Trump Jr.'s statement had been dictated by President Donald Trump, who had overruled his staff's recommendation that the statement be transparent about the actual motivation for the meeting: the Russian government's wish to help Trump's campaign.

Other Trump associates

Former

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

, an early and prominent supporter of Trump's campaign, spoke twice with Russian ambassador Kislyak before the election—once in July 2016 at the Republican convention and once in September 2016 in Sessions' Senate office. In his confirmation hearings, Sessions testified that he "did not have communications with the Russians". On March 2, 2017, after this denial was revealed to have been false, Sessions recused himself from matters relating to Russia's election interference and deferred to Deputy Attorney General

, a former adviser to Donald Trump and business partner of Paul Manafort, said he had been in contact with

, a hacker persona believed to be a front for Russian intelligence operations, who had publicly claimed responsibility for at least one hack of the DNC. During the campaign, Stone had stated repeatedly and publicly that he had "actually communicated with Julian Assange"; he later denied having done so. In August 2016, Stone had cryptically tweeted "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel" shortly after claiming to have been in contact with WikiLeaks and before WikiLeaks' release of the

Podesta emails In March 2016, the personal Gmail account of John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, was compromised in a data breach accomplished via a spear-phishing attack, and some ...

. Stone has denied having any advance knowledge of the Podesta e-mail hack or any connection to Russian intelligence, stating that his earlier tweet was actually referring to reports of the

Podesta Group The Podesta Group was a lobbying and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1988 by brothers John and Tony Podesta and has previously been known as Podesta Associates, podesta.com and PodestaMattoon. John Podesta left ...

's own ties to Russia. Stone ultimately named

Randy Credico Randolph A. Credico (born 1954) is an American perennial political candidate, comedian, radio host, and activist, and the former director of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. Entertainment career Credico was formerly active o ...

, who had interviewed both Assange and Stone for a radio show, as his intermediary with Assange. In June 2018 Stone disclosed that he had met with a Russian individual during the campaign, who wanted Trump to pay two million dollars for "dirt on Hillary Clinton". This disclosure contradicted Stone's earlier claims that he had not met with any Russians during the campaign. The meeting Stone attended was set up by Donald Trump's campaign aide,

Michael Caputo Michael Raymon Caputo (born March 24, 1962) is an American political strategist and lobbyist. In April 2020, Caputo was appointed as assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration. ...

and is a subject of Robert Mueller's investigation. Oil industry consultant

had his communications monitored by the FBI under a

FISA The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign pow ...

warrant beginning in 2014, and again beginning in October 2016, after he was suspected of acting as an agent for Russia. Page told ''The Washington Post'' he considered that to be "unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance". Page spoke with Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention, acting as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump. In 2013 he had met with Viktor Podobnyy, then a junior attaché at the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, at an energy conference, and provided him with documents on the U.S. energy industry. Podobnyy was later charged with spying, but was protected from prosecution by

diplomatic immunity Diplomatic immunity is a principle of international law by which certain foreign government officials are recognized as having legal immunity from the jurisdiction of another country.

Adam Goldman Adam Goldman is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist. He received the award for covering the New York Police Department's spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities and for his coverage of Russian meddli ...

"Russian Spies Tried to Recruit Carter Page Before He Advised Trump"
''

'' (April 4, 2017). The FBI interviewed Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into Podonyy's spy ring, but never accused Page of wrongdoing. The Mueller Report also found that

Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi (, ; ar, أَبُو ظَبْيٍ ' ) is the capital and second-most populous city (after Dubai) of the United Arab Emirates. It is also the capital of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the centre of the Abu Dhabi Metropolitan Area. ...

's Crown Prince

Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan ( ar, مُحَمّد بِن زَايد آل نَهيَان, Moḥamed bin Zāyed Āl Nahyān; born 11 March 1961), colloquially known by his initials as MBZ, is the third president of the United Arab Emirates ...

(MbZ) approached Richard Gerson, a financier and Jared Kushner's friend, to arrange his meetings with Trump. A Russian businessman

Kirill Dmitriev Kirill Alexandrovich Dmitriev (russian: Кирилл Александрович Дмитриев; born 12 April 1975) is the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a $10 billion sovereign wealth fund created by the Russian government ...

, who was close to

and Blackwater founder

Erik Prince Erik Dean Prince (born June 6, 1969) is an American businessman, former United States Navy SEALs, U.S. Navy SEAL Officer (armed forces), officer, and the founder of the private military company Blackwater USA, Blackwater. He served as Blackwat ...

, discussed a "reconciliation plan" with Gerson for the U.S. and Russia, which was later shared with Kushner. MbZ also advised Trump on the dangers of Iran and about Palestinian peace talks. On January 11, 2017,

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...

officials organized a meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Dmitriev. They discussed a back channel between Trump and Putin along with Middle East policy, notably about Syria and Iran. U.S. officials said the FBI was investigating the meeting. Jared Kushner June 2019

Donald Trump's son-in-law and

senior advisor In some countries, a senior advisor (also spelt senior adviser, especially in the UK) is an appointed position by the Head of State to advise on the highest levels of national and government policy. Sometimes a junior position to this is called a N ...

, on his application for top secret security clearance, failed to disclose numerous meetings with foreign officials, including Ambassador Kislyak and Sergei Gorkov, the head of the Russian state-owned bank

Vnesheconombank VEB.RF, or VEB (russian: ВЭБ.РФ (ex-Vnesheconombank)), is a Russian state development corporation. It was founded in 2007 as a development institute. VEB.RF is an investment company and development institute in Russia. It has financed more t ...

. Kushner's lawyers called the omissions "an error".

has said the meeting was business-related, in connection with Kushner's management of

Kushner Companies Kushner Companies LLC is an American real estate developer in the New York City metropolitan area. The company's biggest presence is in the New Jersey residential market. A study published in December 2017 by ''Bloomberg News'' indicated that ...

. However, the Trump administration provided a different explanation, saying it was a diplomatic meeting. On May 30, 2017, the House and Senate congressional panels both asked President Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen to "provide information and testimony" about any communications Cohen had with people connected to the Kremlin. Cohen had attempted to contact Kremlin spokesman

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' that during the 2016 campaign he had been actively involved in trying to obtain emails he believed had been hacked from Hillary Clinton's computer server. In that quest he contacted several known hacker groups, including some Russian groups. He claimed he was working on behalf of Trump campaign advisor (later national security advisor)

and Flynn's son. At around the same time, there were intelligence reports that Russian hackers were trying to obtain Clinton's emails to pass to Flynn through an unnamed intermediary. Five of the hacker groups Smith contacted, including at least two Russian groups, claimed to have Clinton's emails. He was shown some information but was not convinced it was genuine, and suggested the hackers give it to

instead. A document describing Smith's plans claimed that Flynn,

Steve Bannon Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump during t ...

, and other campaign advisors were coordinating with him "to the extent permitted as an independent expenditure". The White House, a campaign official, Conway, and Bannon all denied any connection with Smith's effort. British blogger Matt Tait said Smith had contacted him—curiously, around the same time Trump called for the Russians to get Hillary Clinton's missing emails—to ask him to help authenticate any materials that might be forthcoming. Ten days after his interview with ''The Wall Street Journal'', Smith committed suicide in a Minnesota hotel room, citing declining health.

Steele dossier

In June 2016, Christopher Steele, a former

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

agent, was hired by

Fusion GPS Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for ...

to produce opposition research on Donald Trump. In October 2015, before Steele was hired, Trump's Republican political opponents had hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump. When they stopped their funding, Fusion GPS hired Steele to continue that research, but with more focus on Trump's Russian connections. In the beginning, Steele did not know the identities of Fusion GPS's ultimate clients, which were no longer Republicans, but the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. His reports, based on information provided by his witting and unwitting Russian sources and sources close to the Trump campaign, included alleged ''

kompromat (russian: links=no, компромат, short for "compromising material") is damaging information about a politician, a businessperson, or other public figure, which may be used to create negative publicity, as well as for blackmail, often to ...

'' that may make Trump vulnerable to

blackmail Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...

from Russia. In October 2016, a 33-page compilation was shared with ''

Mother Jones Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She h ...

'' magazine, which described some of its contents, but other mainstream media would not report on it because they could not confirm the material's credibility. In December 2016, two more pages were added alleging efforts by Trump's lawyer to pay those who had hacked the DNC and arranging to cover up any evidence of their deeds. On January 5, 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump on the existence of these documents. Eventually, the dossier was published in full by BuzzFeed News on January 10. In October 2016, the FBI used the dossier as part of its justification to obtain a

FISA warrant The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA" , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and the collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign po ...

to resume monitoring of former Trump foreign policy advisor

. However, officials would not say exactly what or how much of the dossier was actually corroborated. John Brennan and James Clapper testified to Congress that Steele's dossier played no role in the intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election, testimony which was reaffirmed by an April 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. The committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments". In a December 2020 interview with

Chris Wallace Christopher Wallace (born October 12, 1947) is an American broadcast journalist. He is known for his tough and wide-ranging interviews, for which he is often compared to his father, ''60 Minutes'' journalist Mike Wallace. Over his 50-year care ...

of Fox News, Brennan said: "The Steele dossier was not used in any way to undergird the judgments that came out of the intelligence community assessment about the Russian actions in the 2016 election... There was so much other evidence and intelligence to support those judgments."

Ongoing investigations

In December 2019, Switzerland extradited Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin to the United States, where he will reportedly face questions about the Russian government's interference in the 2016 election, though the US Government has not publicly implicated him.

Commentary and reactions

Public opinion

Polls conducted in early January 2017 showed that 55% of respondents believed Russia interfered in the election; 51% believed Russia intervened through hacking. public-opinion polls showed a partisan split on the importance of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election. At that time, however, the broader issue of the Trump administration's relationship with Russia didn't even register among the most important problems facing the U.S. An

/''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' poll found that 53 percent wanted a Congressional inquiry into communications in 2016 between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Quinnipiac University Quinnipiac University () is a private university in Hamden, Connecticut. The university grants undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees through its College of Arts and Sciences, School of Business, School of Engineering, School of C ...

found that 47 percent thought it was very important. A March 2017 poll conducted by the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

and

NORC NORC may refer to: Organizations * NORC (web service), a street view web service and company based in Romania * Guerrilla Army of the Poor, which went by the acronym NORC in its beginnings * National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the Universit ...

found about 62% of respondents say they are at least moderately concerned about the possibility that Trump or his campaign had inappropriate contacts with Russia during the 2016 campaign. A January 2017 poll conducted by the

Levada Center The Levada Center is a Russian independent, nongovernmental polling and sociological research organization. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada (1930–2006). The center traces back its history to 1 ...

, Russia's largest independent polling organization, showed that only 12% of

n respondents believed Russia "definitely" or "probably" interfered in the U.S. election. A December 2017 survey conducted by the Levada Center found that 31% of Russian respondents thought their government tried to influence U.S. domestic affairs in a significant way. A

poll conducted in late March and early April 2017 found that 68% of voters supported "an independent commission investigating the potential links between some of Donald Trump's campaign advisors and the Russian government". An April 2017

/''

'' poll found that respondents had little confidence in Congress's investigation into the Russian interference in the election. The poll found that approximately 73% supported a "nonpartisan, independent commission" to look into Russia's involvement in the election. An

/''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' poll conducted in April 2017 found that 56 percent of respondents thought Russia tried to influence the election. A May 2017

Monmouth University Monmouth University is a private university in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Founded in 1933 as Monmouth Junior College, it became Monmouth College in 1956 and Monmouth University in 1995 after receiving its charter. There are about 4,400 full- ...

poll, conducted after the

, found that "nearly 6-in-10 Americans thought it was either very (40%) or somewhat (19%) likely that Comey was fired in order to slow down or stop the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links with the Trump campaign." Like other recent opinion polls, a majority, 73%, said that the FBI investigation should continue. A June 2017

/''

'' poll found that respondents were more likely to believe

over Trump when it came to their differing accounts behind the reasons for Comey's dismissal. The survey found that 45% of respondents were more likely to believe Comey than Trump. The poll also found that the number of respondents disapproving of Trump's decision to fire Comey- 46%- was higher than when the same question was asked in May of the same year. 53% of respondents said that they believed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, however the number changes by party affiliation. 78% of Democrats said that they believed there was interference, versus 26% of Republicans who agreed. An

PBS NewsHour ''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virg ...

Marist College Marist College is a private university in Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded in 1905, Marist was formed by the Marist Brothers, a Catholic religious institute, to prepare brothers for their vocations as educators. In 2003, it became a secular in ...

poll conducted in late June 2017 found that 54% of respondents believed that Trump either did "something illegal" or "something unethical, but not illegal" in his dealings with Russian president

. The poll found that 73% of Republicans said Trump himself has done "nothing wrong" while 41% of Democrats believed that Trump did something that was illegal. In addition, 47% said that they thought Russia was a major threat to future U.S. elections, while 13% of respondents said that Russia posed no threat at all. A July 2017

/''

'' poll found that 63% of respondents said that it " was inappropriate for Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign manager to have met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign." The poll also found that six in ten overall who think that Russia tried to influence the election, with 72% saying that they thought that Trump benefited and that "67 percent thought that members of his campaign intentionally helped those efforts." Polls conducted in August 2017 found widespread disapproval and distrust of Trump's handling of the investigation. A

/SSRS poll conducted in early August found that only 31% of respondents approved of Trump's handling of the matter. The poll also noted that 60% of adults "thought that it was a serious matter that should be fully investigated." On party lines, the poll found that 15% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans approved of Trump's handling of the matter. A Gallup poll from the same month found similar trends. The poll found that 25% of respondents said Trump acted illegally in dealings with the Russians. The poll found that 6% of Republicans and Republican-leaners thought Trump did something illegal in his dealings with the Russians. A poll conducted by the

Public Religion Research Institute The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization that conducts public opinion polls on a variety of topics, specializing in the quantitative and qualitative study of political ...

found that 58% of respondents expressed a negative view of Russia, while 25% had a favorable view of the country. The poll also found that 48% believed "there is clear evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help the Trump campaign." The broader issue of the Trump administration's relationship with Russia, however, was not identified by more than one percent of respondents in Gallup tracking of 'Most Important Problem' at any point since February 2017. (As of July 2018, it was less than half a percent.) A July 2018 an online Ipsos poll found that 60% of American believed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with 85% of democrats and 53% of Independents believing so compared to 46% of Republicans. 66% of democrats approved of the

special counsel investigation In the United States, a special counsel (formerly called special prosecutor or independent counsel) is a lawyer appointed to Criminal investigation, investigate, and potentially prosecution, prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing fo ...

compared to 32% of Republicans and 36% of Independents. In addition 75% of republicans believed the special counsel investigation was the result of anti-Trump bias. Compared to 32% of democrats and 36% of independents. A July 2018 Ipsos/Reuters poll found that 56% of Americans believed that Russia did interfere in support of Trump. A March 2019 poll released after reports of the findings of the Mueller report found that 48% of respondents said they believed "Trump or someone from his campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election"; 53% said "Trump tried to stop investigations into Russian influence on his administration"; and "Democrats eremuch more likely than Republicans to believe that Trump colluded with Russia and obstructed justice." In addition, 39% of respondents felt that Trump "should be impeached," while 49% said that he should not.

Hillary Clinton

On December 15, 2016,

said she partially attributed her loss in the 2016 election to Russian meddling organized by Putin. Clinton said Putin had a personal grudge against her, and linked his feelings to her criticism of the 2011 Russian legislative election, adding that he felt she was responsible for fomenting the 2011–13 Russian protests. She drew a specific connection from her 2011 assertions as

U.S. Secretary of State The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...

that Putin rigged the elections that year, to his actions in the 2016 U.S. elections. During the third debate, Clinton stated that Putin favored Trump, "because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States". Clinton said that by personally attacking her through meddling in the election, Putin additionally took a strike at the American democratic system. She said the cyber attacks were a larger issue than the effect on her own candidacy and called them an attempt to attack the national security of the United States. Clinton noted she was unsuccessful in sufficiently publicizing to the media the cyber attacks against her campaign in the months leading up to the election. She voiced her support for a proposal put forth by Senators from both parties, to set up an investigative panel to look into the matter akin to the 9/11 Commission.

Republican National Committee

Chief of staff-designate for Trump and outgoing RNC Chairman

Reince Priebus Reinhold Richard Priebus ( ; born March 18, 1972) is an American lawyer and politician who served as White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump from January 20, 2017, until July 31, 2017. He also served as the chairman of the Republ ...

said in December 2016 that he still didn't know who hacked the DNC's computer servers. The RNC said there was no intrusion into its servers, while acknowledging email accounts of individual Republicans (including Colin Powell) were breached. More than 200 emails from Colin Powell were posted on the website

DC Leaks DCLeaks (also known as DC Leaks) was a website that was established in June 2016. It was responsible for publishing leaks of emails belonging to multiple prominent figures in the United States government and military. Cybersecurity research firms d ...

. Priebus appeared on ''

'' on December 11, 2016, and discounted the CIA conclusions. Priebus said the FBI had investigated and found that RNC servers had not been hacked.

Donald Trump

Prior to his presidential run, Donald Trump made statements to

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

in 2014 in which he agreed with an assessment by then FBI director James Comey about hacking against the U.S. by Russia and China. Trump was played a clip of Comey from ''

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...

'' discussing the dangers of cyber attacks. Trump stated he agreed with the problem of cyber threats posed by China, and went on to emphasize there was a similar problem towards the U.S. posed by Russia. In September 2016, during the first presidential debate, Trump said he doubted whether anyone knew who hacked the DNC, and disputed Russian interference. During the second debate, Trump said there might not have been hacking at all, and questioned why accountability was placed on Russia. During the third debate, Trump rejected Clinton's claim that Putin favored Trump. Trump's words "our country has no idea" and "I doubt it" were deeply shocking to the British because "all

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

allies" and "all of America's intelligence agencies" were "sure Russia was behind the hacking", according to Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek. Trump denied these conclusions "based on absolutely nothing.... That he would so aggressively fight to clear Putin and cast aspersions on all Western intelligence agencies, left the British officials slack-jawed." After the election, Trump rejected the CIA analysis and asserted that the reports were politically motivated to deflect from the Democrats' electoral defeat. Trump's transition team said in a brief statement: "These are the same people that said

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

had weapons of mass destruction." However, the intelligence analysts involved in monitoring Russian activities were different from those who assessed that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, while post-

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...

reforms have made it less likely for similar errors to reach the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community. Trump dismissed reports of Russia's interference, calling them "ridiculous"; he placed blame on Democrats upset over election results for publicizing these reports, and cited Julian Assange's statement that "a 14-year-old kid could have hacked Podesta". After Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and announced further sanctions on Russia, Trump commended Putin for refraining from retaliatory measures against the United States until the Trump administration would lay out its policy towards Russia. On January 6, 2017, after meeting with members of U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump released a statement saying: cyberwarfare had no impact on the election and did not harm voting machines. In the same statement, he vowed to form a national cybersecurity task force to prepare an anti-hacking plan within 90 days of taking office. Referring to the

Office of Personnel Management data breach In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting personnel records. Approximately 22.1 million records were affected, including records related to government emplo ...

in 2015, Trump said he was under a "political witch hunt" and wondered why there was no focus on China. Two days later, Reince Priebus said Trump had begun to acknowledge that "entities in Russia" were involved in the DNC leaks. On January 11, 2017, Trump conceded that Russia was probably the source of the leaks, although he also said it could have been another country. On November 11, 2017, after meeting Vladimir Putin at a summit in Vietnam, Trump said, "I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election.... Every time he sees me he says: 'I didn't do that,' and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it." Trump went on to contrast Putin's "very strongly, vehemently" spoken denials with the word of American former intelligence officials who he termed as "political hacks": John Brennan, James Clapper, and the "liar" and "leaker" James Comey. But a day later, when asked to clarify his comments, Trump said, "As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our ntelligenceagencies, especially as currently constituted." Brennan and Clapper, appearing on CNN, expressed concern that Trump was "giving Putin a pass" and showing the Russian leader that "Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities." In 2019, ''The Washington Post'' revealed that (according to former officials) in May 2017 Trump had privately told Russian officials

and

he wasn't concerned about Russia interfering in American elections. In early October 2022, ''

'' reported that Trump had retained secret government documents found by the FBI at his

Mar-a-Lago Mar-a-Lago ( from the Spanish for ''sea to lake'') is a resort and national historic landmark in Palm Beach, Florida, owned by former U.S. president Donald Trump. Trump acquired Mar-a-Lago in 1985 and referred to it as his "Winter White House ...

domicile earlier the same year with the intention of pressuring the agency into trading them for files allegedly substantiating his claims that any Russian interference during the election was a "hoax", as he had constantly maintained in public.

Trump viewed as under Putin's influence

The

Steele dossier The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a controversial political opposition research report written from June to December 2016, containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trum ...

alleges that the Russians have

on Trump which could be used to

him, and that the Kremlin promised the kompromat will not be used as long as he continues his cooperation with them. Trump's actions at the Helsinki summit in 2018 "led many to conclude that Steele's report was more accurate than not.... Trump sided with the Russians over the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow had waged an all-out attack on the 2016 election... The joint news conference... cemented fears among some that Trump was in Putin's pocket and prompted bipartisan backlash." At the joint news conference, when asked directly about the subject, Putin denied that he had any kompromat on Trump. Even though Trump was reportedly given a "gift from Putin" the weekend of the pageant, Putin argued "that he did not even know Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 when, according to the Steele dossier, video of Trump was secretly recorded to blackmail him." In reaction to Trump's actions at the summit, Senator

Chuck Schumer Charles Ellis Schumer ( ; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as Senate Majority Leader since January 20, 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Schumer is in his fourth Senate term, having held his seat since 1999, and ...

(D-N.Y.) spoke in the Senate: Several operatives and lawyers in the U.S. intelligence community reacted strongly to Trump's performance at the summit. They described it as "subservien eto Putin" and a "fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine" which they saw as "harmful to U.S. interests". They also suggested that he was either a "Russian asset" or a "useful idiot" for Putin, and that he looked like "Putin's puppet". Former Director of National Intelligence

wondered "if Russians have something on Trump", and former CIA director

, who has accused Trump of "treason", tweeted: "He is wholly in the pocket of Putin." Former acting CIA director

Michael Morell Michael Joseph Morell (; born September 4, 1958) is an American former career intelligence analyst. He served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013 and twice as its acting director, first in 2011 and then fr ...

has called Trump "an unwitting agent of the Russian federation", and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said Trump was a "useful fool" who is "manipulated by Moscow". House Speaker

Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who has served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2019 and previously from 2007 to 2011. She has represented in the United States House of ...

questioned Trump's loyalty when she asked him: "

hy do Hy is a Dialect (computing), dialect of the Lisp (programming language), Lisp programming language designed to interact with Python (programming language), Python by translating s-expressions into Python's abstract syntax tree (AST). Hy was intr ...

all roads lead to Putin?"

Ynet Ynet (stylized as ynet) is one of the major Israeli news and general-content websites, and is the online outlet for the '' Yedioth Ahronot'' newspaper. However, most of Ynet's content is original work, published exclusively on the website and wri ...

, an Israeli online news site, reported on January 12, 2017, that U.S. intelligence had advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated. Ex-spy

Yuri Shvets Yuri may refer to: People and fictional characters Given name *Yuri (Slavic name), the Slavic masculine form of the given name George, including a list of people with the given name Yuri, Yury, etc. * Yuri (Japanese name), also Yūri, feminine Ja ...

, who was a partner of the assassinated

Alexander Litvinenko Alexander Valterovich "Sasha" Litvinenko (30 August 1962 ( at WebCite) or 4 December 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised ...

, believes that the KGB cultivated Trump as an asset for over 40 years. Yuri Shvets, a source for journalist

Craig Unger Craig Unger (b. March 25, 1949) is an American journalist and writer. He has served as deputy editor of ''The New York Observer'' and was editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine. He has written about George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush for ''The Ne ...

, compared the former president to the Cambridge Five who passed secrets to Moscow. Shvets believes that Semyon Kislin was a "spotter agent" who identified Trump as an asset in 1980. Among other things Shvets highlights Trump's visit to the Soviet Union in 1987. Yuri Shvets believes Trump was fed KGB talking points. For example, after Trump's return to New York, Trump took out full-page ads in major newspapers criticizing American allies and spending on NATO. Yuri Shvets claims that at the chief KGB directorate in Yasenevo, he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful " active measure". Shvets described the Mueller Report as a "big disappointment" because it focused only on "crime-related issues" rather than "counterintelligence aspects". Journalist

Luke Harding Luke Daniel Harding (born 21 April 1968) is a British journalist who is a foreign correspondent for ''The Guardian''. He was based in Russia for ''The Guardian'' from 2007 until, returning from a stay in the UK on 5 February 2011, he was refus ...

argued that Trump's visit to the Soviet Union in 1987 was arranged by the KGB as part of KGB overtures to recruit a wider variety of agents.

Mike Pence

In an interview on February 14, 2018, Pence said, "Irrespective of efforts that were made in 2016 by foreign powers, it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election." (In fact, in January 2017 the intelligence community had published a statement saying, "We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.") Pence added, "It doesn't mean that there weren't efforts, and we do know there were—there were efforts by Russia and likely by other countries. We take that very seriously."

Intelligence community

The CIA assessment, and Trump's dismissal of it, created an unprecedented rupture between the president-elect and the intelligence community. On December 11, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials responded to Trump's denunciation of their findings in a written statement, and expressed dismay that Trump disputed their conclusions as politically motivated or inaccurate. They wrote that intelligence officials were motivated to defend U.S. national security. Members of the intelligence community feared reprisals from Donald Trump once he took office. Former

said foreign interference in U.S. elections was an

existential threat A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical future event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanen ...

. Former CIA spokesman

George E. Little George E. Little is a former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of Defense and was replaced by Brent Colburn. He was appointed to his position on July 19, 2011. Professional career Little was app ...

condemned Trump for dismissing the CIA assessment, saying the president-elect's atypical response was disgraceful and denigrated the courage of those who serve in the CIA at risk to their own lives. Former NSA director and CIA director Michael V. Hayden posited that Trump's antagonizing the Intelligence Community signaled the administration would rely less on intelligence for policy-making. Independent presidential candidate and former CIA intelligence officer

Evan McMullin David Evan McMullin (born April 2, 1976) is an American politician and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. McMullin ran as an independent in the 2016 United States presidential election and in the 2022 United States Senate electio ...

criticized the Republican leadership for failing to respond adequately to Russia's meddling in the election process. McMullin said Republican politicians were aware that publicly revealed information about Russia's interference was likely the

tip of the iceberg Tip of the iceberg may refer to: * Tip of the iceberg, the top tenth portion of an iceberg An iceberg is a piece of freshwater ice more than 15 m long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water ...

relative to the actual threat. Former NSA director Michael V. Hayden has stated that Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election is the "most successful covert influence operation in history". Hayden went further saying that Trump was a "useful fool... manipulated by Moscow". A January 2017 report by the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence community did "not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election". Despite this, CIA Director

claimed that "the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election" at an event hosted by the

Foundation for Defense of Democracies The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank and registered lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., United States. The group's political leanings have been described as hawkish and neoconservati ...

on October 19, 2017. CIA agency spokesman Dean Boyd withdrew his remarks the next day saying they had been made in error.

Electoral College

On December 10, 2016, ten electors, headed by

Christine Pelosi Christine Paule Pelosi (born May 5, 1966) is an American Democratic Party political strategist from California. She is the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and businessman Paul Pelosi and sis ...

, daughter of former

United States Speaker of the House The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, commonly known as the speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. The office was established in 1789 by Article I, Section 2 of the ...

(D-CA), wrote an

open letter An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally. Open letters usually take the form of a letter addressed to an indiv ...

to the Director of National Intelligence

demanding an intelligence briefing on investigations into foreign intervention in the presidential election. Fifty-eight additional electors subsequently added their names to the letter, bringing the total to 68 electors from 17 different states. The Clinton campaign supported the call for a classified briefing for electors. On December 16, 2016, the briefing request was denied.

Russia

The Russian government initially issued categorical denials of any involvement in the U.S. presidential election.Andrew Higgins
Putin Hints at U.S. Election Meddling by 'Patriotically Minded' Russians
''The New York Times'' (June 1, 2017). By June 2016, Kremlin spokesman

Valdai Discussion Club The Valdai Discussion Club is a Moscow-based think tank and discussion forum. It was established in 2004 and is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place. In 2014, the managem ...

forum in October 2016, Putin denounced American "hysteria" over alleged Russian interference. When a new intelligence report surfaced in December 2016,

Foreign Minister of Russia The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation is a high-ranking Russian government official who heads the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The foreign minister is one of the five so-called 'presidential' minist ...

, rejected the accusations again. During a press conference, Putin deflected questions on the issue by accusing the U.S.

of scapegoating Russia after losing the presidential election. In June 2017, Putin said that "patriotically minded" Russian hackers could have been responsible for the cyberattacks against the U.S. during the 2016 campaign, while continuing to deny government involvement. Putin's comments echoed similar remarks that he had made earlier the same week to the French newspaper ''

Le Figaro ''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...

''. A few days later he said, "Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change. That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the head of the United States. We know more or less what is going to happen. And so in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere."Megyn Kelly Drills Vladimir Putin on Presidential Election Hack, Russia's Ties With Trump (Video)
. Yahoo News. June 5, 2017. Putin also invoked

whataboutism Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accu ...

and criticized

U.S. foreign policy The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America, including all the bureaus and offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the ''Foreign Policy Agenda'' of the Department of State, are ...

, saying, "Put your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are

interfering Interference is the act of interfering, invading, or poaching. Interference may also refer to: Communications * Interference (communication), anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a message * Adjacent-channel interference, caused by extra ...

in internal electoral processes." In March 2018 Putin suggested that "Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship" might have been to blame for interfering with U.S. elections, and suggested that "maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work".Alexander Smith
Putin on U.S. election interference: 'I couldn't care less'
NBC News (March 10, 2018). Putin's statement was criticized by the

Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...

and the

American Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish org ...

; both likened his comments to the ''

Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' () or ''The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax was plagiarized from several ...

'', an

antisemitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

hoax first published in Russia in the early 20th century. Boruch Gorin, a prominent

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

in Moscow, said that the translation of Putin's comment into English lacked critical nuance and that Russian Jews were largely indifferent to it.

Notes

References

External links

U.S. Department of Justice federal indictment against 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities
February 16, 2016
Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security
October 7, 2016
McCain, Graham, Schumer, Reed Joint Statement on Reports That Russia Interfered with the 2016 Election
December 11, 2016
James Comey's opening statement preceding the June 8, 2017 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing

House Intelligence Committee Report Findings and Recommendations

Chronological Listing of Donald Trump Jr.'s Email Exchange With Rob Goldstone

Committee to Investigate Russia

Indictment
July 13, 2018, indictment of 12 Russians for conspiracy, hacking, identity theft, and money laundering
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Russian Active Measures: Majority Report
March 22, 2018—Final Report of the Republican majority
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Russian Active Measures: Minority Views
March 26, 2018—a 98-page response by the Democratic minority
Trump Stories: Collusion

Embedded, February 8, 2018. Length: 1:06:31 {{Disinformation Russia–United States relations Articles containing video clips Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign Electoral fraud in the United States Foreign electoral intervention Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign

Background and Russian actors

Prior Russian election interference in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin

U.S. counter-disinformation team

Russian Institute for Strategic Studies

Social media and Internet trolls

Cyberattack on Democrats

Podesta hack

DNC hack

Intelligence analysis of attack

Intelligence reaction and indictment

WikiLeaks

Hacking of Congressional candidates

= Hacking of Republicans

= Civil DNC lawsuit against Russian Federation

= Calls by Trump for Russians to hack Clinton's deleted emails

Targeting of important voting blocs and institutions

Attempts to suppress African American votes and spread alienation

Arousing conservative voters

Intrusions into state election systems

Intrusions into state voter-registration systems

Investigation into financial flows

Money funneled through the NRA

Money from Russian oligarchs

Intelligence analysis and reports

Non-U.S. intelligence

October 2016 ODNI / DHS joint statement

December 2016 CIA report

FBI inquiries

January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment

James Comey testimony

U.S. government response

U.S. Senate

2018 committee reports

2020 committee report

U.S. House of Representatives

Obama administration

Punitive measures imposed on Russia

Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act

Counter-sanctions by Russia

Impact on election result

2017 developments

Dismissal of FBI Director James Comey

Investigation by special counsel

2017 charges

2018 developments

2018 indictments

Claims by Anastasia Vashukevich

2019 developments

2020 developments

2022 developments

Links between Trump associates and Russian officials

Paul Manafort

Michael Flynn

George Papadopoulos

Veselnitskaya meeting

Other Trump associates

Steele dossier

Ongoing investigations

Commentary and reactions

Public opinion

Hillary Clinton

Republican National Committee

Donald Trump

Trump viewed as under Putin's influence

Mike Pence

Intelligence community

Electoral College

Russia

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links