Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

• 1. Introduction

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  Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections drew an unusual admission from Vladimir Putin himself. Asked whether he had wanted Donald Trump to win, Putin answered: "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal." He said as much in 2018. That was after Russian officials had repeatedly denied any part in the hacks and leaks. American intelligence agencies reached a very different verdict. They said the operation carried the code name Project Lakhta and that Putin ordered it directly. It combined a troll farm in Saint Petersburg, military hackers, stolen emails and a trail of contacts around the Trump campaign. How did a foreign government try to steer an American election? What did its operatives actually do, and who helped or ignored them? What did investigators prove, and what did it change? Some of those answers are firm. Others are still argued over.

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• 2. Roots and Motives

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  The Soviet Union interfered in American elections in 1960 and again in 1984, and America influenced the Russian election of 1996. So the 2016 operation had precedents, though its tools and scale were new.

  A closer rehearsal came in Ukraine. Over several days in 2014, pro-Russian hackers disrupted Ukraine's presidential election with hacked emails, attempts to alter vote tallies and denial-of-service attacks. Less than an hour before polls closed, officials removed malware from the Central Election Commission. It would have shown a graphic declaring the far-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh the winner. Channel One Russia broadcast that same fake graphic anyway. Political scientist Peter Ordeshook said the faked results were aimed at a specific audience, feeding a Russian claim that ultra-nationalists and Nazis stood behind the Ukrainian revolution. The Sofacy malware used in the election commission hack was later found on the servers of the Democratic National Committee.

  What drove Putin? According to the January 2017 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which reflected the work of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA, he blamed Hillary Clinton for the mass protests against his rule in 2011-2012. She was secretary of state at the time. The report said Russia aimed to undermine public faith in American democracy and to harm Clinton's electability. It also said Putin developed a clear preference for Trump. The agencies expressed high confidence in these judgments. Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia, suggested the operation could be retaliation. Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov said the Kremlin believed sanctions would be nearly impossible to lift with Clinton in the White House. Unnamed senior officials said the goals shifted over time. First came undermining trust in American democracy, then damaging Clinton, and by the fall of 2016 directly helping Trump. Documents described as Kremlin papers say Putin authorized intensive measures in January 2016 to make sure Trump was elected.

  America had once planned a defense. The State Department built a Counter-Disinformation Team, meant as a reboot of the Reagan-era Active Measures Working Group. It was aimed at outlets such as the television network RT, and Richard Stengel was its point person. Department heads disbanded it in September 2015, after eight months of development, having missed the scope of the propaganda. Intelligence officials told one columnist that the Obama administration feared antagonizing Russia.

  In April 2017, Reuters cited unnamed American officials who described a strategy from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, headed by retired general Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov. They said Putin ordered it. Its first recommendations in June 2016 proposed backing a candidate friendlier to Russia. By October, it allegedly shifted toward eroding faith in the voting system by alleging voter fraud, since Clinton looked likely to win. Institute director Mikhail Fradkov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied it.

  The groundwork had started long before. A February 2018 indictment alleged that two Russian women obtained visas more than two years before the election for a three-week reconnaissance trip. Their route included Colorado, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico.

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• 3. The Troll Farm

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  By February 2016, internal documents from the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg contained an order to back Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Staff were told to use any opportunity to criticize Hillary Clinton and the other candidates. The Mueller Report described this troll farm as the first method of interference, a social media campaign meant to favor Trump, disparage Clinton and amplify discord. To pass as Americans, operatives created hundreds of email, PayPal and bank accounts, along with fraudulent driver's licenses. Some used the stolen Social Security numbers of real people.

  The campaign spread across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, YouTube, Vine and Google+. Instagram was by far the most used platform, and it stayed largely out of public view until late 2018. The Mueller report lists Facebook groups the agency created, including Tea Party News, Blacktivist, LGBT United and United Muslims of America. On Twitter, the account @TEN_GOP claimed ties to the Tennessee Republican Party. Two other accounts, @jenn_abrams and @Pamela_Moore13, each reached 70,000 followers. Trump family members and campaign figures including Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale and Michael Flynn reposted material from @TEN_GOP.

  The money involved was small. The Mueller Report found the agency spent $100,000 on more than 3,500 Facebook advertisements between June 2015 and May 2017. By comparison, the Clinton and Trump campaigns together spent $81 million on Facebook ads. Even so, the report said the Russian ads likely drew more impressions and engagement per dollar. From June 2016, the agency also organized real rallies in the United States, hiding its Russian origin while asking Trump campaign members for buttons, flyers and posters.

  Vox reported that the agency courted Muslims, Christians, Texans and LGBTQ people, but no group got more attention than Black Americans. A December 2018 report commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee counted 30 Facebook pages aimed at Black Americans. It also counted 10 YouTube channels that posted 571 videos about police violence. The covert Instagram account @blackstagram passed 300,000 followers. The pages together gained 1.2 million followers, and the Russian Blacktivist page drew more hits than the real Black Lives Matter page. Researchers have compared the effort to the KGB's Operation INFEKTION, which sought to foster racial tension.

  On the other side, at least 25 pages drew 1.4 million followers by courting the political right. After Black Lives Matter moved to the center of public attention, Russian operatives added Blue Lives Matter material. Scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson argued that churchgoing Christians and military families were two blocs where Trump might underperform. Trolls answered with memes that exploited conservative attitudes about people of color, Muslims and immigrants. One meme paired a homeless veteran with an undocumented immigrant. CNN exit polls later showed Trump leading Clinton among veterans by 26 percentage points.

  The second method of interference did not rely on strangers' likes. It relied on stolen files.

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• 4. Stolen Emails

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  Starting in March 2016, the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, sent spearphishing emails to more than 300 people tied to the Democratic Party or the Clinton campaign, according to a July 2018 indictment. On the 19th of March 2016, campaign chairman John Podesta received a message warning of a "compromise in the system" and urging him to change his password immediately. The link opened his private account, and about 60,000 emails were taken. Inside the Democratic networks, the hackers harvested tens of thousands of emails and attachments, then deleted logs and files to cover their tracks.

  The Democratic National Committee had been breached for a long time. The intelligence community concluded that the GRU, operating as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, entered its network in July 2015 and stayed until at least June 2016. In June and July 2016, security firms including CrowdStrike, Mandiant and FireEye attributed the intrusions to two Russian intelligence groups. Dutch reporting later revealed that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD had penetrated Cozy Bear in 2014. It watched the group hack the State Department in 2015 and even captured pictures of the hackers through a security camera.

  The documents were released in stages through a website called DCLeaks, a persona called Guccifer 2.0, and WikiLeaks. The Russians paid for the DCLeaks domain mainly with Bitcoin. The first batch, 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments, appeared on the 22nd of July 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. Coverage suggested the party committee favored Clinton over Sanders, who won 43 percent of primary votes. Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned.

  The second major batch came on the 7th of October. A few hours earlier, the Obama administration had publicly accused Russia of hacking. Twenty-nine minutes before the release, The Washington Post had reported on the Access Hollywood tape featuring Trump. WikiLeaks announced it held 50,000 Podesta emails and initially released 2,050. They included transcripts of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street banks and staff infighting. Podesta said this was when he first understood what had been taken. The emails later fed Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory about a child trafficking ring.

  Assange and his organization denied that Russia was the source. An anonymous CIA official said the material traveled from the GRU to WikiLeaks by a circuitous route through third parties. In April 2017, CIA director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence agency. In August 2017, congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange. At his 2020 extradition hearings, Assange's lawyers alleged Rohrabacher offered a Trump pardon in return for saying Russia was not the source. They said it came on instructions from the president. Trump and Rohrabacher denied discussing it, and Rohrabacher said he acted on his own.

  Trump himself had invited the hacking. At a news conference on the 27th of July 2016, he said: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." He later said he was joking. The 2018 indictment said Russian hackers made their first unsuccessful attempt on Clinton's offices that same day, though it alleged no direct link. Journalist Jane Mayer called the timing striking.

  Clinton was not the only target. Documents stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee went to reporters and bloggers, and The New York Times noted the targeted seats were among the most competitive House races. Republicans were hit too. FBI director James Comey told the Senate in January 2017 that Russia collected information from Republican-linked targets but did not leak it. Over 200 emails from Colin Powell were posted on DC Leaks.

  On the 20th of April 2018, the Democratic National Committee sued the Russian government, the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks and others. The judge dismissed the case because New York did not recognize the tort claims, and made no finding on collusion.

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• 5. Voting Systems

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  In the summer and fall of 2016, Russian hackers intruded into voter databases and software in 39 states. Obama administration officials were alarmed enough to use the Moscow-Washington hotline and warn that the attacks risked a broader conflict. The FBI had sent states a warning about "bad actors" probing election systems as early as June 2016. In August it issued a nationwide flash alert. In September, FBI director Comey told the House Judiciary Committee that agents had detected hacker activity in state voter-registration databases.

  September 2016 brought a further announcement from Homeland Security officials and the National Association of Secretaries of State. Hackers had penetrated or tried to penetrate the registration systems of more than 20 states. Four intrusions succeeded, including those in Illinois and Arizona. The hackers did not appear to alter data, but Illinois officials said information on up to 200,000 registered voters was stolen. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said 18 states asked for security help. The department offered risk assessments, yet only four states showed interest with the election so close. Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote to the FBI that foreign efforts to cast doubt on free elections were a danger to democracy not seen since the Cold War.

  A National Security Agency report dated the 5th of May 2017, published by The Intercept that June, described a months-long GRU hacking effort. Hackers used spearphishing to get employee logins at VR Systems, an election software vendor. Two months later, they sent trojanized Microsoft Word documents that appeared to come from a company employee. These targeted local officials involved in managing voter registration. The agency was unsure what the second attack achieved.

  On the 22nd of September 2017, federal authorities notified election officials in 21 states that their systems had been targeted. Often states were told they had not been breached. For many, this was the first official confirmation, more than a year later. Wisconsin and California officials disputed the claim, and California secretary of state Alex Padilla called the notice a year late and bad information.

  The Senate Intelligence Committee's interim report in May 2018 called the Homeland Security response inadequate. It found Russian penetration of election systems in at least 18 states, possibly 21. In a smaller group of states, infiltrators could have altered or deleted voter registration data, though not individual votes or tallies. The committee recommended that any new voting machine have a voter-verified paper trail and no WiFi capability.

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• 6. Campaign Contacts

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  At least 18 Trump campaign officials and advisers, along with Trump, had contacts with Russian nationals, WikiLeaks, or intermediaries between the two, up to the inauguration. The New York Times counted more than 140 meetings, calls, texts and messages. Trump's team issued at least twenty denials about communications with Russian officials, and several turned out to be false.

  Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, had several contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials that he denied. Intercepted communications showed Russian officials believed they could use him to influence Trump. In August 2016, Manafort gave Konstantin Kilimnik polling data for Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The Mueller Report linked Kilimnik to Russian intelligence, and the Senate committee called him an intelligence officer. The Internet Research Agency had specifically targeted those three states, which Trump won narrowly. Manafort was convicted of fraud in August 2019 and sentenced to 47 months. Judge Amy Berman Jackson added another 43 months, and Manafort was pardoned on the 23rd of December 2020. None of the charges alleged collusion.

  In December 2015, retired general Michael Flynn sat next to Putin at a Moscow dinner after giving a paid speech. On the 29th of December 2016, the day Obama announced sanctions, Flynn spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and urged restraint. He first denied the conversation, then said he could not remember. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House that Russia had leverage over him, and Flynn resigned as national security advisor on the 13th of February 2017. He pleaded guilty on the 1st of December 2017 to lying to the FBI. In 2020, the Justice Department moved to dismiss the charge, a judge resisted, and appeals followed. Trump pardoned Flynn on the 25th of November 2020, and the case ended as moot.

  In March 2016, Trump named George Papadopoulos an unpaid foreign policy advisor. Soon after, London professor Joseph Mifsud told him the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. In May 2016, at a London wine bar, Papadopoulos relayed this to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. When the DNC emails surfaced in July, Australia told the FBI, which opened Crossfire Hurricane. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on the 5th of October 2017 and received 14 days in prison. Trump pardoned him in December 2020.

  In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Manafort and Jared Kushner met Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Publicist Rob Goldstone had arranged it by email, saying the information came from the Russian government. Trump Jr. replied: "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer." He said no damaging information arrived and the talk turned to adoption. When The New York Times disclosed the meeting in July 2017, The Washington Post revealed that President Trump had dictated his son's statement about it.

  Others surfaced too. Jeff Sessions spoke twice with Kislyak before the election despite saying under oath he had no communications with Russians, and he recused himself on the 2nd of March 2017. Roger Stone said he had been in touch with Guccifer 2.0. He also claimed contact with Assange, then denied it, naming Randy Credico as his intermediary. Carter Page, an oil consultant, was monitored by the FBI under a FISA warrant. Republican operative Peter W. Smith contacted hacker groups in search of Clinton's emails, and five claimed to have them. He suggested they give the material to WikiLeaks instead.

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• 7. Investigations and Denials

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  From late 2015 into the summer of 2016, several allied countries noticed suspicious interactions between Trump-linked figures and Russian agents during routine surveillance. The United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland and Australia passed warnings to Washington. GCHQ director Robert Hannigan went directly to CIA director John O. Brennan. Brennan briefed the congressional Gang of Eight in late August and September 2016. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell discouraged public discussion and blocked an election security bill, which earned him the nickname "Moscow Mitch". The first public government accusation was a joint statement on the 22nd of September 2016 from Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff. Meanwhile, ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, hired by Fusion GPS, produced a dossier. Its claim that Putin ordered a campaign against Clinton came six months before the January 2017 intelligence report.

  The Obama administration answered with strong statements from intelligence agencies, a direct warning from Obama to Putin, renewed economic sanctions and the closure of Russian diplomatic facilities. Brennan had personally warned Alexander Bortnikov, his counterpart at Russia's FSB, on the 4th of August 2016. The FBI opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016. It examined the campaign and possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian officials.

  On the firing of FBI director James Comey in May 2017, the inquiry stopped abruptly. Trump openly said the firing was partly motivated by Comey's role in the investigation. After public outcry, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein authorized a special counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller. His team indicted twenty-six Russian citizens and three Russian organizations, among them twelve GRU officials in July 2018. It also produced indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans.

  The Mueller report, released in April 2019, called the interference "sweeping and systematic" and said it "violated U.S. criminal law". Investigators found the Trump campaign welcomed Russia's activities, yet lacked sufficient evidence for conspiracy or coordination charges. They noted that Roger Stone "appeared to know in advance" about the publication of hacked emails. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released its report in five volumes between July 2019 and August 2020. It found an extensive Russian campaign to sabotage the election in Trump's favor, with help from some of his advisers. It called the intelligence community's assessment "coherent and well-constructed" and found analysts faced no politically motivated pressure.

  The denials never stopped. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected any link to the DNC hacks in June 2016. In December 2016, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said he was "astonished" by what he called nonsense. In June 2017, Putin suggested "patriotically minded" Russian hackers may have been responsible. Donald Trump denied any interference occurred at all. He, Republican leaders and right-wing conservatives promoted debunked counter-narratives, calling the inquiry a "Russia hoax". Yet Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Internet Research Agency, admitted taking part.

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• 8. Reach and Effect

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  Facebook first denied that fake news on its platform influenced the election and said it knew of no Russian-financed advertisements. It later admitted that about 126 million Americans may have seen posts from Russia-based operatives. In May 2017, it announced plans to hire 3,000 content reviewers. In September 2017, Facebook told congressional investigators that hundreds of fake accounts linked to a Russian troll farm had bought ads aimed at American voters. Roughly 25 percent were geographically targeted. About 3,000 ads were viewed by between four and five million users before the election, and other estimates put the ads' reach at 10 million. On the 1st of November 2017, the House Intelligence Committee released a sample of the ads and pages.

  BuzzFeed News found that the 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs drew 8,711,000 shares, reactions and comments on Facebook. Jonathan Albright of Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism studied 470 confirmed Russian-created Facebook accounts in 2017. Six of them produced material shared at least 340 million times. Researchers J.M. Berger, Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts monitored 7,000 pro-Trump accounts for two and a half years. They found falsehoods about Clinton's health and attacks on critics of Russian activity in Syria. Philip N. Howard found about half of the Twitter news aimed at Michigan before the election was fabricated or untrue.

  A 2019 Washington Post analysis found many troll accounts resembled ordinary users. They often used humor and exploited questions of culture and identity, and some were among the first to push new divisive conversations into mainstream print media. Howard and colleagues concluded that most misinformation came as organic posting, not advertisements, and that the activity grew after 2016.

  In January 2023, a study from New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics reached a more skeptical result for Twitter. It found Russian trolls had little influence on voters' attitudes, polarization or voting behavior. Only 1 percent of Twitter users accounted for 70 percent of exposure to Russian troll accounts. Highly partisan Republicans saw nine times more of their posts than non-Republicans. The study did not examine Facebook, nor the hack-and-leak operations, which Kathleen Hall Jamieson suggested in 2018 probably played a significant role. Its authors also stressed that foreign influence operations remain a threat. The Senate Intelligence Committee warned in 2019 that the United States remained vulnerable in the 2020 election.

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