Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Elections (The More Things Changed)



The United States Intelligence Community has officially concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 United States elections. An intelligence community assessment stated, "Russian 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 President-elect Hillary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Governor Chafee and Mr. Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), representing 17 intelligence agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jointly stated that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and leaked its documents to WikiLeaks. In early January 2017, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before a Senate committee that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign went beyond hacking, and included disinformation and the dissemination of fake news often promoted on social media. Six federal agencies have also been investigating possible links and financial ties between the Kremlin and Trump's associates, including his advisers Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone; in addition, the same agencies have been investigating possible links and financial ties between the Kremlin and associates of Governor Chafee, including his advisers Ray McGovern and Daniel Ellsberg.

On February 21, 2017, Congress passed and President Clinton signed legislation to create a bi-partisan commission to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 elections. The commission is chaired by Avril Haines, Deputy National Security Advisor under President Barack Obama, and co-chaired by Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush.

On March 20, 2017, FBI director James Comey testified to the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI has been conducting a counter-intelligence investigation about Russian interference since July 2016, including possible coordination between associates of Donald Trump, Lincoln Chafee, and Russia.

Vladimir Putin Involvement


The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, representing the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA), published the following assessment in public, non-classified form in January 2017. The FBI and CIA gave the assessment with high confidence and the NSA with moderate confidence.

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

In December 2016, two senior intelligence officials told NBC News they were highly confident that Vladimir Putin personally directed the operation, citing new evidence obtained after the election from "diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies". They said Putin's motives started as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton, and grew into a desire to foment global distrust of the U.S. Officials made similar statements to CBS News, ABC News and Reuters. According to those statements, the operation began with a low-level effort to penetrate Democratic and Republican computer systems, Putin became personally involved after Russia accessed the DNC, and such an operation "had to be approved by top levels of the Russian government".

U.S. officials said that under Putin's direction, the goals evolved from criticizing American democracy to attacking Clinton, and by the fall of 2016 to directly help Trump's campaign, because "Putin believed he would be much friendlier to Russia, especially on the matter of economic sanctions". White House Press Secretary Josh 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.

Hostility between Putin and Clinton
The U.S. intelligence community, in a joint January 6, 2017, declassified report, stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin "most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Hillary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him." On March 20, 2017, FBI Director James Comey testified that Putin "hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much". Russians protest against Putin's re-election in 2012. Putin accused Secretary of State Clinton of inciting 2011–13 Russian protests.

Putin repeatedly accused Clinton, who served as U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, of interfering in Russia's internal affairs, and in December 2016, Clinton accused Putin of having a personal grudge against her. Michael McFaul, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia, said that "[Putin] was very upset [with Clinton] and continued to be for the rest of the time that I was in government. One could speculate that this is his moment for payback." In July 2016, NBC News reported that "Several former Obama administration officials said that when Clinton was secretary of state, she was by far the most aggressive and outspoken U.S. official when it came to countering Putin's efforts to consolidate his power domestically, and to expand his sphere of influence in the region and beyond. And when she left government, they say, Clinton became even more combative".

According to Russian security expert and investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, one of the reasons Russia tried to sway the U.S. presidential election is perceived antipathy between Clinton and the Russian government. Soldatov stated that according to Russia, the U.S. is "trying to interfere in our internal affairs, so why not try to do the same thing to them?"

Email Leaks
In June 2016, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) first stated that the Russian hacker groups Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear had penetrated their campaign servers and leaked information via the Guccifer 2.0 online persona.



On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released approximately 20,000 emails sent from or received by DNC personnel. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chairwoman following WikiLeaks releases suggesting collusion against the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and Lincoln Chafee. A few days later, at a televised news conference, Trump invited Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton's deleted emails from her private server during her tenure in the State Department, saying "Russia: If you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing". He also tweeted: "If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!" 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, and Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe added that Trump's call "might even constitute treason"; this claim was largely disputed by other constitutional scholars.



On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks started releasing series of emails and documents sent from or received by Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, which continued on a daily basis until Election Day. Podesta later blamed Russia for hacking into his email and claimed the leaks had "distorted" election results.

In April 2017, CIA Director André Carson stated:

"'I don't think there's any denying that Moscow had a role in the hacking. We know that they're responsible for the hacking of the DNC, and as suspected, they've been leaking information through intermediaries, i.e. Wikileaks. I think it's clear that Russia was interested in raising questions about the validity of the electoral system and denigrating Mrs. Clinton's candidacy.'"

Cybersecurity Analysis
In June and July 2016, cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis, Mandiant, SecureWorks and ThreatConnect, 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 Cozy Bear, also known respectively as APT28 and APT29. ThreatConnect also noted possible links between the DC Leaks project and Russian intelligence operations because of a similarity with Fancy Bear attack patterns. Symantec and FireEye examined the data themselves and "endorsed Crowdstrike's conclusion that two particular hacking groups were the culprits: 'Fancy Bear' and 'The Dukes'". The latter is also known as APT29.

In December 2016, Ars Technica IT editor Sean Gallagher reviewed the publicly available evidence, and wrote that attribution of the DNC hacks to Russian intelligence was based on clues from attack methods and similarity to other cases, as the hacking was tracked in real time since May 2016 by CrowdStrike's monitoring tools. SecureWorks stated that the actor group was operating from Russia on behalf of the Russian government with "moderate" confidence level, defined as "credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence."

GCHQ Tips and CIA Briefings to Congress
In part because U.S. agencies cannot surveil U.S. citizens without a warrant, the U.S. was slow to recognize a pattern itself. 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.

According to The Guardian because the materials were highly sensitive, Robert Hannigan, then the director of the UK's GCHQ, contacted CIA director John O. Brennan to give him information directly. Concerned, Brennan gave classified briefings to the Gang of Eight (the leaders of the House and Senate, and the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees) during late August and September 2016. Referring only to intelligence allies and not to specific sources, Brennan told the Gang of Eight that he had received evidence that Russia might be trying to help Trump win the U.S. election.

October 2016 ODNI / DHS Joint Statement
At the Aspen security conference in summer 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that 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 in the 2014 Ukraine crisis. In July 2016, consensus grew within the CIA that Russia had hacked the DNC.

In a joint statement on October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence 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 they had gained confidence that Russia's efforts were aimed at denying Clinton a victory.

FBI Inquiries
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, 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, FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the FBI "did not develop any evidence that the Trump campaign or the current RNC was successfully hacked". He added 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 stated that 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 House Intelligence Committee hearing in early December, the CIA said it was certain of Russia's intent to help Trump, but the FBI said "it's not clear that they have a specific goal or mix of related goals". On December 16, 2016, CIA Director John O. Brennan sent a message to his staff saying he had spoken with FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, 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 March 20, 2017, during public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of an FBI 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 and was "still in its early stages". Comey made the unusual decision to reveal the ongoing investigation to Congress, citing benefit to the public good.

December 2016 FBI / DHS Joint Analysis Report
On December 29, 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an unclassified Joint Analysis Report titled "GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity". It gave new technical details regarding methods used by Russian intelligence services for affecting the U.S. election, government, political organizations and private sector.

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 "released an extensive list of Internet Protocol addresses, computer files, malware code and other 'signatures' that it said the Russian hackers have used." An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung discussed the difficulty of proof in matters of cybersecurity. Persons quoted in the article told the paper that the unclassified evidence provided by the Joint Analysis Report did not provide proof of Russian culpability. One analyst told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that U.S. intelligence services could be keeping some information secret to protect their sources and analysis methods.

In January 2017, former hacker Kevin Poulsen, writing for The Daily Beast, stated that while there is solid evidence of Russia's interference from other sources, the incompetence of the DHS report encouraged "Trump-friendly conspiracy theorists". In another January, 2017 article, The Daily Beast stated that the report "was widely criticized by cybersecurity experts for being little more than a hodge-podge of random Internet Protocol addresses and code names for hacker gangs suspected of having ties to Moscow."

January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment
On January 6, 2017, after briefing the president, the president-elect, and members of the Senate and House, U.S. intelligence agencies released a de-classified version[114] of the report on Russian activities. The report 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.[115] A large part of the report was dedicated to criticizing Russian TV channel RT America, which it described as a "messaging tool" for the Kremlin.

On March 5, 2017, James Clapper said, in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that, regarding the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment:

"'We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, 'our', that's N.S.A., F.B.I. and C.I.A., with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report. … Whether there is more evidence that's become available since then, whether ongoing investigations will be revelatory, I don't know. It is to everyone's interest to get to the bottom of this.'"

On May 14, 2017, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Clapper explained more about the state of evidence for or against any collusion:

"'There was no evidence of any collusion included in that report, that's not to say there wasn't evidence. There could have been—might be, I don’t know—in the investigation. I did not know there was a formal investigation or they were addressing potential political collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.... [A]t the time I left office,.. I had no evidence available to me that there was collusion. But that's not necessarily exculpatory, since I did not know the state of the investigation nor the content, what had been turned up in it.'"

Obama Administration


U.S. President Obama and Vladimir Putin had a discussion about computer security 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 Moscow–Washington hotline, 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. We will hold Russia to those standards."

On December 9, 2016, Obama ordered the U.S. Intelligence Community 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 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 occurring between the 2008 and 2016 elections. CNN reported that an unnamed senior administration official told them that the White House was confident Russia interfered in the election. The official said the order by President Obama would be a lessons learned report, with options including sanctions and covert cyber response against Russia.

At a White House press conference on December 15, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Trump and the public were aware prior to the 2016 election of Russian interference efforts, calling these undisputed facts. United States Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on December 15, 2016, about President Obama's decision to approve the October 2016 joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Kerry stated the president's decision was deliberative and relied upon information cautiously weighed by the intelligence agencies. He said the president felt a need to warn the U.S. public and did.

In a December 15, 2016 interview by NPR journalist Steve Inskeep, 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. He added that motive 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.

Sanctions Imposed on Russia
On December 29, 2016, the U.S. government announced a series of punitive measures against Russia that were said to be "the biggest retaliatory move against Russian espionage since the Cold War" and "the strongest American response yet to a state-sponsored cyberattack". Namely, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on four top officials of the GRU and declared persona non grata 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying; they were ordered to leave the country within 72 hours. Further sanctions against Russia were announced, both overt and covert. A White House statement said that "Russia's cyberactivities were intended to influence the election, erode faith in US democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the US government." President Obama said "these actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm US interests in violation of established international norms of behavior."

On December 30, two waterfront compounds used 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, on Long Island, and the other in Centreville, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. They had served as luxury retreats for various Russian diplomats over several decades.

Haines-Rice Commission




On February 21, 2017, Congress passed and President Clinton signed legislation to create a bi-partisan commission to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 elections, formally titled the National Commission on Foreign Interference in United States Elections. The commission consists of five Democrats and five Republicans. It is chaired by Avril Haines, Deputy National Security Advisor under President Barack Obama, and co-chaired by Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush.

The members of the commission include:
 * Avril Haines (Chair) - Democrat, former Deputy National Security Advisor and former Deputy Director of the CIA
 * Condoleeza Rice (Vice-Chair) - Republican, former Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor
 * Viet Dinh - Republican, former Assistant Attorney General
 * Christopher Kojm - Democrat, former Chair of the National Intelligence Council and Deputy Director of the 9/11 Commission
 * Jon Kyl - Republican, former United States Senator from Arizona
 * John Lehman - Republican, former Secretary of the Navy and member of the 9/11 Commission
 * William J. Lynn III - Democrat, former Deputy Secretary of Defense
 * Lisa Monaco - Democrat, former U.S. Homeland Security Advisor
 * Richard Painter - Republican, former chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House
 * Deval Patrick - Democrat, former Governor of Massachusetts

Patrick Fitzgerald, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, has been selected as the Executive Director of the commission.

Paul Manafort
The New York Times reported that campaign chairman Paul Manafort had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016. Manafort said he did not knowingly meet any Russian intelligence officials.

Carter Page
In February 2017, Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump stated that he had "no meetings" with Russian officials during 2016 but two days later said that he "did not deny" meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Page's reversal occurred after the news reports that revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had likewise met with Kislyak. In March 2017, Page was called on by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Roger Stone


Roger J. Stone Jr., a former adviser to Donald Trump and self-proclaimed political “dirty trickster”, admitted in March 2017 that during August 2016, he had been in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker persona believed to be a front for Russian intelligence operations who has publicly claimed responsibility for at least one hack of the DNC. Stone is suspected of having inside knowledge of these hacks, accurately predicting that it would soon be John Podesta's "time in the barrel" on Twitter, shortly prior to the Wikileaks release of the Podesta emails, a hacking incident now broadly understood to have been a significant contributing factor to Trump's 2016 election victory against then-expected winner Hillary Clinton. Additionally, Stone has also reportedly stated privately to some Republican colleagues that he has "actually communicated with Julian Assange" on at least one occasion, although Stone and his two Attorneys have since denied this.

Stone is presently under FBI scrutiny as the agency investigates the possibility that criminal collusion between key figures in the Trump campaign and the Russian Federation took place during the 2016 election. If the FBI investigation reveals that criminal collusion with a hostile foreign government did indeed occur within the Trump campaign, it is highly likely that Roger Stone was involved, knowingly or otherwise.

Steele Dossier
On October 31, 2016, a week before the election, David Corn of Mother Jones magazine, reported that an unnamed former intelligence officer had produced a report (later referred to as a dossier) based on Russian sources and had turned it over to the FBI. The officer, who was familiar to the FBI and was known for the quality of his past work, was later identified as Christopher Steele. The FBI found Steele and his information credible enough that it considered paying Steele to continue collecting information but the release of the document to the public stopped discussions between Steele and the FBI. Corn said the main points in the unverified report were that Moscow had tried to cultivate Donald Trump for years; that it possessed compromising or potentially embarrassing material about him that could possibly be used to blackmail him; and that there had been a flow of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, which involved multiple in-person meetings between Russian government officials and individuals working for Trump. The dossier also claimed that the Kremlin's goal had been to "encourage splits and divisions in the Western alliance."

On March 30, 2017, Paul Wood of BBC News revealed that the FBI was using the dossier as a roadmap for its investigation. On April 18, 2017, CNN reported that corroborated information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the FISA warrant to monitor former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page during the summer of 2016.

Ray McGovern


Former CIA analyst and Chafee campaign advisor Ray McGovern had attended a gala in Moscow hosted by the state owned media outlet Russia Today - which has been frequently described as a propaganda outlet for the Russian government - where he criticized U.S. policy towards Russia. Also in attendance were Donald Trump intelligence advisor retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

McGovern, who had accompanied Chafee on his trip to Moscow, had frequently been critical of what he termed "hysteria" over Russian interference in the 2016 election. On March 24, 2017, McGovern agreed to testify before the House Intelligence Committee regarding their investigation into Russia. In his testimony, McGovern denied any interference in the 2016 elections and turned blame to domestic agencies, stating:

"'It is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several “active measures” undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Clapper - Director Clapper.'"

Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst who released top secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, had served as a key intelligence and national security policy advisor to the Chafee campaign.

On May 15th, 2017, Ellsberg signed a letter by the Courage Foundation to President Clinton and Attorney General Granholm asking them to drop an investigation into Wikileaks, the online publication by which many of the leaked classified documents were released.

Hillary Clinton
On December 15, 2016, President Hillary Clinton gave a gratitude speech to her campaign donors in which she reflected on Putin's motivations for the covert operation. 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 that Putin rigged the elections that year, to his actions in the 2016 U.S. elections.

During the third Presidential debate, Clinton stated that Putin favored Trump, "because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States". Trump strongly rejected the claim. Clinton proceeded to describe how the Russians "engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race".

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 U.S. Senators from both parties, to set up an investigative panel to look into the matter akin to the 9/11 Commission. This panel was later realized in the creation of the Haines-Rice Commission.

Donald Trump
Prior to his presidential run, Donald Trump made statements to Fox News in 2014 in which he agreed with an assessment by FBI director James Comey about hacking against the U.S. by Russia and China. Trump was played a clip of Comey from 60 Minutes 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: "No, I think he's 100% right, it's a big problem, and we have that problem also with Russia. You saw that over the weekend. Russia's doing the same thing."

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, "because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States".

After the election, Trump rejected the CIA analysis and asserted that the reports were politically motivated to deflect from the Democrats' narrower-than-expected electoral win. Trump's campaign drew attention to prior errors emanating from the CIA, namely stating: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." The intelligence analysts involved in monitoring Russian activities are most likely different from those who assessed that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Responding to The Washington Post, 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."

Intelligence Community
Former CIA director Michael Morell said foreign interference in U.S. elections was an existential threat and called it the "political equivalent" of the September 11 attacks. Former CIA spokesman George E. Little condemned Trump for dismissing the CIA assessment, saying that 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 said that Trump's antagonizing the Intelligence Community was problematic and signaled that the new administration was less likely to use intelligence "to create the basis, and set the boundaries, for rational policy choices".

Former Congressman and Director of the CIA André Carson has stated "I don't think there's any denying that Moscow had a role in the hacking."

Ray Mabus, Director of National Intelligence and former Secretary of the Navy, has similarly stated his concerns, stating "I want to know what the Russian intelligence services had to do with our democracy."