Russian Interference in 2016 US Elections and Ties to Trump Associates

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    Trump Officials Take Steps to Target Comey and Brennan, Who Investigated Trump

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    It is unclear whether moves targeting the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan will lead to charges.The Trump administration appears to be targeting officials who oversaw the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, examining the actions of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan, according to people familiar with the situation.John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director and a harsh critic of his Democratic-appointed predecessors, has made a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan to the F.B.I., accusing him of lying to Congress, officials said. The bureau is also scrutinizing Mr. Comey for his role in the Russia investigation, other officials said, although the exact basis for any inquiry remains unclear.Even if it is unclear whether the moves will lead to charges, they are among the most significant indications that President Trump’s appointees intend to follow through on his campaign to exact retribution against his perceived enemies. That includes people leading the investigation into what he has repeatedly denounced as the “Russia hoax” nine years ago and officials involved in two failed federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump during the Biden years.This all comes at a precarious moment for the appointed leadership of federal law enforcement agencies. Since Monday, Trump supporters on the far right have lashed out at Attorney General Pam Bondi and F.B.I. brass for closing the investigation into the death of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Those same allies have called for aggressive investigations of Trump investigators.C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman wrote in a statement that it did not comment on “ongoing investigations.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      C.I.A. Says Its Leaders Rushed Report on Russia Interference in 2016 Vote

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      But the new review of the earlier assessment does not dispute the conclusion that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump.A C.I.A. review of its assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election criticized the agency’s leadership at the time for rushing the effort but did not dispute the conclusion that Russia favored the election of Donald J. Trump.The review also criticized John O. Brennan, who was the C.I.A. director when the assessment was written, for his oversight of the project and for too tightly controlling access to sensitive intelligence that formed the basis of the work.The original intelligence review, which was undertaken in the aftermath of the November 2016 vote, came amid concerns about Russian ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign and efforts by the Kremlin to sow dissent during the election.Before the vote, the Obama administration issued warnings about Russian cyberoperations, and the C.I.A. and F.B.I. intensified their scrutiny of Russian activity after the election.Early on, the intelligence assessment, an unclassified version of which was released in January 2017, came under criticism from Republican supporters of Mr. Trump. The criticism continued through his first term, though a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee affirmed the judgment of the assessment.John H. Durham, a Justice Department special counsel in the first Trump administration, looked at the C.I.A.’s and other intelligence agencies’ work on the assessment, but made no substantive mention of it in his final report.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Targets WilmerHale, Citing Law Firm’s Connection to Robert Mueller

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      President Trump moved on Thursday to punish the law firm WilmerHale, where Robert S. Mueller III worked before and after he served as special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation, expanding his widespread campaign of retribution.In an executive order, Mr. Trump hit the elite firm with many of the same penalties that he had applied to its competitors who had taken on cases or causes he did not like.He directed the cancellation of all government contracts with WilmerHale, and the suspension of any security clearances of its employees. The order also barred WilmerHale employees from federal buildings, banned them from communicating with government employees and prevented them from being hired at government agencies.Other elite law firms have been hit with similar sanctions, leaving them to choose whether to fight the orders or cut a deal with Mr. Trump to remove the restrictions, even as a judge has already blocked one of the orders because it is likely to be unlawful.The order said Mr. Trump was in part punishing WilmerHale for the firm’s connections to Mr. Mueller, who led an inquiry that the order described as “one of the most partisan investigations in American history.”In fact, Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel by Mr. Trump’s own deputy attorney general amid concerns about Mr. Trump’s desire to shut down the F.B.I. investigation of his campaign after he took office. Mr. Mueller, then working at WilmerHale, resigned from the firm to lead the investigation, and returned to WilmerHale after the investigation was closed. Mr. Mueller retired from WilmerHale in 2021.“WilmerHale rewarded Robert Mueller and his colleagues,” the order said, adding that “Mueller’s investigation epitomizes the weaponization of government, yet WilmerHale claimed he ‘embodies the highest value of our firm and profession.’”The order also attacked diversity efforts at WilmerHale, as well as its representation of clients who Mr. Trump disagreed with, asserting that the firm “backs the obstruction of efforts” against illegal immigrants and drug trafficking.In a statement, WilmerHale defended Mr. Mueller’s character and said the firm had “a longstanding tradition of representing a wide range of clients, including in matters against administrations of both parties.”The firm added, “We look forward to pursuing all appropriate remedies to this unlawful order.”Matthew Goldstein More

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      Trump Dislikes Ukraine for the Most MAGA of Reasons

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      It’s certainly understandable that many millions of Americans have focused on Springfield, Ohio, after the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. When Trump repeated the ridiculous rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating household pets, he not only highlighted once again his own vulnerability to conspiracy theories, it put the immigrant community in Springfield in serious danger. Bomb threats have forced two consecutive days of school closings and some Haitian immigrants are now “scared for their lives.”That’s dreadful. It’s inexcusable. But it’s not Trump’s only terrible moment in the debate. Most notably, he refused to say — in the face of repeated questions — that he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia. Trump emphasized ending the war over winning the war, a position that can seem reasonable, right until you realize that attempting to force peace at this stage of the conflict would almost certainly cement a Russian triumph. Russia would hold an immense amount of Ukrainian territory and Putin would rightly believe he bested both Ukraine and the United States. He would have rolled the “iron dice” of war and he would have won.There is no scenario in which a Russian triumph is in America’s best interest. A Russian victory would not only expand Russia’s sphere of influence, it would represent a human rights catastrophe (Russia has engaged in war crimes against Ukraine’s civilian population since the beginning of the war) and threaten the extinction of Ukrainian national identity. It would reset the global balance of power.In addition, a Russian victory would make World War III more, not less, likely. It would teach Vladimir Putin that aggression pays, that the West’s will is weak and that military conquest is preferable to diplomatic engagement. China would learn a similar lesson as it peers across the strait at Taiwan.If Vladimir Putin is stopped now — while Ukraine and the West are imposing immense costs in Russian men and matériel — it will send the opposite message, making it far more likely that the invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s last war, not merely his latest.But that’s not how Trump thinks about Ukraine. He exhibits deep bitterness toward the country, and it was that bitterness that helped expose how dangerous he was well before the Big Lie and Jan. 6.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alongside the Trump-Russia Inquiry, a Lesser-Known Look at Egyptian Influence

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      The Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller investigated whether a Trump adviser was part of an Egyptian plan, never proven, to funnel $10 million to the 2016 Trump campaign.In the summer of 2017, as the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was starting his investigation, his agents and prosecutors were chasing potentially explosive allegations about foreign influence over Donald J. Trump and his campaign.C.I.A. intelligence relayed to the special counsel’s office suggested that senior leaders of a foreign adversary had signed off on secretly funneling millions of dollars — with the help of a Trump campaign adviser acting as “a bag man” — to Mr. Trump in the final days of the 2016 election.Interviews and other evidence obtained by the special counsel’s office showed that indeed Mr. Trump had lent his campaign a similar amount of money in the final days of the race — and, after beating Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump immediately struck a far more favorable tone toward the country than his predecessors.The country in question, however, was not Russia. It was Egypt.Seven years after Mr. Mueller’s team dug in on those allegations, people familiar with the investigation acknowledged that while much of the country’s attention was focused on ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, the most concrete lead Mr. Mueller’s team initially had about potential foreign influence over Mr. Trump involved Egypt. The people familiar with the inquiry discussed details of it on the condition of anonymity.While Mr. Mueller has often been criticized for not moving aggressively enough to investigate Mr. Trump’s personal and financial ties to Russia, his team took invasive steps to try to understand whether Mr. Trump or his campaign had received financial backing from Cairo.Mr. Trump’s foreign business ties and efforts by foreign interests and government to influence him have come under scrutiny again as he seeks to return to the White House. The little-known investigation into possible Egyptian influence shows both the intensity of past efforts to explore the issue and how they have fueled Mr. Trump’s long-running assertions that he has been subject to a “witch hunt.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. and Allies Target Russian Bots Working to Spread Propaganda

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      Intelligence officials from three countries flagged a Russian influence campaign that used artificial intelligence to create nearly 1,000 fake accounts on the social media platform X.The Justice Department said on Tuesday that it had moved to disrupt a covert Russian influence operation that used artificial intelligence to spread propaganda in the United States, Europe and Israel with the goal of undermining support for Ukraine and stoking internal political divisions.Working with the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, as well as officials at Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, the department said it seized two internet domains in the United States and took down 968 inauthentic accounts that the Russian government created after its attack on Ukraine began in 2022.In affidavits released with the announcement, officials with the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon’s Cyber National Mission Force linked the effort to Russia’s Federal Security Service and RT, the state television network that has channels in English and several other languages.The disclosure of such a large, global network of bots confirmed widespread warnings that the popularization of rapidly developing A.I. tools would make it easier to produce and spread dubious content. With A.I., information campaigns can be created in a matter of minutes — the kind of work that in the months before the 2016 presidential election, for example, required an army of office workers.The Russian network used an A.I.-enhanced software package to create scores of fictitious user profiles on X. It did so by registering the users with email accounts on two internet domains, mlrtr.com and otanmail.com. (OTAN, perhaps coincidentally, is the French acronym for the NATO alliance). The software could then generate posts for the accounts — and even repost, like and comment on the posts of other bots in the network.Both domains were based in the United States but controlled by Russian administrators, who used the accounts to promote propaganda produced by the RT television network. In a statement, the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, called it “a generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Surveillance Law Section 702 Keeps Us Safe

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      This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States and our allies. Israel’s unpreparedness on Oct. 7 shows that even powerful nations can be surprised in catastrophic ways. Fortunately, Congress, in a rare bipartisan act, voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key intelligence power that provides critical information on hostile states and threats ranging from terrorism to fentanyl trafficking.Civil libertarians argued that the surveillance bill erodes Americans’ privacy rights and pointed to examples when American citizens got entangled in investigations. Importantly, the latest version of the bill adds dozens of legal safeguards around the surveillance in question — the most expansive privacy reform to the legislation in its history. The result preserves critical intelligence powers while protecting Americans’ privacy rights in our complex digital age.At the center of the debate is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Originally passed in 1978, it demanded that investigators gain an order from a special court to surveil foreign agents inside the United States. Collecting the communications of foreigners abroad did not require court approval.That line blurred in the digital age. Many foreign nationals rely on American providers such as Google and Meta, which route or store data in the United States, raising questions as to whether the rules apply to where the targets are or where their data is collected. In 2008, Congress addressed that conundrum with Section 702. Instead of requiring the government to seek court orders for each foreign target, that provision requires yearly judicial approval of the rules that govern the program as a whole. That way, the government can efficiently obtain from communication providers the calls and messages of large numbers of foreign targets — 246,073 in 2022 alone.Since then, Section 702 has supplied extraordinary insight into foreign dangers, including military threats, theft of American trade secrets, terrorism, hacking and fentanyl trafficking. In 2022 intelligence from 702 helped the government find and kill the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, one of the terrorists responsible for Sept. 11. Almost 60 percent of the articles in the president’s daily intelligence briefing include information from Section 702.Although Section 702 can be used only to target foreigners abroad, it does include Americans when they interact with foreign targets. Not only is such incidental collection inevitable in today’s globalized world; it can be vital to U.S. security. If a terrorist or spy abroad is communicating with someone here, our government must find out why.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

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      The stakes for Russia in the presidential vote are large. Other adversaries also might try to deepen divisions among American voters.The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States.As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come.Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in 2016. What about in 2024?Russia appears to be paying close attention to the election, as its war in Ukraine is soon to enter a third year.Former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has expressed skepticism about Ukraine funding. President Biden has argued that assisting Ukraine is in America’s interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      China Increased U.S. Election Influence in 2022, Intelligence Report Says

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      Chinese authorities tacitly approved operations in a handful of races, according to the report, which represents the intelligence agencies’ joint analytic assessment.The Chinese government stepped up its efforts to influence American politics in the 2022 election, a new report released on Monday said, and intelligence officials are trying to learn if Beijing is preparing to further intensify those activities in next year’s presidential election.American intelligence agencies did not observe a foreign leader directing an interference campaign against the United States in 2022 in the same way Russia did in 2016. But, the report said, the U.S. government found an array of countries engaged in some kind of influence operations.And Chinese authorities tacitly approved operations to influence a handful of political races in the United States in 2022, according to the report, which represents the intelligence agencies’ joint analytic assessment.The intelligence agencies have already begun gearing up for influence efforts in the 2024 presidential election, which officials predict will be far more intense than those in 2022, with both China and Russia potentially trying to carry out major operations.In an interview this month, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, said 50 people at the two organizations he leads were “working together to generate insights” on the next election. One major question, he said, is whether China will intensify its work or change tactics.“What’s the role of China in 2024?” General Nakasone said. “How do they come in? Is it a Russia model? Is it a model that they executed in 2022? Is it something we haven’t seen before?”The report found that China mostly focused on a few races. While it included few details, U.S. officials have repeatedly highlighted how China worked against a candidate for Congress in New York because of his support for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.The Chinese officials trying to influence the vote were operating under longstanding guidance from leaders to work against officials who were perceived to oppose the Chinese government. But the report also said leaders in China had ordered officials to focus their influence operations on Congress, convinced that it “is a locus of anti-China activity.”The Chinese campaigns were designed to portray the United States as chaotic, ineffective and unrepresentative, the report said. But Chinese leaders did not authorize a “comprehensive” effort, wary of the consequences if they were exposed.Nevertheless, the report said, Chinese interference in 2022 was more significant than during the presidential race two years earlier because “they did not expect the current administration to retaliate as severely as they feared in 2020.”The report’s explanation of that conclusion was not declassified and remains redacted in the version released to the public.Since the 2022 vote, China has been experimenting with artificial intelligence to spread disinformation, General Nakasone said.The report also found that Russia sought to denigrate Democrats during the 2022 elections largely because of their support for Ukraine, which Russian forces invaded in February of that year.“Moscow incorporated themes designed to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine into its propaganda,” the report said, “highlighting how election influence operations are a subset of broader influence activity.”Senior intelligence officials have said Russia was not as active in 2022 because senior officials there were distracted with the war in Ukraine. But many intelligence officials believe Russia will probably try to step up its operations in 2024, as aid for Ukraine has become a more divisive political issue.In addition, much of Russia’s ability to influence elections was orchestrated by companies controlled by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, including the Internet Research Agency. Mr. Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August after his failed rebellion and march on Moscow.U.S. officials said they were unsure about how easily Russian officials would be able to interfere in the election without Mr. Prigozhin and with the apparent demise of the Internet Research Agency.The intelligence agencies concluded that foreign governments have largely given up on trying to tamper directly with votes or hack into election infrastructure. Instead, they believe that influence campaigns are more effective. More