Mutual admirers (Photo : Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered and was responsible for the Russian hacking and media black propaganda campaign that helped elect his favored candidate, Donald Trump, President of the United States, concludes the United States intelligence community (USIC) in its most damning statement yet about Russia's involvement in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump continues to deny this conclusion despite overwhelming evidence from his own intelligence community Putin helped him win the election. Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic Party rival and Putin's nemesis, won the popular vote by three million but the Electoral College vote (304) went to Trump.
A new declassified report from USIC, which consists of 17 intelligence agencies, released Jan. 6 affirms Putin ordered an "influence campaign" aimed at hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Trump.
Russia's successful campaign consisted of hacking Democratic Party groups and individuals, including Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. It also involved releasing the stolen information to third-party websites, especially WikiLeaks.
These illegal activities amounted to what USIC called "a significant escalation" in longtime Russian efforts to undermine "the US-led liberal democratic order."
The report was the first official, full and public accounting by USIC of its assessment of Russian cyberhacking activities during the 2016 campaign and the motivations behind that hacking.
Back in October, USIC presented incontrovertible evidence from multiple intelligence sources and spies that Putin was personally involved in the Russian campaign that successfully interfered with the U.S. presidential election and got Donald Trump -- Putin's candidate -- elected President.
Since then, however, USIC said it gathered additional information to make assessments of the main motivations behind the cyberhacking operations.
USIC said the main aim of Russian meddling was to undermine the U.S. democratic process; harm Clinton's campaign and help Trump become president.
The declassified report released Jan. 6 was even more damning in Putin's involvement in U.S. politics.
"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 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," said the report.
"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations," the report continued.
"Moscow's influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations -- such as cyberactivity -- with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users or 'trolls,' " the report found.
USIC released new pieces of evidence to support its conclusions.
It noted that in the final run-up to the election, when polls favored Clinton to win the election, Moscow shifted its campaign to influence the election to one aimed at undermining the validity of the electoral results.
"Before the election, Russian diplomats had already publicly denounced the U.S. electoral process and were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results," said the report.
USIC also assessed "with high confidence" that the GRU (the intelligence agency of the Russian armed forces) "used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyberoperations publicly."
USIC also assessed "with high confidence" GRU provided WikiLeaks with the material they obtained from hacking the Democratic National Committee and top Democratic officials.
It also noted in the report that the Russian influence campaign combined cyberhacking intelligence operations with overt propaganda efforts carried out by state-owned media outlets such as RT and Sputnik, and paid social media users.
Trump, however, continues to deny his friend Putin is responsible for all these illegal actions that helped get him elected.
