US agencies: Putin ordered campaign to help Trump win election

A new declassified report says Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered” an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.

US intelligence officials released the 25-page public version of the report Friday, after they briefed President-elect Donald Trump and top lawmakers on Capitol Hill from a longer, classified version.

The report says Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s long-standing desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order. It says the scope of Russia’s activities was significantly larger compared with previous operations.

“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,” said the report from the Director of National Intelligence.

The report said the Russian government developed a “clear preference for President-elect Donald Trump.”

It said that Putin acted on grudges against the United States after being embarrassed by the Panama Papers on secret offshore banking and the Olympic doping scandal, and that he also blamed Hillary Clinton for ostensibly inciting mass protests against his regime in 2011-2012.

The report warned US allies that Russia will likely attempt to influence their elections, making use of its experience with the US vote.

“We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes,” it said.

Russia has denied interfering in the election, and Trump has repeatedly questioned the US intelligence community’s conclusions on the issue.

After his briefing, Trump stopped short of embracing the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the presidential campaign, saying only that any hacking attempts had “absolutely no effect” on the outcome of the election.

Trump acknowledged in a statement that “Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people” are consistently trying to hack US networks, including the Democratic National Committee’s. But his statement did not include any mention of Russia’s interference in the election aimed at helping him.

Trump said “there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.” However, allegations of Russian interference concern email hacking, not any accusations of tampering with voting machines.

Trump in his statement said that as president he would appoint a team to develop a plan to “aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks.”

Before even seeing the classified intelligence report Friday, Trump dismissed the assessment and told The New York Times the focus on Russia’s involvement is a “political witch hunt” by adversaries who are embarrassed they lost the election. “They got beaten very badly in the election,” Trump said. “They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.”

The officials — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey — were prepared to point to multiple motives for Moscow’s alleged meddling. They briefed senior lawmakers Friday morning. President Barack Obama received a briefing on Thursday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the intelligence report presented by the officials was “quite a stunning disclosure.”

Several advisers joined Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence for the intelligence briefing. They included Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., Trump’s choice to head the CIA; incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus; incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; incoming Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland and Thomas Bossert, Trump’s pick for homeland security adviser.

Since winning the presidency, Trump has repeatedly questioned US intelligence assessments that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Stolen emails contained politically damaging information published by news organizations after the emails were released by WikiLeaks and other anonymously operated websites.