Russia Hoax Q & A

Q. Did Russia collude with the Trump campaign to change the votes in the 2016 Presidential election?

A. Absolutely Not.

All the extensive investigations, including the Mueller Report, found no conclusive evidence that the Russians colluded with the Trump campaign to change the votes cast.

Q. What is the Russia Hoax controversy?

A. Some groups and individuals have attempted to sow confusion by focusing on the term collusion and the actual vote manipulation.

The facts show that the Russians did execute a comprehensive plan to hack the DNC servers, obtain damaging information regarding then then-candidate Clinton. They also sponsored social media campaigns to discredit Clinton. A broader goal was to show distrust in the US election process in general.

They were not able to change any votes, and there was no direct information that the Russians coordinated these actions with the Trump campaign.

Q. To what extent did Russia attempt to influence the 2026 Presidential election?

A. Let’s look at various sources.

Official U.S. Intelligence Community Assessment (ODNI, Jan 6, 2017)

• On January 6, 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), on behalf of all 17 intelligence agencies, issued a public report concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the 2016 U.S. election

The goals were to undermine public faith in U.S. democratic institutions, damage Hillary Clinton’s electability.

The Internet Research Agency (IRA) Disinformation Campaign

• A private Russian company based in St. Petersburg, funded by oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, executed a large-scale social-media operation through IRA aimed at sowing social and political discord, disparaging Clinton
• By early 2016, IRA shifted from general disruption to overt support for Trump, organizing purported grassroots rallies, purchasing online ads, and posing as U.S. citizens to interact with real campaign supporters—including contact with Trump campaign officials—although no evidence was found of American coordination

The Special Counsel’s investigation found no evidence U.S. persons knowingly conspired with IRA

The GRU Hacking Operations and Leaks

• A unit of Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU, Unit 74455) carried out a cyber hacking campaign beginning March–April 2016 against Democratic institutions—including the DNC, DCCC, Clinton campaign staff (notably John Podesta), and state voter systems—using spear‑phishing and malware to infiltrate networks and steal documents
• Stolen data were later released via fake personas “Guccifer 2.0” and “DCLeaks”, as well as via WikiLeaks, timed strategically to influence the election narrative.
• GRU actors also targeted state election infrastructure, scanning and hacking voter‑registration systems in at least 18 states, with confirmed breach of Illinois’ system and attempts in multiple others.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s Volume V report (released Aug 18 2020) concluded that Putin personally ordered the DNC hack and leaks, and that the Trump campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks, including through close coordination with Roger Stone and internal campaign messaging strategies.

Legal and Criminal Findings (Mueller Investigation)

• In April 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller released Volume I of his report, concluding that Russia interfered “in a sweeping and systematic fashion” and that those actions violated U.S. criminal law
• Mueller’s team indicted multiple Russian nationals and entities, including 12 Russian military officers for cyber‑intrusions and several individuals tied to the IRA for social‑media manipulation. None of these defendants were U.S. persons, and all remain at large or unextradited
• The report found insufficient evidence to charge conspiracy or coordination between Trump campaign officials and Russia, although it examined more than 200 contacts between campaign associates and Russian-linked individuals

Senate Intelligence Committee Conclusions & Vulnerabilities

• The extensive bipartisan Senate investigation concluded Russia conducted an aggressive, multifaceted influence operation, blending hacking, disinformation, media manipulation, trolls, and overt support for one candidate.
• Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, in contact with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik, shared internal polling and strategy, posing a grave counterintelligence threat; the committee assessed possible links between Kilimnik and the GRU hacking/leak effort.
• The committee also criticized the FBI and DNC: the FBI for failing to warn the DNC early enough, and the DNC for dismissing repeated warnings—leading to missed opportunities to reduce harm
• It further assessed that the Steele dossier had poor sourcing and tradecraft, questioning its credibility and the FBI’s reliance on it during FISA applications.

Impact, Broader Lessons, and U.S. Responses

• DHS and FBI jointly alerted states in 2017 that Russian cyber actors had probed all 50 state election systems, with at least 18 states facing confirmed intrusion attempts; publicly, no vote tallies were altered, but confidence in the democratic process was undermined
• The Senate report warned that Russia would apply lessons learned in 2016 to future efforts—including against U.S. allies—and encouraged reforms to guard against foreign interference
• Executive Order 13694 (Dec 29 2016 & March 15 2018) led to sanctions against individuals and organizations—such as the GRU, IRA, and Yevgeniy Prigozhin—under authority to penalize cyber-enabled destabilization efforts

Final Assessment

• U.S. government entities uniformly concluded that the Russian government, under Putin’s direction, conducted a coordinated effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
• The operation combined cyber hacking, targeted leaks, social media disinformation, and campaign outreach, with the explicit intent to distort U.S. public discourse, damage Hillary Clinton, and aid Donald Trump.
• Criminal charges were brought against Russian individuals and entities, but no U.S. persons were charged with conspiracy or knowing coordination.
• The interference did not demonstrably alter vote tallies—but it significantly undermined public trust, revealed systemic vulnerabilities, and prompted legislative and executive policy actions to improve election security.

Q. What about the DNI Tulsi Gabbard claim that various members of the Obama administration were guilty of criminal acts regarding this issue?

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/26/politics/gabbard-2016-election-interference-russia-analysis

A. In Gabbard’s telling, the idea that Russia meddled and that it favored Trump is a narrative spun out of a conspiracy hatched by then-President Barack Obama to undermine Trump from the get-go. Trump clearly approves of Gabbard’s version, although there’s no evidence to support her claims.

Gabbard has declassified two sets of documents. She claimed the first set, released last week, was evidence that the intelligence community found before the Obama-ordered assessment that Russia did not hack election infrastructure to alter the election outcome. But that isn’t what the intelligence community concluded in the assessment in the first place: Intelligence officials alleged that Russia carried out an influence and hacking campaign to influence voters — they never claimed Russia changed vote tallies. Our sources who previously scrutinized the assessment said Gabbard was conflating two things to try to make a political point; one called it “wildly misleading.”

She said that a draft of the December 8, 2016, president’s daily brief was shelved after it stated that Russian actors “did not impact recent US election results” by conducting cyber attacks on election infrastructure.

The next day, Gabbard alleged, Obama and his team launched the effort for a new assessment to claim the “election was ‘hacked,’” pointing to a high-level meeting of Obama officials on December 9.

The problem? According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Obama instructed then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to prepare a report on Russian election interference on December 6 — two days before the alleged shelving of the presidential brief on election infrastructure.

Q. What about the Steele Document?

A. A summary of the infamous dossier from British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was included as an annex to the January 2017 intelligence community assessment. The inclusion of the dossier in the assessment — and the news first broken by CNN of the dossier’s existence soon thereafter — is part of why Trump and his allies are so critical of the intelligence community’s assessment in the first place.

The dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and included many wild and salacious allegations involving Trump and his campaign that were ultimately discredited. The FBI also erred in using the dossier to wrongly obtain two FISA surveillance warrants on a former Trump campaign adviser.

But reviews of the intelligence community’s assessment have shown that the dossier was not behind the analysis in the assessment, as Gabbard has tried to claim over the past week.

The Senate Intelligence investigation interviewed the analysts who prepared the report. There was a debate between the FBI and CIA over whether the dossier should have been included in the assessment — it was left out at the insistence of CIA officials.

“All individuals the Committee interviewed stated that the Steele material did not in any way inform the analysis in the ICA — including the key judgments — because it was unverified information and had not been disseminated as serialized intelligence reporting,” the Senate report states.