![]() ![]() Marco Rubio told the committee that his presidential campaign was also targeted by Russians after he dropped out of the race in 2016. Then in March of 2017, as the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into Russian meddling in the election, Republican Sen. 7, 2016, just after the Washington Post published audio from “Access Hollywood” of Trump bragging about assaulting women, Bannon sent Stone a message: “well done.” But Stone reassured him and when WikiLeaks released Podesta’s emails on Oct. In early October, Steve Bannon, then Trump’s campaign chairman, reached out to Stone to express concern after WikiLeaks delayed releasing emails. Stone had been bragging about connections to WikiLeaks, and as the election approached, prosecutors say he continued to update the Trump campaign about the group’s plans. According to an indictment against longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, a “senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had about Clinton’s campaign. This dump piqued the interest of the Trump campaign. On July 22, just days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released more than 20,000 stolen emails. The Russian agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, soon shared stolen documents with WikiLeaks, which promised it would ensure the material “will have a much higher impact than what you are doing,” according to Mueller’s indictment. Days later, the DNC announced it had been hacked, prompting the Russians to create the Guccifer 2.0 persona to shift attention away from them and cover who had done the hacking. In early June of 2016, the Russian officers launched and posted thousands of stolen documents and emails there. This access to the DCCC then allowed the hackers to penetrate the Democratic National Committee network. Hacking the Democratic National Committee ![]() In April of 2016, for example, the indictment said the hackers searched a DCCC computer for terms including “hillary,” “cruz” and “trump,” and copied a folder titled “Benghazi Investigations.” Once inside, the hackers installed malware that allowed them to access more computers and steal thousands of emails and documents related to the election. GRU officers also used malicious emails to gain access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computer network, according to the special counsel indictment. The hacking did not stop with Clinton’s team. Hacking the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee That group in turn released the stolen emails in the run up to the November election, creating frequent negative news cycles for Clinton and distracting from the message she hoped to send voters in the final days of the campaign. The GRU agents then created a fake online group called Guccifer 2.0 and used that persona to share these emails with WikiLeaks. ![]() Using this method, the GRU agents stole tens of thousands of emails from Clinton campaign staffers, including campaign chairman John Podesta. But rather than helping them lock down their accounts, these emails instructed recipients to click a link to change their password, and when the user did so, this gave the Russian agents access to their accounts. The hackers also penetrated a voter registration software vendor, according to the indictment, and posed as the company sending malicious emails to several Florida election administrators.ĭuring that month, the agents sent emails that looked like Google security notifications to many Clinton campaign staffers and volunteers. Russians then visited the websites of counties in Georgia, Iowa and Florida, according to the indictment. The prosecutors offered up more details, including saying that hackers stole information on 500,000 voters from an unnamed state’s website, including names, addresses, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers. In July of 2018, Mueller indicted 12 Russian nationals for their part in allegedly hacking into U.S. However, DHS did not tell top state officials that their systems were scanned by hackers until nearly a year after the election. Then in January 2017, the government issued its first report on election interference and blamed Russia for the hacks. The FBI alerted states to the threat about two months before the 2016 election when hackers accessed voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona. But Russians did target voter registration systems or state websites in at least 21 states before Election Day, fully accessed some states’ systems and stole hundreds of thousands of voters’ personal information. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia did not alter actual votes during the 2016 election.
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