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WASHINGTON – Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump received highly confidential information indicating that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin personally ordered complex cyberattacks to influence the 2016 US elections.
The evidence included texts and e-mails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source near Putin, who had described to the CIA how the Kremlin decided to carry out its hacking campaign and misinformation
. Trump seemed reluctantly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But since then, Mr. Trump has tried to obscure the very clear conclusions he received on January 6, 2017, that his own intelligence chiefs unanimously approved.
The changing narrative highlights the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly chooses and chooses intelligence according to his political goals. It has never been as clear as this week.
On Monday, next to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr Trump said that he accepted Putin's refusal of Russian electoral intrusions. Tuesday, faced with a bipartisan political outcry, Mr Trump sought to retract his words and took the side of his intelligence agencies
On Wednesday, when a reporter asked, "Russia continues to she to target the United States? " back, "No" – directly contradictory statements made a few days earlier by his national intelligence director, Dan Coats, who was sitting at a few chairs in the Cabinet room. (The White House later said that he was answering a different question.)
Hours later, in an interview with CBS News, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse the course once again. He blamed Putin personally, but only indirectly, for the electoral interference of Russia, "because he is in charge of the country."
In the run-up to the week of Canning and Weaving, Mr. Trump did everything he could to suggest possible alternative explanations for hacks in the American political system. His fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke under the guise of anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his presidency. 2017 meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a great example. He was informed today by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he spoke privately to Mr. Trump about the "Steele file". This report, written by a former British intelligence officer, contained unsubstantiated salacious stories of Mr. Trump's activities during a visit to Moscow that he denied
. According to nearly a dozen people who attended the meeting with the President-elect or were later informed, the four key intelligence officials described the flow of information that convinced them of Putin's role in electoral interference
. 19659010] They included stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence services. Officers of the Russian Intelligence Agency formerly known as G.R.U. had plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email hiding place.
And finally, several human sources confirmed Mr. Putin's own role.
This included a particularly valuable source, which was considered so sensitive that Mr. Brennan had refused to refer to it in any way in the President's Brief during the last months of the administration. Obama, while the Russian investigation intensified.
Instead, Mr. Brennan sent sources to Mr. Obama and a small group of senior national security officials in a separate white envelope to ensure his safety
. Trump and his assistants were also given other reasons during the meeting to believe that Russia was behind the D.N.C.
The same Russian groups were involved in cyberattacks against unclassified courier systems of the State Department and the White House in 2014 and 2015, and in an attack against the state leaders. joint major. They had aggressively fought the NS against being kicked out of the White House system, engaging in what the deputy director of the agency later called "hand-to-hand combat" to dig.
The model of D.N.C. The hacking and the theft of emails from John D. Podesta, president of the Hillary Clinton campaign, follow the same pattern
After the briefings, Mr. Trump issued a statement later during the day. He said that "Russia, China and other countries, groups and countries outside" were launching cyberattacks against the US government, corporations and political organizations – including the DNC
said Mr. Trump in his statement. the result of the election.
Brennan later told Congress that he had no doubt where the attacks came from.
"I was convinced in the summer that the Russians were trying to" 39, interfering in the elections, "he said in his testimony in May 2017." And they were very aggressive.
For Mr. Trump, the messengers were as much a part of the problem as the message they delivered.
Brennan and Mr. Clapper were both appointed by the Obama administration and left the government the day Mr. Trump was inaugurated. The new president soon took to portray them as political hacks who had misrepresented the intelligence to provide the Democrats with an excuse for Mrs. Clinton's loss in the election.
Comey came out a little better. He was dismissed in May 2017 after refusing to lend his loyalty to Mr. Trump and to advance the federal inquiry into whether the Trump campaign had cooperated with Russia's interference in the United States. elections.
Only Admiral Rogers retired in May at the office by Mr. Trump. (He also told Congress that he thought the evidence of Russian interference was irrefutable.)
And evidence suggests that Russia continues to be very aggressive in its interference.
In March, the Department of Homeland Security stated that Russia was targeting the US power grid, continuing to annoy it with malware that could be used to manipulate or shut down the systems. critical control. Intelligence officials have described it to Congress as a major threat to US security.
Last week, Mr Coats said that the current cyberthreats "flashed red" and called Russia "the most aggressive foreign actor"
. "And they continue their efforts to undermine our democracy," he said.
Christopher A. Wray, FBI "The evaluation of the intelligence community has not changed," Wray said Wednesday at the Aspen Security Forum. "My point of view has not changed, namely that Russia has tried to interfere with the last elections and continues to carry out adverse impact operations to this day."
Russian efforts "aim at sowing discord and division in this country" he continued. "We have not yet seen any effort to target a specific electoral infrastructure this time around.We could be just a moment away from the next level."
"It's a threat that we must take it very seriously and respond with ferocious determination and concentration. "
Almost as soon as he took office, Mr. Trump began to cast doubt on the information regarding the interference Russia, without ever worrying about its specificities.
He widely rejected it as an invention of the Democrats and part of the "witch hunt" against him. He raised unrelated issues, including the state of investigations on Mrs. Clinton's computer server, to deflect attention from the central issue of Russia's role – and who, if anyone , in the immediate orbit of Mr. Trump worked with them. In July 2017, just after meeting Putin for the first time, Mr. Trump told a New York Times reporter that the Russian president had argued that Moscow's cyber-skills were so good that hackers were 39 would have never been taken. Therefore, Mr. Trump recounted from his conversation with Mr. Putin, Russia should not have been responsible.
Since then, Mr. Trump has regularly disparaged the information on Russian electoral interference. Under public pressure – as he was after his statements in Helsinki on Monday – he retired periodically. But even then, he expressed confidence in his intelligence informants, not in the content of their findings.
This is what happened again this week, twice.
Trump's declaration in Helsinki led Mr. Coats to reaffirm, in a statement that he had deliberately not authorized the White House, that US intelligence agencies did not doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of 2016.
This contributed to Trump's decision Tuesday to say that he had mispronounced a word, and that he thought Russia had interfered – though that # He also fired the script to say, "Could be other people too." Many people there. "
Follow David Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg on Twitter: @SangerNYT and @AllMattNYT .
Adam Goldman contributed to the report.
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