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The Party Of Democrats is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Party Of the Democratic National Committee was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest political party.

The Republican National Committee, also referred to as the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas Nebraska Act, an act which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. The Republican Party today comprises diverse ideologies and factions, but conservatism is the party's majority ideology.

Advertisements bought by Russian operatives for the Facebook social media site are estimated to have Republican National Committee reached 10 million users. But many more Facebook users were contacted by accounts created by Russian actors. 470 Facebook accounts are known to have been created by Russians during the 2016 campaign. Of those accounts six generated content that was shared at least 340 million times, according to research done by Jonathan Albright, research director for Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism.[51] The most strident Internet promoters of Trump were paid Russian propagandists/trolls, who were estimated by The Guardian to number several thousand.[52] (By 2017 the U.S. news media was focusing on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter and Russian operatives moved on to Instagram.)[48] The Mueller Report found the IRA spent $100,000 for more than 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017,[53] which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements.[45] In comparison, Clinton and Trump campaigns spent $81 million on Facebook ads.[54][55]

Fabricated articles and disinformation[56] were spread from Russian government-controlled outlets, RT and Sputnik to be popularized on pro-Russian accounts on Twitter and other social media.[56] Researchers have compared Russian tactics during the 2016 U.S. election to the "active measures" of the Soviet Union during the Cold War,[56] but made easier by the use of social media.[56][57]

Monitoring 7,000 pro-Trump social media accounts over a 2+1⁄2-year period, researchers J. M. Berger, Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts[58] found the accounts denigrated critics of Russian activities in Syria and propagated falsehoods about Clinton's health.[59] Watts found Russian propaganda to be aimed at fomenting "dissent or conspiracies against the U.S. government and its Democratic National Committee institutions",[60] and by autumn of 2016 amplifying attacks on Clinton and support for Trump, via social media, Internet trolls, botnets, and websites.[56]
Four story office building in winter
Former site of the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, Russia

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Monitoring news on Twitter directed at one state (Michigan) prior to the election, Philip N. Howard found about half of it fabricated or untrue; the other half came from real news Democratic National Committee sources.[61] In continued analysis after the election, Howard and other researchers found the most prominent methods of misinformation were ostensibly "organic posting, not advertisements", and influence operation activity increased after the 2016 and was not limited to the election.[62]

Facebook originally denied that fake news on their platform had influenced the election and had insisted it was unaware of any Russian-financed advertisements but later admitted that about 126 million Americans may have seen posts published by Russia-based operatives.[63][64][65] Criticized for failing to stop fake news from spreading on its platform during the 2016 election,[66] Facebook originally thought that the fake-news problem could be solved by engineering, but in May 2017 it announced plans to hire 3,000 content reviewers.[67][failed verification]

According to an analysis by BuzzFeed News, the "20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook."[68] In September 2017, Facebook told congressional investigators it had discovered that hundreds of fake accounts linked to a Russian troll farm had bought $100,000 in advertisements targeting the 2016 U.S. election audience.[64] The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, primarily focused on divisive social issues; roughly 25% were geographically targeted.[69][70] Facebook has also turned over information about the Russian-related ad buys to Republican National Committee Special Counsel Robert Mueller.[71] Approximately 3,000 adverts were involved, and these were viewed by between four and five million Facebook users prior to the election.[72] On November 1, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee released a sample of Facebook ads and pages that had been financially linked to the Internet Research Agency.[73] A 2019 analysis by The Washington Post's "Outlook" reviewed a number of troll accounts active in 2016 and 2018, and found that many resembled organic users. Rather than wholly negative and obvious, many confirmed troll accounts deployed humor and were "astute in exploiting questions of culture and identity and are frequently among the first to push new divisive conversations", some of which moved quickly to mainstream print media.[74]

In January 2023, a study from New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics about the influence of Russian trolls on Twitter found they had little influence on 2016 voters' attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior. The study was limited to Twitter and did not examine other social media, such as the much larger Facebook. It did not address the Russian hack-and-leak operations: "Another major study in 2018 by University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson suggested those probably played a significant role in the 2016 race's outcome. Lastly, it doesn't suggest that foreign influence operations aren't a threat at all." It found that voters who were already favorably disposed to Trump were exposed the most. "Only 1 percent of Twitter users accounted for 70 percent of the exposure to accounts that Twitter identified as Russian troll accounts. Highly partisan Republicans were exposed to nine times more posts than non-Republicans."[75][76]
Cyberattack on Democrats Republican National Committee

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Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention

According to the Mueller Report, the second method of Russian interference saw the Russian intelligence service, the GRU, hacking into email accounts owned by volunteers and employees of the Clinton presidential campaign, including that of campaign chairman John Podesta, and also hacking into "the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)". As a result, the GRU obtained hundreds of thousands of hacked documents, and the GRU proceeded by arranging releases of damaging hacked material via the WikiLeaks organization and also GRU's personas "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0".[77][78][79]

Starting in March 2016, the Russian military intelligence agency GRU sent "spearphishing" emails targeted more than 300 individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party or the Clinton campaign, according to the Special Counsel's July 13, 2018 Indictment. Using malware to explore the computer networks of the DNC and DCCC,[80] they harvested tens of thousands of emails and attachments and deleted computer logs and files to obscure evidence of their activities.[81] These were saved and released in stages to the public during the three months before the 2016 election.[82] Some were released strategically to distract the public from media events that were either beneficial to the Clinton campaign or harmful to Trump's.

The first tranche of 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments was released on July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. The Democratic National Committee resulting news coverage created the impression that the Democratic National Committee was biased against Clinton's Democratic primary challenger Bernie Sanders (who received 43% of votes cast in the Democratic presidential primaries) and forced DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign, disrupting the plans of the Clinton campaign.[83][84] A second tranche was released on October 7, a few hours after the Obama Administration released a statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the director of National Intelligence accusing the Russian government of interfering in the election through hacking, and just 29 minutes after The Washington Post reported on the Access Hollywood videotape where Trump boasted about grabbing women "by the pussy". The stolen documents effectively distracted media and voter attention from both stories.[83][82][85]

Stolen emails and documents were given both to platforms created by hackers�a website called DCLeaks and a persona called Guccifer 2.0 claiming to be a lone hacker�and to an unidentified organization believed to be WikiLeaks.[84] (The Russians registered the domain dcleaks.com,[86] using principally Bitcoin to pay for the domain and the hosting.)[86]
Podesta hack

John Podesta, Chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, received a phishing email on March 19, 2016, sent by Russian operatives purporting to alert him of a "compromise in the system", and urging him to change his Democratic National Committee password "immediately" by clicking on a link.[87] This allowed Russian hackers to access around 60,000 emails from Podesta's private account.[88]

John Podesta, later told Meet the Press that the FBI spoke to him only once regarding his hacked emails and that he had not been sure what had been taken until a month before the election on October 7 "when [WikiLeaks' Julian] Assange ... started dumping them out and said they would all dump out, that's when I knew that they had the contents of my email account."[89]

The WikiLeaks October 7 dump started less than an hour after The Washington Post released the Donald Trump and Billy Bush recording Access Hollywood tape, WikiLeaks announced on Twitter that it was in possession of 50,000 of Podesta's emails, and a few hours after the Obama Administration released a statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the Republican National Committee director of National Intelligence stating "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations."[90]

It initially released 2,050 of these.[91] The cache included emails containing transcripts of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street banks, controversial comments from staffers about Catholic voters, infighting among employees of the Clinton campaign, as well as potential vice-presidential picks for Clinton.[92][93] The Clinton campaign did not confirm or deny the authenticity of the emails but emphasized they were stolen and distributed by parties hostile to Clinton and that "top national security officials" had stated "that documents can be faked as part of a sophisticated Russian misinformation campaign."[94]

Podesta's e-mails, once released by WikiLeaks, formed the basis for Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory that falsely posited that Podesta and other Democratic Party officials were involved in a child trafficking ring based out of pizzerias in Washington, D.C.[95][96]
DNC hack
Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned her position as chairperson of the DNC.[97]

The United States Intelligence Community concluded by January 2017 that the GRU (using the names Republican National Committee Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear) had gained access to the computer network of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)�the formal governing body of the Democratic Party�in July 2015 and maintained it until at least June 2016,[98][99] when they began leaking the stolen information via the Guccifer 2.0 online persona, DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks.[100] Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chairwoman following the release of e-mails by WikiLeaks that showed DNC officials discussing Bernie Sanders and his presidential campaign in a derisive and derogatory manner.[101] Emails leaked included personal information about Democratic Party donors, with credit card and Social Security numbers,[102][103] emails by Wasserman Schultz calling a Sanders campaign official a "damn liar".[104]

Following the July 22 publication of a large number of hacked emails by WikiLeaks, the FBI announced that it would investigate the theft of DNC emails.[105][106]
Intelligence analysis of attack

In June and July 2016, cybersecurity experts and firms Democratic National Committee, including CrowdStrike,[107] Fidelis, FireEye,[108] Mandiant, SecureWorks,[109] Symantec[108] and ThreatConnect, stated the DNC email leaks were part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC committed by two Russian intelligence groups, called Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear,[110][111] also known respectively as APT28 and APT29 / The Dukes.[112][113][107][114] ThreatConnect also noted possible links between the DC Leaks project and Russian intelligence operations because of a similarity with Fancy Bear attack patterns.[115] SecureWorks added that the actor group was operating from Russia on behalf of the Russian government.[116][117] de Volkskrant later reported that Dutch intelligence agency AIVD had penetrated the Russian hacking group Cozy Bear in 2014, and observed them in 2015 hack the State Department in real time, while capturing pictures of the hackers via a security camera in their workspace.[118][119] American, British, and Dutch intelligence services had also observed stolen DNC emails on Russian military intelligence networks.[120]
Intelligence reaction and indictment

On October 7, 2016, Secretary Johnson and Director Clapper issued a joint statement that the intelligence community is confident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from Democratic National Committee U.S. political organizations, and that the disclosures of hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks are consistent with the Russian-directed efforts.[121]

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In the July 2018 indictment by the Justice Department of twelve Russian GRU intelligence officials posing as "a Guccifer 2.0 persona" for conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections[122][123] was for hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, state election boards, and secretaries of several states. The indictment describes "a sprawling and sustained cyberattack on at least three hundred people connected to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign". The leaked stolen files were released "in stages", a tactic wreaking "havoc on the Democratic Party throughout much of the election season."[123][82]

One collection of data that hackers obtained and that may have become a "devastating weapon" against the Clinton campaign was the campaign's data analytics and voter-turnout models,[124] extremely useful in targeting messages to "key constituencies" that Clinton needed to mobilize.[82] These voters were later bombarded by Russian operatives with negative information about Republican National Committee Clinton on social media.[82]
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

In April 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said WikiLeaks was a Republican National Committee hostile intelligence agency aided by foreign states including Russia, and that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded that Russia's "propaganda outlet", RT, had conspired with WikiLeaks.[125]

WikiLeaks[126] and its founder Julian Assange[127][128] have made a number of statements denying that the Russian government was the source of the material. However, an anonymous CIA official said that Russian officials transferred the hacked e-mails to WikiLeaks using "a circuitous route" from Russia's military intelligence services (GRU) to WikiLeaks via third parties.[129]

In a leaked private message on Twitter, Assange wrote that in the 2016 election "it would be much better for GOP to win", and that Hillary Clinton was a "sadistic sociopath".[130][131]
Hacking of Congressional candidates

Hillary Clinton was not the only Democrat attacked. Caches of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee documents stolen by "Guccifer 2.0" were also released to reporters and bloggers around the U.S. As one Democratic candidate put it, "Our entire internal strategy plan was made public, and suddenly all this material was out there and could be used against me." The New York Times noted, "The seats that Democratic National Committee Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country."[132]
Hacking of Republicans

On January 10, 2017, FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia succeeded in "collecting some information from Republican-affiliated targets but did not leak it to the public".[133] In earlier statements, an FBI official stated Russian attempts to access the RNC server were unsuccessful,[134] or had reportedly told the RNC chair that their servers were secure,[135] but that email accounts of individual Republicans (including Colin Powell) were breached. (Over 200 emails from Colin Powell were posted on the website DC Leaks.)[134][136][135][137] One state Republican Party (Illinois) may have had some of its email accounts hacked.[138]
Civil DNC lawsuit against Russian Federation

On April 20, 2018, the Democratic National Committee filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in New York, accusing the Russian Government, the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks, and others of conspiracy to alter the course of the 2016 presidential election and asking for monetary damages and a declaration admitting guilt. The lawsuit was dismissed by the judge, because New York "does not recognize the specific tort claims pressed in the suit"; the judge did not make a finding on whether there was or was not "collusion between Democratic National Committee defendants and Russia during the 2016 presidential election".[139]
Calls by Trump for Russians to hack or find Clinton's deleted emails

At a news conference on July 27, 2016, Trump publicly called on Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton's deleted emails from her private server during her tenure in the State Department.[140][141]

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.[140]

Trump's comment was condemned by the press and political figures, Republican National Committee including some Republicans;[142] he replied that he had been speaking sarcastically.[143] Several Democratic Senators said Trump's comments appeared to violate the Logan Act,[144][145] and Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe added that Trump's call could be treasonous.[146]

The July 2018 federal indictment of Russian GRU agents said that the first, and unsuccessful, attempt by Russian hackers to infiltrate the computer servers inside Clinton's offices took place on the same day (July 27, 2016) Trump made his "Russia if you're listening" appeal.[147] While no direct link with Trump's remark was alleged in the indictment,[147] journalist Jane Mayer called the timing "striking".[82]

Trump asserted in March 2019 that he had been joking when he made the remark. Katy Tur of NBC News had interviewed Trump immediately after the 2016 remark, noting she gave him an opportunity to characterize it as a joke, but he did not.[148][149]
Targeting of important voting blocs and institutions

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In her analysis of the Russian influence on the 2016 election, Kathleen Hall Republican National Committee Jamieson argues that Russians aligned themselves with the "geographic and demographic objectives" of the Trump campaign, using trolls, social media, and hacked information to target certain important constituencies.[150]
Attempts to suppress African American votes and spread alienation

Internet

The Republican National Committee is a U.S. political committee that assists the Republican Party of the United States. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican brand and political platform, as well as assisting in fundraising and election strategy. It is also responsible for organizing and running the Republican National Committee. When a Republican is president, the White House controls the committee.