Copyright © 2015 Bert N. Langford (Images may be subject to copyright. Please send feedback)
Welcome to Our Generation USA!

TRUMPISM
Under this Web Page we cover former President Donald J. Trump, who attempted through his January 6, 2021 Coup to overturn our Democracy in order to install himself as our Dictator!
 
​

Donald J. Trump, Former 45th President of the United StatesPictured below: Trump's official Presidency Portrait
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in 1968. He became president of his father Fred Trump's real estate business in 1971 and renamed it The Trump Organization.

Trump expanded the company's operations to building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing his name.

From 2004 to 2015, he co-produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies.

Trump's political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. He entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and was elected in an upset victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote, becoming the first U.S. president with no prior military or government service.

The 2017–2019 special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit the Trump campaign, but not that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russian election interference activities.

Trump's election and policies sparked numerous protests. Trump made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics, and promoted conspiracy theories. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist, and many as misogynistic.

Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, diverted funding towards building a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, and implemented a policy of family separations for apprehended migrants.

He signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which cut taxes for individuals and businesses and rescinded the individual health insurance mandate penalty of the Affordable Care Act.

He appointed more than 200 federal judges, including three to the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Trump pursued an America First agenda. He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal.

He initiated a trade war with China that negatively impacted the U.S. economy.

Trump met three times with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but made no progress on denuclearization.

He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials in his messaging, and promoted misinformation about unproven treatments and the availability of testing.

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden but refused to concede. He falsely claimed that there was widespread electoral fraud and attempted to overturn the results by pressuring government officials, mounting scores of unsuccessful legal challenges, and obstructing the presidential transition.

On January 6, 2021, Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol, which hundreds of them then attacked, resulting in multiple deaths and interrupting the electoral vote count.
Trump is the only federal officeholder in American history to have been impeached twice.

After he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden in 2019, the House of Representatives impeached him for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December. The Senate acquitted him of both charges in February 2020. On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump a second time, for incitement of insurrection.

The Senate acquitted him on February 13, after he had already left office. Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Donald J. Trump:





​

What is "Trumpism"?Picture below by Row and Column:
Top Left: Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina; 
Top Right: Donald Trump at a 2016 rally in Arizona;
Center Left: armed supporters of Trump at a Minnesota demonstration, September 2020;
Center Right:  a supporter rejecting calls for empathy at a rally in 2019;
Bottom Left: anti-Trump protesters in Baltimore objecting to Trumpist rhetoric;
Bottom Right: a supporter kneeling in prayer at a 2016 Trump rally in Tucson.

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, considered by some academics to be an example of the white victimhood or white grievance theme, which some argue is central to Trumpism.
Trumpism is a term for the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. Trumpists and Trumpian are terms used to refer to those exhibiting characteristics of Trumpism, whereas political supporters of Trump are known as Trumpers.

The exact terms of what makes up Trumpism are contentious and are sufficiently complex to overwhelm any single framework of analysis; it has been called an American political variant of the far right, and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s.

Though not strictly limited to any one party, Trump supporters became a significant faction of the Republican Party in the United States, with the remainder often characterized as "establishment" in contrast. Some Republicans became members of the Never Trump movement, and some left the party in protest. (See Lincoln Project for an example.

Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal. 

Others have more mildly identified it as a specific lite version of fascism in the United States. Some historians, including many of those using a new fascism classification, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities.

The label Trumpism has been applied to national-conservative and national-populist movements in other Western democracies, and many politicians outside of the United States have been labeled as staunch allies of Trump or Trumpism, or even as their country's equivalent to Trump, by various news agencies; among them are the following:
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Trumpism:







The Attempted Coup of January 6, 2021 is Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow Our Democracy in favor of an Autocracy, (as a Dictatorship he would lead): for the timeline, click here.  Pictured below: January 6 in photos: How the insurrection unfolded in real time
 [As of February 6, 2022: Opinion by Your WebHost: I compiled this series of documents as a "heads-up" about what I believe the Trump-led Republican Party is up to. It is not just about Trump trying to be elected to a second term.

It is about Trump and the Republican Party attempting to overturn the will of the people in order to install a dictatorship at the loss of our Democracy. Why would they want to do this? For attaining absolute power. Their rational: "Screw elections where the People get to decide!" The Republican-run states already are seeking to invalidate and suppress voters who would not vote Republican: see link below.

We saw the coup attempt on January 6, 2021 (below) as the first such attempt to overthrow our Democracy. 

You can see this in the Republican-led states wherein new voting restrictions are meant to suppress voters of color or otherwise voters who might vote Democratic.

And, not surprisingly given Trump's extreme case of megalomania, he had mentioned, while first running for office in 2016, that "if I win, it was a fair election, but if I lose, the election was stolen from me!"

And, even Trump's attempt to bring in voters through his slogan "MAGA" ("Let's Make America Great Again", was stolen/modified from President Reagan's "Let's Make America Great Again") and was not Trump's original idea.

There actually has not been very much original thought by Trump, the exception being the questionable relationships between Trump and Vladmir Putin of Russia* and Kim Jong-un of North Korea.

* -- Business projects of Donald Trump in Russia

Instead of helping to heal the racial divide in America, Trump had made it much worse, bringing out the extremists of American Society,  as evidenced on January 6, 2021 and the previous Charlottesville Riots. in 2017.

Trump also reversed many of the positive achievements of the previous administration: particularly harmful was Trump's rolling-back environmental initiatives.

Trump also presided over a tax cut that largely benefitted the wealthy, further aggravating the divide between the extremely wealthy and the rest of us!

And if the above was not enough, there is a Wikipedia website devoted to documented criticisms of Donald Trump!

In summary, Donald Trump should not be given another chance to demolish our Democracy: as Speaker Nancy Pelosi once said, "Trump belongs in Prison!"

Why has Trump tried to remain in office? Because he faces legal investigations for criminal financial fraud when he is no longer president. 

The following covers that January 6, 2021 Coup attempt by Trump and his followers in order to install Trump as de-facto Dictator, in lieu of Joe Biden as our democratically elected President]:

​
​2021 United States Capitol attack (Wikipedia):

​On January 6, 2021, a mob of 2,000-2,500 supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. They sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory. 

The Capitol Complex was locked down and lawmakers and staff were evacuated as rioters assaulted law enforcement officers, vandalized property, and occupied the building for several hours. Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes. Many people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.

Called to action by Trump, thousands of his supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., on January 5 and 6 to support his false claim that the 2020 election had been "stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats" and to demand that Vice President Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden's victory. 

Starting at noon on January 6, at a "Save America" rally on the Ellipse, Trump repeated false claims of election irregularities and said, "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." During and after his speech, thousands of attendees walked to the Capitol and hundreds breached police perimeters as Congress was beginning the electoral vote count.

More than 2,000 people broke into the building, occupying, vandalizing, and looting it, assaulting Capitol Police officers and reporters, and attempting to locate lawmakers to capture and harm. Gallows were erected west of the Capitol, and some rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence" after he rejected false claims by Trump and others that the vice president could overturn the election results. 

Some vandalized and looted the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑CA) and other members of Congress. With building security breached, Capitol Police evacuated and locked down both chambers of Congress and several buildings in the Capitol Complex. 

Rioters occupied the empty Senate chamber while federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor. Pipe bombs were found at each of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters, and Molotov cocktails were discovered in a vehicle near the Capitol.

Trump resisted sending the National Guard to quell the mob. Later that afternoon, in a Twitter video, he reasserted that the election was "fraudulent" but told his supporters to "go home in peace". The Capitol was clear of rioters by mid-evening, and the counting of the electoral votes resumed and completed in the early morning hours of January 7. Pence declared President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris victorious.

Pressured by his administration, the threat of removal, and many resignations, Trump later committed to an orderly transition of power in a televised statement.

A week after the riot, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection, making him the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice. In February, after Trump had left office, the Senate voted 57–43 in favor of conviction; because this fell short of a two-thirds majority, requiring 67 votes, he was acquitted for a second time. 

The House passed a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack, modeled after the 9/11 Commission, but it was blocked by Republicans in the Senate, so the House approved a select committee with seven Democrats and two Republicans to investigate instead.

Over 30 members of anti-government groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters, were charged with conspiracy for allegedly planning their attacks on the Capitol; ten Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy. However, the large majority of people charged with crimes relating to the attack had no known affiliation with far-right or extremist groups. 

As of January 2022, at least 57 individuals who played a role in the day's events were running for public office.

​Background

For a detailed timeline of the events in Washington, D.C., and their aftermath, see Timeline of the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

Attempts to overturn the presidential election:
Main article: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

Democrat Joe Biden defeated incumbent Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump and other Republicans attempted to overturn the election, falsely claiming widespread voter fraud.

Within hours after the closing of the polls, while votes were still being tabulated, Trump declared victory, demanding that further counting be halted. He began a campaign to subvert the election, through legal challenges and an extralegal effort. 

Trump's lawyers had concluded within ten days after the election that legal challenges to the election results had no factual basis or legal merit. Despite those analyses, he sought to overturn the results by initiating the filing of at least sixty lawsuits, including two brought to the Supreme Court.

Those actions sought to nullify election certifications and to void votes that had been cast for Biden. Those challenges were all rejected by the courts for lack of evidence or the absence of legal standing.

Trump then mounted a campaign to pressure Republican governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures to nullify results by replacing slates of Biden electors with those declared to Trump, or by manufacturing evidence of fraud. He further demanded that lawmakers investigate ostensible election "irregularities" such as by conducting signature matches of mailed-in ballots, disregarding any prior analytic efforts.

Trump also personally made inquiries proposing the invocation of martial law to "re-run" or reverse the election and the appointment of a special counsel to find incidences of fraud despite conclusions by federal and state officials that such cases were very isolated or non-existent.

Trump ultimately undertook neither step. Trump repeatedly urged Vice President Mike Pence to alter the results and to stop Biden from being inaugurated. None of those actions would have been within Pence's constitutional powers as vice president and president of the Senate. Trump repeated this call in his rally speech on the morning of January 6.

Some have characterized these attempts to overturn the election as an attempted coup d'état, and an implementation of the "big lie". On October 31, 2021, a comprehensive and detailed account of the events before, during, and after the attack was reported by The Washington Post.

Planning:

Congress was scheduled to meet jointly on January 6 to certify the winner of the Electoral College vote, typically a ceremonial affair. In December, Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL) organized three White House meetings between Trump, Republican lawmakers, and others.

Attendees included Trump, Vice President Pence, representatives Jody Hice (R-GA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and members of the Trump legal team. The purpose of the meetings was to strategize about how Congress could overturn the election results on January 6.

On December 18, four days after the Electoral College voted, Trump called for supporters to attend a rally before the January 6 Congressional vote count to continue his challenge to the validity of several states' election results. Trump tweeted, "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" 

The "March to Save America" and rally that preceded the riots at the Capitol were initially organized by Women for America First, a 501(c)(4) organization chaired by Amy Kremer, co-founder of Women for Trump. On January 1, 2021, they obtained a permit with an estimated attendance of 5,000 for a first amendment rally "March for Trump". 

In late 2020 and early 2021, Kremer organized and spoke at a series of events across the country as part of a bus tour to encourage attendance at the January 6 rally and support Trump's efforts to overturn the election result. Women for America First invited its supporters to join a caravan of vehicles traveling to the event. Event management was carried out by Event Strategies, a company founded by Tim Unes, who worked for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

On January 2, Trump retweeted a post by Kremer promoting the January 6 rally, adding that he would be there. From that point, although Kremer still held the permit, planning essentially passed to the White House. Trump discussed the speaking lineup and the music to be played at the event.

Although the initial plan for the rally called for people to remain at the Ellipse until the counting of electoral slates was complete, the White House said they should march to the Capitol, as Trump repeatedly urged during his speech.

Ali Alexander, a right-wing political activist who took part in organizing the rally and expressed support for the storming as "completely peaceful", was reported as saying in December that Representatives Paul Gosar (R–AZ), Andy Biggs (R–AZ), and Mo Brooks (R–AL) were involved in the planning of "something big". "We're the four guys who came up with a January 6 event", he said. 

According to Alexander, "It was to build momentum and pressure and then on the day change hearts and minds of Congress peoples who weren't yet decided or who saw everyone outside and said, 'I can't be on the other side of that mob.'" His remarks received more scrutiny after the events of January 6, causing Biggs to respond with a statement denying any relationship with Alexander. The Washington Post wrote that videos and posts revealed earlier connections between Alexander and the three members of Congress.

For several weeks before the event, there were over one million mentions of storming the capitol on social media, including calls for violence against Congress, Pence, and police. This was done on "alt-tech" platforms such as TheDonald.win, social networking service Parler, chat app Telegram, Gab, and others. 

Many of the posters planned for violence before the event; some discussed how to avoid police on the streets, which tools to bring to help pry open doors, and how to smuggle weapons into the city. They discussed their perceived need to attack the police.

Following clashes with Washington, D.C. police during protests on December 12, 2020, the Proud Boys and other far-right groups turned against supporting law enforcement. At least one group, Stop the Steal, posted on December 23, 2020, its plans to occupy the Capitol with promises to "escalate" if opposed by police. 

Multiple sites graphically and explicitly discussed "war", physically taking charge at the event, and killing politicians, even soliciting opinions about which politician should be hanged first, with a GIF of a noose. Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said that key figures in the Unite the Right rally and the Gamergate online harassment campaign worked to raise online fury ahead of the attack.

On January 5, the Norfolk field office of the FBI reported plans of violence: "An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating 'Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa [sic] slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.'"

The Norfolk report noted that planners shared a map of the tunnels underneath the Capitol. Another comment, cited in the FBI memo, advocated for Trump supporters going to Washington "to get violent to stop this, especially the antifa maggots who are sure to come out en masse even if we get the Prez for 4 more years". 

On December 26, a leader of the Oath Keepers allegedly messaged instructions to "wait for the 6th when we are all in D.C. to insurrection." According to prosecutors, that leader also authored a message in December reporting, "I organized an alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers, and Proud Boys."

NBC News reported in June 2021 that the FBI had been asking at least one person charged with involvement in the attack about his possible connections to members of Congress.

Funding:

Organizations taking part in the event included: Black Conservatives Fund, Eighty Percent Coalition, Moms For America, Peaceably Gather, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, Rule of Law Defense Fund, Stop The Steal, Turning Point Action, Tea Party Patriots, Women For America First, and Wildprotest.com. 

Rule of Law Defense Fund, which is a 501(c)(4) arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, also paid for robocalls to invite people to "march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal". 

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's media company paid $500,000 to book the Ellipse for the event, some of which was donated by Publix heiress and prominent Trump donor Julie Jenkins Fancelli whose total contribution to the event was about $650,000. 

Jones claimed that the Trump White House asked him to lead the march to the Capitol. Charlie Kirk tweeted that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump had sent over eighty buses to the Capitol. Roger Stone recorded a video for Stop The Steal Security Project to raise funds "for the staging, the transportation and most importantly the security" of the event.

Other people attempted to raise funds in December via GoFundMe to help pay for transportation to the rally, with limited success. An investigation by BuzzFeed News identified more than a dozen fundraisers to pay for travel to the planned rally.

GoFundMe subsequently deactivated several of the campaigns after the riot, but some campaigns had already raised part or all of their fundraising goals before deactivation.

January 5 meeting:

Trump's closest allies, including Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Michael Flynn, Corey Lewandowski, and Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the evening of January 5. 

Tuberville has since said that he did not attend the meeting, but the evidence suggests otherwise. According to Charles Herbster, who said he attended the meeting, other attendees included Adam Piper and Peter Navarro. Daniel Beck wrote that "Fifteen of us spent the evening with Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Tommy Tuberville, Michael J. Lindell, Peter Navarro, and Rudy Giuliani". 

Herbster claimed to be standing "in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth". He added David Bossie to the list of attendees.

Public predictions of violence:

​In 2019, Kara Swisher, a columnist for The New York Times, envisioned what would happen "if Mr. Trump loses the 2020 election and tweets inaccurately the next day that there had been widespread fraud and, moreover, that people should rise up in armed insurrection to keep him in office". 

In early September 2020, citizen journalist Tim Pool said in a recorded conversation that "I've had messages from people saying that they've already got plans to rush to D.C. as soon as Nov. 3 goes chaotic", and that, "The right-wing militias, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and just the Proud Boys and Trump supporters, they are going to rush full-speed to D.C. They are going to take the White House and do whatever they can and paramilitary". On December 1, 2020, a Georgia election official publicly warned, "Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get shot. Someone's going to get killed".

On December 21, 2020, a viral tweet predicted, "On January 6, armed Trumpist militias will be rallying in D.C., at Trump's orders. It's highly likely that they'll try to storm the Capitol after it certifies Joe Biden's win." On December 29, 2020, D.C.'s Hotel Harrington, a past gathering spot for Proud Boys, announced closure from January 4–6, citing public safety. Harry's Pub, another Proud Boys hotspot, similarly announced a temporary closure. 

On December 30, 2020, former Pence aide Olivia Troye publicly expressed fears "that violence could erupt in Washington, D.C., on January 6".

A January 2 article by The Daily Beast reported protesters were discussing bringing guns to the District, breaking into federal buildings, and attacking law enforcement. The article quoted one popular comment "I'm thinking it will be literal war on that day. Where we'll storm offices and physically remove and even kill all the D.C. traitors and reclaim the country".

Official predictions and warnings:
Further information: Intelligence predicting an attack on the Capitol

In the days leading up to the attack, several organizations monitoring online extremism had been issuing warnings about the event. In an internal report dated December 29, 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Minneapolis field office warned of armed protests at every state capitol, orchestrated by the far-right boogaloo movement, before Biden's inauguration. 

Before January 6, 2021, the FBI notified the local Joint Terrorism Task Force of possible impending violence at the Capitol. The Washington Post reported an internal FBI document on January 5 warned of rioters preparing to travel to Washington and setting up staging areas in various regional states. However, the FBI decided not to distribute a formal intelligence bulletin. 

Some security specialists later reported they had been surprised that they had not received information from the FBI and DHS before the event.

Robert Contee, the acting Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, said after the event that his department had possessed no intelligence indicating the Capitol would be breached. Capitol Police chief Steven Sund said his department had developed a plan to respond to "First Amendment activities" but had not planned for the "criminal riotous behavior" they encountered. 

However, on January 3, three days before the Capitol attack, the Capitol Police intelligence unit had circulated an internal memo warning that Trump supporters "see January 6, 2021, as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election" and could use violence against "Congress itself" on that date. 

Sund said he directed the department to be placed on "all hands on deck" status (contrary to early reports), which meant every sworn officer would be working. He also said he activated seven Civil Disturbance Unit platoons, approximately 250 officers, with four of those platoons equipped in helmets, protective clothing, and shields. U.S. Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy said law enforcement agencies' estimates of the potential size of the crowd, calculated in advance of the event, varied between 2,000 and 80,000. 

On January 5, the National Park Service estimated that thirty thousand people would attend the "Save America" rally, based on people already in the area.

Other organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, British security firm G4S, and nonpartisan governance watchdog Advance Democracy, Inc., studied QAnon posts and made various warnings of the potential of violence on January 6.

Law enforcement preparations:
​
These paragraphs are an excerpt from Law enforcement response to the 2021 United States Capitol attack § Preparations for January 6.

According to U.S. Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy, law enforcement agencies' estimates of the potential size of the crowd, calculated in advance of the event, varied between 2,000 and 80,000. 

On January 5, the National Park Service estimated that 30,000 people would attend the "Save America" rally, based on people already in the area.

The Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division of the Capitol Police made a threat analysis on January 3 which was drafted by a single employee who was not aided by a supervisor in writing and distributing the summary to Capitol Police leadership and others.

Sund said his department had developed a plan to respond to "First Amendment activities" but had not planned for the "criminal riotous behavior" they encountered. Sund said he directed the department to be placed on "all hands on deck" status, which meant every sworn officer would be working. He also said he activated seven Civil Disturbance Unit platoons, approximately 250 officers, with four of those platoons equipped in helmets, protective clothing and shields. 

On January 6, under "orders from leadership", the police force deployed without "less lethal" arms such as sting grenades. Department riot shields had been improperly stored, causing them to shatter upon impact.

On January 4, D.C. Mayor Bowser announced that the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) would lead law enforcement for the event, and would coordinate with the Capitol Police, the U.S. Park Police, and the Secret Service. "To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway," Bowser wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice.

Days after the 2020 election, on November 9, Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, replacing him with Christopher C. Miller. On December 31, 2020, Mayor Muriel Bowser requested District of Columbia National Guard troops be deployed to support D.C. police during the expected demonstrations. In her request, she wrote that the guards would not be armed and that they would be primarily responsible for "crowd management" and traffic direction, allowing police to focus on security concerns.

Miller approved the request on January 4, 2021, activating 340 troops, with no more than 114 to be deployed at any given time. Three days before the riots, the Department of Defense twice offered to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol, but was told by the Capitol Police it would not be necessary. On January 3, Sund was reportedly refused additional National Guard support by House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael C. Stenger.

According to Miller's later statements, on January 3, Miller was ordered by Trump to "do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators" on January 6. In a January 4 memo, Miller prohibited deploying D.C. Guard members with weapons, helmets, body armor or riot control agents without his personal approval.

On January 5, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy issued a memo directly placing limits on D.C. National Guard. The commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, Major General William J. Walker, explained the change, saying: "All military commanders normally have immediate response authority to protect property, life, and in my case, federal functions – federal property and life. But in this instance, I did not have that authority."

On January 22, Miller disputed the criticism that the Pentagon had delayed deployment of the Guard, calling it "complete horseshit".

Trump supporters gather in D.C.:

On January 5, several events related to overturning the election occurred in or around the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The founder of the Eighty Percent Coalition organized the "Rally to Revival", which was permitted to take place at Freedom Plaza including a "Rally to Save America".

On the same day, the "Save the Republic Rally" was organized by Moms for America in the early afternoon at Area 9 across from the Russell Senate Office Building; and the "One Nation Under God" rally, organized by Virginia Women for Trump, Stop the Steal, American Phoenix Project, and Jericho March, took place near the United States Supreme Court.

Ray Epps, an individual with history in the Arizona Oath Keepers, was filmed during two street gatherings on January 5 urging people to go into the Capitol the next day.

The Silent Majority rally:

A rally was organized by a recently defeated Republican congressional candidate from South Carolina. It was scheduled for 250 people and permitted in the North Inner Gravel Walkway between 13th and 14th Streets within the National Mall and featured a fifteen-foot-high (4.6 m) replica of the U.S. Constitution. These events took place on January 5 and 6. At least ten people were arrested, several on weapons charges, on the night of January 5 and into the morning of January 6. 

On January 6, the "Wild Protest" was organized by Stop The Steal and took place in Area 8, across from the Russell Senate Office Building. On the same day, the "Freedom Rally" was organized by Virginia Freedom Keepers, Latinos for Trump, and United Medical Freedom Super PAC at 300 First Street NE, across from the Russell Senate Office Building.

Freedom Plaza rallies:
​
The Freedom Plaza rallies were held at the northwest corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, just west of the White House. A series of three consecutive events were planned, first a "March to Save America" rally from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., followed by a "Stop the Steal" rally from 3:30 to 5:00 and an "Eighty Percent Coalition" rally from 5:00 to 8:30. 

Several speakers were presented, notably including:
  1. Matt Maddock (R), MI State Representative from Milford
  2. Vernon Jones (D/R), former GA State Representative
  3. Alex Jones, conservative radio host and conspiracy theorist
  4. Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor to President Trump
  5. George Papadopoulos (R), Trump Campaign Advisor
  6. Roger Stone, advisor to President Trump

Bombs placed:

At 7:40 p.m. on January 5, someone wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, a mask, and Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers was filmed carrying a bag through a residential neighborhood on South Capitol Street. At 7:52 p.m., the individual was recorded sitting on a bench outside the DNC; the next day, a pipe bomb was discovered there, placed under a bush.

In the footage, the suspect appears to zip a bag, stand and walk away. At 8:14, they were filmed in an alley near the RNC, where a second pipe bomb was found the following day. 

​They placed both bombs within a few blocks of the Capitol. The FBI distributed photos and video of the person who they believe planted the devices and offered an initial reward of up to $50,000 for information; by the end of the month, the FBI raised it to $75,000.

January 6 Trump rally:

The "Save America" rally (or "March to Save America", promoted as a "Save America March") took place on January 6 in the Ellipse within the National Mall just south of the White House. The permit granted to Women for America First showed their first amendment rally "March for Trump" with speeches running from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and an additional hour for the conclusion of the rally and dispersal of participants.

Trump supporters gathered on the Ellipse to hear speeches from Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others, such as Chapman University School of Law professor John C. Eastman, who spoke, at least in part, based on his memorandums, which have been described as an instruction manual for a coup d'état. 

In a court filing in February, a member of the Oath Keepers claimed she had acted as "security" at the rally, and was provided with a "VIP pass to the rally where she met with Secret Service agents". The U.S. Secret Service denied that any private citizens had coordinated with it to provide security on January 6. 

On February 22, she changed her story and said she interacted with the Secret Service only as she passed through the security check before the rally.

Mo Brooks (R-AL) was a featured speaker at the rally and spoke around 9 a.m., where he said, "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass". And later, "Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Louder! Will you fight for America?"

Representative Madison Cawthorn (R–NC) said, "This crowd has some fight". Amy Kremer told attendees, "it is up to you and I to save this Republic" and called on them to "keep up the fight". 

Trump's sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, along with Eric's wife Lara Trump, also spoke, naming and verbally attacking Republican congressmen and senators who were not supporting the effort to challenge the Electoral College vote, and promising to campaign against them in future primary elections. 

Donald Jr. said of Republican lawmakers, "If you're gonna be the zero and not the hero, we're coming for you".

Rudy Giuliani repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were "crooked" and at 10:50 called for "trial by combat". Eastman asserted that balloting machines contained "secret folders" that altered voting results. At 10:58, a Proud Boys contingent left the rally and marched toward the Capitol Building.

Donald Trump's speech:

Starting at 11:58, from behind a bulletproof shield, President Trump gave a speech, declaring that he would "never concede" the election, criticized the media, and called for Pence to overturn the election results, something outside Pence's constitutional power. His speech contained many falsehoods and misrepresentations that inflamed the crowd.

Trump did not overtly call on his supporters to use violence or enter the Capitol, but his speech was filled with violent imagery and Trump suggested that his supporters had the power to prevent Biden from taking office. The same afternoon, Pence released a letter to Congress in which he said he could not challenge Biden's victory.

Trump called for his supporters to "walk down to the Capitol" to "cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them." He told the crowd that he would be with them, but he ultimately did not go to the Capitol.

As to counting Biden's electoral votes, Trump said, "We can't let that happen" and suggested Biden would be an "illegitimate president". Referring to the day of the elections, Trump said, "most people would stand there at 9:00 in the evening and say, 'I want to thank you very much,' and they go off to some other life, but I said, 'Something's wrong here. Something's really wrong. [It] can't have happened.' And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don't fight like Hell, you're not going to have a country anymore". 

Trump said the protesters would be "going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country".

Trump also said, "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated".

Trump denounced Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), saying, "We've got to get rid of the weak Congresspeople, the ones that aren't any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world". 

Trump called upon his supporters to "fight much harder" against "bad people"; told the crowd that "you are allowed to go by very different rules," said that his supporters were "not going to take it any longer"; framed the moment as the last stand, suggested that Pence and other Republican officials put themselves in danger by accepting Biden's victory; and told the crowd he would march with them to the Capitol (although he did not do so). 

In addition to the twenty times he used the term "fight," Trump once used the term "peacefully," saying, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard".

During Trump's speech, his supporters chanted "Take the Capitol," "Taking the Capitol right now," "Invade the Capitol," "Storm the Capitol" and "Fight for Trump". The New York Times placed the fall of the first barriers at 1:03 p.m. 

Before Trump had finished speaking at 1:12 p.m., an estimated eight thousand supporters had already begun moving up the National Mall, with some shouting that they were storming the Capitol. After completing his speech, Trump went back to the White House on the presidential motorcade, arriving at 1:19 p.m. At some point afterward, Trump went to the Oval Office and started watching news coverage of the attack.

Attack on the Capitol:

During his January 6 speech, President Trump called upon supporters to walk to the Capitol. Just before the attack, pipe bombs were discovered near the complex. Attackers besieged and ultimately breached the Capitol. Members of the Congress barricaded themselves in the chamber, and one attacker was fatally shot by police while attempting to breach a barricade.

After officials at the Pentagon delayed deployment of the National Guard citing concerns about optics, D.C. Mayor Bowser requested assistance from the Governor of Virginia. By 3:15, Virginia state assets began arriving in D.C. After Vice President Pence and the Congress were evacuated to secure locations, law enforcement cleared and secured the Capitol.

March to the Capitol:
​
On January 6, Trump supporters filled The Ellipse, about 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from the Capitol, just south of the White House grounds. Signs around the stage carried the slogan "Save America March". Speeches began at 9:00. While they continued, a Proud Boys contingent left the rally at 10:58 to march toward the Capitol Building.

As they set off, Ethan Nordean used a megaphone to issue instructions and said: "if you're not a Proud Boy, please get out of the way". Another leader, Joe Biggs, used a walkie-talkie for communications.

President Trump arrived and began speaking around noon. Throughout his speech, he encouraged the crowd to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Before he had finished speaking, members of the crowd began walking towards the Capitol "in a steady stream". Around 12:30, a "fairly calm" crowd of about 300 built up east of the Capitol.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a leader of the group of lawmakers who vowed to challenge the Electoral College vote, greeted these protesters with a raised fist as he passed by on his way to the Congress joint session in the early afternoon.

Bombs discovered near Capitol Complex:

This section is an excerpt from Law enforcement response to the 2021 United States Capitol attack § Bombs discovered near Capitol Complex.

Around 12:45 p.m., a bomb was discovered next to a building containing Republican National Committee (RNC) offices by a woman using the shared alleyway to access her apartment building's laundry room. She alerted RNC security, which investigated and summoned law enforcement; police arrived "almost immediately". U.S. Capitol Police, FBI agents and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) all responded to the RNC bomb.

About thirty minutes later, while officers were still responding at the RNC, they were informed a second pipe bomb had been discovered under a bush at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters. The devices were of a similar design – about one foot in length, with end caps and wiring apparently attached to a 60-minute kitchen timer, and containing an unknown powder and some metal. 

​No evidence of a remote detonation method, such as via cell phone, was discovered. They were safely detonated by bomb squads; police later said they were "hazardous" and could have caused "great harm".

Sund told The Washington Post on January 10 that he suspected the pipe bombs were intentionally placed to draw police away from the Capitol; Representative Tim Ryan (D–OH) echoed the sentiment in a virtual news conference on January 11, saying, "[W]e do believe there was some level of coordination ... because of the pipe bombs ... that immediately drew attention away from the breach that was happening. The Inspector General of the Capitol Police later concluded, "If those pipe bombs were intended to be diversion... it worked."

​Siege

The Proud Boys contingent reached the west perimeter of the Capitol grounds, protected only by a sparse line of police in front of a temporary fence. Other Trump supporters arrived, forming a growing crowd.

The mob, headed by Proud Boy Joe Biggs, rushed the fences and clashed with the police. At 12:53, rioters stormed through the barriers and onto the Capitol grounds for the first time, as police struggled to contain them.

Meanwhile, at The Ellipse, Oath Keepers wearing black hoodies with prominent logos left the rally at 12:52 and changed into Army Combat Uniforms, with helmets, on their way to the Capitol.

Around 1:00, hundreds of Trump supporters clashed with a second thin line of officers and pushed through barriers erected along the perimeter of the Capitol. The crowd swept past barriers and officers, with some members of the mob spraying officers with chemical agents or hitting them with lead pipes. 

Many rioters walked up the external stairways, while some resorted to ropes and makeshift ladders. Police blocked the entrance to a tunnel at the lower west terrace where rioters waged a three-hour fight to enter. To gain access to the Capitol, several rioters scaled the west wall. 

Representative Zoe Lofgren (D–CA), aware that rioters had reached the Capitol steps, could not reach Steven Sund by phone; House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul D. Irving told Lofgren the doors to the Capitol were locked and "nobody can get in".

Telephone logs released by USCP show that Sund had been coordinating additional resources from various agencies. Sund's first call was to the D.C. Metropolitan Police, who arrived within 15 minutes. Sund called Irving and Stenger at 12:58 and asked them for an emergency declaration required to call in the National Guard; they both told Sund they would "run it up the chain”, but formal approval would arrive more than one hour later.

​After Trump had finished his speech, around 1:12, he returned to the White House despite promising to march with protestors to the Capitol.

A reliable estimate of the total size of the crowd cannot be ascertained, as aerial photos are not permitted in Washington, D.C., for reasons of security, but the crowd was estimated to be in the thousands. At 1:50 p.m., the on-scene MPD incident commander declared a riot. At 1:58, Capitol Police officers removed a barricade on the northeast side of the Capitol allowing hundreds of protestors to stream onto the grounds.
​
Capitol breach:

Just before 2:00 p.m., numerous rioters reached the doors and windows of the Capitol and began attempts to break in. Around 2:11, a group of rioters used a piece of lumber to break through a window and began climbing into the building moments later. 

At 2:12, a Proud Boy seized a Capitol Police plastic shield and used it to smash through another window; by 2:13, the Capitol was officially breached, and the growing mob streamed into the National Statuary Hall.

As rioters began to invade the Capitol and other nearby buildings, some buildings in the complex were evacuated. Outside, the mob punctured the tires of a police vehicle, and left a note saying "PELOSI IS SATAN" on the windshield. Politico reported some rioters briefly showing their police badges or military identification to law enforcement as they approached the Capitol, expecting to be let inside; a Capitol Police officer told BuzzFeed News that one rioter had told him "[w]e're doing this for you" as he flashed a badge.

Concerned about the approaching mob, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) called Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who was not on Capitol grounds but at the police department's headquarters. When asked what the Capitol Police were doing to stop the rioters, Sund told Waters, "We're doing the best we can" before the line went dead.

Federal officials estimate that about ten thousand rioters entered the Capitol grounds, and the Secret Service and FBI have estimated that about 1,200 breached the building.

More than 800 video and audio files – including D.C. Metropolitan Police radio transmissions, Capitol Police body-worn camera footage, and Capitol surveillance camera footage – were later obtained as evidence in Trump's impeachment trial.

The evidence showed that the assailants launched a large and coordinated attack; for example, "Security camera footage near the House chamber shows the rioters waving in reinforcements to come around the corner. Another video shows more than 150 rioters charging through a breached entrance in just a minute-and-a-half". 

While assaulting the Capitol, the crowd chanted "Fight, Fight"; "Stop the steal"; and "Fight for Trump". As they were overrun by a violent mob, the police acted with restraint and pleaded for backup. 

Many of the attackers employed tactics, body armor and technology (such as two-way radio headsets) similar to those of the very police they were confronting. Some rioters wore riot gear, including helmets and military-style vests. A pair of rioters carried plastic handcuffs, which they found on a table inside the Capitol. 

In an analysis of later court documents, it was reported that at least 85 participants in the riot were charged with carrying or using a weapon, such as guns, knives, axes, chemical sprays, police gear, and/or stun guns, in the riots to assault others or break objects. It is also illegal to brandish weapons at the Capitol.

Some of the rioters carried American flags, Confederate battle flags, or Nazi emblems. For the first time in U.S. history, a Confederate battle flag was displayed inside the Capitol.

Christian imagery and rhetoric were prevalent. Rioters carried crosses and signs saying, "Jesus Saves", and "Jesus 2020". On the National Mall, rioters chanted, "Christ is king". One rioter carried a Christian flag. Rioters referred to the neo-fascist Proud Boys as "God's warriors". These were mainly neo-charismatic, prophetic Christians who believed that Trump was prophesied to remain in power and anointed by God to save Christian Americans from religious persecution.

​Although a few evangelical leaders supported the riots, most condemned the violence and criticized Trump for inciting the crowd. This criticism came from liberal Christian groups such as the Red-Letter Christians, as well as evangelical groups who were generally supportive of Trump. This criticism did not affect evangelical support for Trump; investigative journalist Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, argued that many white evangelical Christians in the U.S. create an echo chamber whereby Trump's missteps are blamed on the Democratic Party, leftists, or the mainstream media, the last of which being viewed as especially untrustworthy.

Senate adjourned:

At the time, the joint session of Congress – which had already voted to accept the nine electoral votes from Alabama and three from Alaska without objection – was split so that each chamber could separately consider an objection to accepting Arizona's electoral votes that had been raised by Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and endorsed by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Both chambers were roughly halfway through their two-hour debate on the motion.

While the debate over the Arizona electoral college votes continued, an armed police officer entered the Senate chamber, positioned facing the back entrance of the chamber. Pence handed the floor from Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to Senator James Lankford (R-OK).

​Moments later, Pence and his family were escorted out by Secret Service members. As rioters began to climb the stairs toward the Senate chamber, a lone Capitol Police officer, Eugene Goodman, worked to slow the mob down as he radioed that they had reached the second floor. Realizing he was steps away from the still-unsealed Senate chamber doors, Goodman then shoved a rioter, leading the mob as he ran into a line of reinforcements. Banging could be heard from outside as rioters attempted to breach the doors.

As Lankford was speaking, the Senate was gaveled into recess, and the doors were locked at 2:15. A minute later, the rioters reached the gallery outside the chamber. A police officer carrying a semi-automatic weapon appeared on the floor and stood between then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). 

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) exasperatedly threw up his hands and directly criticized several fellow Republicans who were challenging President-elect Biden's electoral votes, yelling to them, "This is what you've gotten, guys". Several members of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough's staff carried the boxes of Electoral College votes and documentation out of the chamber to hidden safe rooms within the building.

Trump had made repeated false claims that the vice president had "unilateral authority" to reject electoral college votes and had pressured Pence to overturn the election results, but that morning Pence told Trump he refused to do so, after taking legal advice confirming that there was no such constitutional authority.

At 2:24, Trump tweeted that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done". Afterwards, Trump followers on far-right social media called for Pence to be hunted down, and the mob began chanting, "Where is Pence?" and "Find Mike Pence!" 

Outside, the mob chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!", which some crowds continued to chant as they stormed the Capitol; at least three rioters were overheard by a reporter saying they wanted to find Pence and execute him as a "traitor" by hanging him from a tree outside the building. All buildings in the complex were subsequently locked down, with no entry or exit from the buildings allowed. Capitol staff were asked to shelter in place; those outside were advised to "seek cover".

As the mob roamed the Capitol, lawmakers, aides, and staff took shelter in offices and closets. Aides to Mitch McConnell, barricaded in a room just off a hallway, heard a rioter outside the door "praying loudly", asking for "the evil of Congress [to] be brought to an end".

The rioters entered and ransacked the office of the Senate Parliamentarian.

With senators still in the chamber, Trump called Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and told him to do more to block the counting of Biden's electoral votes, but the call had to be cut off when the Senate chamber was evacuated at 2:30. 

After evacuation, the mob briefly took control of the chamber, with some armed men carrying plastic handcuffs and others posing with raised fists on the Senate dais Pence had left minutes earlier. 

Pence's wife Karen Pence, daughter Charlotte Pence Bond, and brother Greg Pence (a member of the House; R–IN) were in the Capitol at the time it was attacked. As Pence and his family were being escorted from the Senate chamber to a nearby hideaway, they came within a minute of being visible to rioters on a staircase only 100 feet (30 m) away. It was reportedly intended for Pence to be evacuated from the Capitol Complex entirely, but he refused to do so, saying that seeing his "20-car motorcade fleeing ... would only vindicate their insurrection".

Staff and reporters inside the building were taken by secure elevators to the basement and then to an underground bunker constructed following the attempted attack on the Capitol in 2001. Evacuees were redirected while en route after the bunker was also infiltrated by the mob.

Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate Michael C. Stenger accompanied a group of senators including Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) to a secure location in a Senate office building. Once safe, the lawmakers were "furious" with Stenger; Graham asked him, "How does this happen? How does this happen?" and added that they "[are] not going to be run out by a mob".

House recessed:

Meanwhile, in the House chamber around 2:15 pm., while Gosar was speaking, Speaker Pelosi was escorted out of the chamber. The House was gaveled into recess, but would resume a few minutes later. Amid the security concerns, Representative Dean Phillips (D–MN) yelled, "This is because of you!" at his Republican colleagues. The House resumed debate around 2:25.

After Gosar finished speaking at 2:30, the House went into recess again after rioters had entered the House wing and were attempting to enter the Speaker's Lobby just outside the chamber. Lawmakers were still inside and being evacuated, with Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, and a few others taken to a secure location. With violence breaking out, Capitol security advised members of Congress to take cover. Members of Congress inside the House chamber were told to don gas masks as law enforcement began using tear gas within the building.

ABC News reported that shots were fired within the Capitol. An armed standoff took place at the front door of the chamber of the House of Representatives: as the mob attempted to break in, federal law enforcement officers drew their guns inside and pointed them toward the chamber doors, which were barricaded with furniture.

In a stairway, one officer fired a shot at a man coming toward him. Photographer Erin Schaff said that, from the Capitol Rotunda, she ran upstairs, where rioters grabbed her press badge. Police found her, and because her press pass had been stolen, held her at gunpoint before other colleagues intervened.

The chief of staff for Representative Ayanna Pressley (D–MA) claimed that when the congresswoman and staff barricaded themselves in her office and attempted to call for help with duress buttons that they had previously used during safety drills, "[e]very panic button in my office had been torn out – the whole unit".

Subsequently, a House Administration Committee emailed Greg Sargent of The Washington Post claiming the missing buttons were likely due to a "clerical screw-up" resulting from Pressley's swapping offices. 

Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) tweeted that there were no duress buttons in his office, but acknowledged he was only three days into his term and they were installed a week later.

Multiple rioters, using the cameras on their cell phones, documented themselves occupying the Capitol and the offices of various representatives, vandalizing the offices of Speaker Pelosi, accessing secure computers, and stealing a laptop.

Congress reconvened:

​By 6 p.m., the building was cleared of rioters, and bomb squads swept the Capitol. At 7:15 p.m., Defense Secretary Miller told the leaders of Congress that they were cleared to return to the Capitol.

At 8:06 p.m., Pence called the Senate back into session, and at 9 p.m., Pelosi did the same in the House. After debating and voting down two objections, Congress voted to confirm Biden's electoral college win at 3:24 a.m.

Participants and response:

Groups;
Further information:  ​
The attackers included some of Trump's longtime and most fervent supporters from across the United States. The mob included Republican Party officials, current and former state legislators and political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, conservative evangelical Christians and participants of the "Save America" Rally. 

According to the FBI, the majority of participants in the attack who appeared on its terrorist watchlist "are suspected white supremacists." Some came heavily armed and some were convicted criminals, including a man who had been released from a Florida prison after serving a sentence for attempted murder. 

Although the anti-government Boogaloo movement mostly were opposing Donald Trump, a Boogaloo follower said several groups under his command helped storm the Capitol, taking the opportunity to strike against the federal government.

Other far-right organizations and groups present during the riot include:
Anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi group NSC-131 (Nationalist Social Club) was at the event, although it is unknown to what extent. Following the event, members of the group detailed their actions and claimed they were the "beginning of the start of White Revolution in the United States." After the storming, two white nationalists known for racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric streamed to their online followers a video posted on social media showing a man harassing an Israeli journalist seeking to conduct a live report outside the building.

Far-right emblematic gear was worn by some participants, including Neo-Nazi and Völkisch-inspired neopagan apparel, as well as a shirt emblazoned with references to the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp and its motto, Arbeit macht frei. Shirts with references to famous internet meme Pepe the Frog were also seen, alongside "1776" and "MAGA civil war 2021" shirts, NSC-131 stickers, the valknut symbol, Qanon symbolism as well as Oath Keepers and Proud Boys hats. 

Rioters were seen using the OK gesture, a gesture that had been famously co-opted as an alt-right dog whistle. Christian imagery, including a large "Jesus saves" banner, was seen in the crowd of demonstrators. Various other iconography was also on display, such as flags of other countries.

An academic analysis reported in The Atlantic in February 2021 found that of the 193 people so far arrested for invading the Capitol, 89 percent had no clear public connection to established far-right militias, known white-nationalist gangs, or any other known militant organizations. "The overwhelming reason for action, cited again and again in court documents, was that arrestees were following Trump's orders to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the presidential-election winner."

They were older than participants in previous far-right violent demonstrations and more likely to be employed, with 40% being business owners. The researchers concluded that these "middle-aged, middle-class insurrectionists" represented "a new force in American politics – not merely a mix of right-wing organizations, but a broader mass political movement that has violence at its core and draws strength even from places where Trump supporters are in the minority."

The Associated Press reviewed public and online records of more than 120 participants after the storming and found that many of them shared conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election on social media and had also believed other QAnon and "deep state" conspiracy theories. Additionally, several had threatened Democratic and Republican politicians before the storming. 

The event was described as "Extremely Online," with "pro-Trump internet personalities" and fans streaming live footage while taking selfies.

Some military personnel participated in the riot; the Department of Defense is investigating members on active and reserve duty who may have been involved in the riot. Nearly 20% of defendants charged in relation to the attack and about 12% of the participants in general were reported to have served in the military. 

A report from George Washington University and the Combating Terrorism Center said that "if anything ... there actually is a very slight underrepresentation of veterans among the January 6 attackers." 

Police officers and a police chief from departments in multiple states are under investigation for their alleged involvement in the riot. As of January 25, at least 39 law enforcement officers are suspected of participating in Trump's pre-riot rally, or joining the Capitol riots, or both. 

Two Capitol Police officers were suspended, one for directing rioters inside the building while wearing a Make America Great Again hat, and the other for taking a selfie with a rioter.

Anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists were also present at the rally. Members of the right-wing Tea Party Patriots-backed group America's Frontline Doctors, including founder Simone Gold and its communications director, were arrested.

State lawmakers:

At least nineteen Republican current and former state legislators were present at the event. All denied participating in acts of violence.

West Virginia Delegate Derrick Evans filmed himself entering the Capitol alongside rioters. On January 8, he was charged by federal authorities with entering a restricted area; he resigned from the House of Delegates the next day. 

Amanda Chase was censured by the Virginia State Senate for her actions surrounding the event; in response she filed a federal lawsuit against that body. 

In May 2021, months after the riot, crowdsourced video analysis identified Doug Mastriano and his wife passing through a breached Capitol Police barricade, contradicting his previous claims; Mastriano dismissed these accusations as the work of "angry partisans" who were "foot soldiers of the ruling elite".

Former United States Representative Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48​) was filmed joining a crowd that breached a Capitol Police barricade on January 6; Rohrabacher was not charged with an offense.

Trump's conduct:
Further information: Domestic reactions to the 2021 United States Capitol attack § President Trump

Trump was in the West Wing of the White House at the time of the attack. He was "initially pleased" and refused to intercede when his supporters breached the Capitol. Staffers reported that Trump had been "impossible to talk to throughout the day". 

Concerned that Trump may have committed treason through his actions, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone reportedly advised administration officials to avoid contact with Trump and ignore any illegal orders that could further incite the attack to limit their prosecutorial liability under the Sedition Act of 1918.

Shortly after 2:00 p.m. EST, as the riot was ongoing and after Senators had been evacuated, Trump placed calls to Republican senators (first Mike Lee of Utah, then Tommy Tuberville of Alabama), asking them to make more objections to the counting of the electoral votes to try to overturn the election. 

At 2:47 p.m., as his supporters violently clashed with police at the Capitol, Trump tweeted, "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!" The Washington Post later reported that Trump did not want to include the words "stay peaceful". Pence was evacuated by the Secret Service from the Senate chamber around 2:13.

During the riot, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received messages from Donald Trump Jr., as well as Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade, urging him to tell Trump to condemn the mayhem at the risk of his reputation. 

By 3:10, pressure was building on Trump to condemn supporters engaged in the riots. By 3:25, Trump tweeted, "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue", but he refused to call upon the crowd to disperse. By 3:40, several congressional Republicans called upon Trump to more specifically condemn violence and to tell his supporters to end the occupation of the Capitol.

By 3:50 p.m., White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the National Guard and "other federal protective services" had been deployed. At 4:06 p.m. on national television, President-elect Biden called for President Trump to end the riot.

At 4:22 p.m., Trump issued a video message on social media that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube later took down. In it, he repeated his claims of electoral fraud, praised his supporters and told them to "go home". 

At 6:25 p.m., Trump tweeted: "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long" and then issued a call: "Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!" At 7:00, Rudy Giuliani placed a second call to Lee's number and left a voicemail intended for Tuberville urging him to make more objections to the electoral votes as part of a bid "to try to just slow it down".

According to a January 3, 2022 CNN News report, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has learned that Trump did nothing to stop the attack as it was unfolding. Leaders of the committee Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney have characterized his failure to intervene, despite being asked to do so, as "dereliction of duty". 

In a speech in January 2022, Trump said that if he returned to the White House in 2024, he might pardon those convicted of participating in an attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.

Congressional conduct:

During the riots, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted information about the police response and the location of members on Twitter, including the fact that Speaker Pelosi had been taken out of the chamber, for which she has faced calls to resign for endangering members. 

Boebert responded that she was not sharing private information since Pelosi's removal was also broadcast on TV.

Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) left the congressional safe room for fear of other members there "who incited the mob in the first place".

While sheltering for hours in the "safe room" – a cramped, windowless room where people sat within arms' length of each other – some Republican Congress members refused to wear face masks, even when their Democratic colleagues begged them to do so. During the following week, three Democratic members tested positive for COVID-19 in what an environmental health expert described as a "superspreader" event.

Law enforcement and National Guard response:

Capitol Police had not planned for a riot or attack: These paragraphs are an excerpt from Law enforcement response to the 2021 United States Capitol attack. 

The Capitol Police Board consisting of the Architect of the Capitol, the House Sergeant at Arms, and the Senate Sergeant at Arms have the authority to request the national guard to the Capitol, but made the decision on January 3 not to do so. 

On January 6, under "orders from leadership", it deployed without "less lethal" arms such as sting grenades. At 12:49 p.m., Capitol police responded to the two bombs near the Capitol. Minutes later, rioters breached a police perimeter west of the Capitol building.

By 2:12 p.m., rioters breached the Capitol building. Capitol and D.C. police then fought to protect Congress and restore order, while individuals at the Department of Defense waited over three hours to deploy the National Guard.

Capitol Police Chief Sund first requested assistance from the D.C. National Guard (DCNG) at 1:49 p.m. At 2:22 p.m. D.C. officials also requested National Guard deployment in a conference call with Pentagon leaders. 

After DoD refused to send immediate assistance, D.C. Mayor Bowser contacted the Public Safety Secretary of Virginia, Brian Moran, who immediately dispatched Virginia State Police to the District. 

At 2:49 p.m., the Governor of Virginia activated all available assets including the Virginia National Guard to aid the U.S. Capitol, even though the authorization from DoD required for legal deployment was not granted. By 3:10 p.m., police from Fairfax County, Virginia, were dispatched to the District, and began arriving at 3:15 p.m.

After assets from the State of Virginia had entered the District, at 4:17 p.m., a video was released of Donald Trump calling for supporters to "go home". The Secretary of Defense then approved deployment of the National Guard. 

By 4:24 p.m., a 12-man armed FBI tactical team had arrived at the Capitol Complex. At 5:02, about 150 soldiers of the DCNG departed the D.C. Armory; the contingent reached the Capitol complex and began support operations at 5:40.

By 6:14 p.m., U.S. Capitol Police, D.C. Metropolitan Police, and DCNG successfully established a perimeter on the west side of the U.S. Capitol. At 8:00 p.m., the U.S. Capitol Police declared the Capitol building to be secure.

Results:

Casualties:
Further information: Aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack § Casualties

Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, was fatally shot in the upper chest by Lt. Michael Leroy Byrd while attempting to climb into the shattered window of a barricaded door. This was soon ruled a justified homicide. Babbitt was not armed when she was shot and killed.

Brian Sicknick, a 42-year-old responding Capitol Police officer, was pepper-sprayed during the riot and suffered from two thromboembolic strokes the next day, after which he was placed on life support and soon died. The D.C. chief medical examiner found he died from a stroke, classifying his death as natural, and commenting that "all that transpired played a role in his condition".

Rosanne Boyland, 34, died of an amphetamine overdose during the riot, rather than being trampled by other rioters after her collapse, ruled accidental by the D.C. medical examiner's office.

Kevin Greeson, 55, and Benjamin Philips, 50, died naturally from coronary heart disease and hypertensive heart disease.

Some rioters and 138 police officers (73 Capitol Police and 65 Metropolitan Police) were injured, of whom 15 were hospitalized, some with severe injuries. All had been released from the hospital by January 11.

Suicides:
Further information: Law enforcement response to the 2021 United States Capitol attack § Suicides

Morale among the Capitol Police plummeted after the riot. The department responded to several incidents where officers threatened to harm themselves. Four officers from various police departments who responded to the attack died by suicide in the days and months that followed. 

Capitol Police Officer Howard Charles Liebengood died by suicide three days after the attack, and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who was injured in the attack, died by suicide from a gunshot wound to the head at George Washington Memorial Parkway on January 15, after a misdiagnosed concussion.

A former D.C. chief medical examiner hired by Smith's widow reported that the "acute, precipitating event that caused the death of Officer Smith was his occupational exposure to the traumatic events he suffered on January 6, 2021"; Smith's widow subsequently sued two of his alleged assailants, claiming they caused a traumatic brain injury with a crowbar or a heavy walking stick, leading to his death. 

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, some members of Congress and press reports included these two suicides in the number of reported casualties, for a total of seven deaths. 

In July, two more members of law enforcement who responded to the attack died by suicide: Metropolitan Police Officer Kyle Hendrik DeFreytag was found on July 10, and Metropolitan Police Officer Gunther Paul Hashida was found on July 29.

On August 5, 2021, Liebengood and Smith, along with Brian Sicknick and Billy Evans, were posthumously honored in a signing ceremony for a bill to award Congressional Gold Medals to Capitol Police and other January 6 responders. Their names are noted in the text of the bill, and Biden remarked on their deaths.

Damage:

​Rioters stormed the offices of Nancy Pelosi, flipping tables and ripping photos from walls; the office of the Senate Parliamentarian was ransacked; art was looted; and feces were tracked into several hallways. 

Windows were smashed throughout the building, leaving the floor littered with glass and debris. Rioters damaged, turned over, or stole furniture. 

One door had "MURDER THE MEDIA" scribbled onto it. Rioters damaged Associated Press recording and broadcasting equipment outside the Capitol after chasing away reporters. 

Rioters also destroyed a display honoring the life of congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. A photo of Representative Andy Kim (D–NJ) cleaning up the litter in the rotunda after midnight went viral.

The rioters caused extensive physical damage. Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton, who leads the office charged with maintaining the Capitol and preserving its art and architecture, reported in congressional testimony from late February 2021 that the combined costs of repairing the damage and post-attack security measures (such as erecting temporary perimeter fencing) already exceeded $30 million and would continue to increase. 

In May 2021, U.S. prosecutors estimated that the damage would cost almost $1.5 million. Interior damage from the riot included broken glass, broken doors, and graffiti; as well as defecation throughout the complex, on the floor and smeared on the walls; some statues, paintings, and furniture were damaged by pepper spray, tear gas, and fire extinguishing agents deployed by rioters and police.

The historic bronze Columbus Doors were damaged. Items, including portraits of John Quincy Adams and James Madison, as well as a marble statue of Thomas Jefferson, were covered in "corrosive gas agent residue"; these were sent to the Smithsonian for assessment and restoration. A 19th-century marble bust of President Zachary Taylor was defaced with what seemed to be blood, but the most important works in the Capitol collection, such as the John Trumbull paintings, were unharmed.

On the Capitol's exterior, two 19th-century bronze light fixtures designed by Frederick Law Olmsted were damaged. Because the Capitol has no insurance against loss, taxpayers will pay for damage inflicted by the siege. 

Rare old-growth mahogany wood, stored in Wisconsin for more than one hundred years by the Forest Products Laboratory, was used to replace damaged wood fixtures and doors at the Capitol.

Laptop theft and cybersecurity concerns:

A laptop owned by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) was stolen. A laptop taken from Speaker Pelosi's office was a "laptop from a conference room ... that was only used for presentations", according to Pelosi's deputy chief of staff. 

Representative Ruben Gallego (D–AZ) said "we have to do a full review of what was taken, or copied, or even left behind in terms of bugs and listening devices". 

​Military news website SOFREP reported that "several" secret‑level laptops were stolen, some of which had been abandoned while still logged in to SIPRNet, causing authorities to temporarily shut down SIPRNet for a security update on January 7 and leading the United States Army Special Operations Command to re-authorize all SIPRNet-connected computers on January 8.

Representative Anna Eshoo (D–CA) said in a statement that "[i]mages on social media and in the press of vigilantes accessing congressional computers are worrying" and she had asked the Chief Administrative Officer of the House (CAO) "to conduct a full assessment of threats based on what transpired". The CAO said it was "providing support and guidance to House offices as needed".

One 22-year-old Capitol rioter, Riley Williams, was arrested and indicted on eight counts, including theft of government property, obstructing an official proceeding, and assaulting or resisting police. The indictment charged her with stealing a Hewlett-Packard laptop computer from Pelosi's office, subsequently selling or disposing of it, and boasting on social media of having taken Pelosi's "hard drives."

The laptop has not been recovered. Pelosi's office stated that the computer was used only for presentations. Williams' boyfriend, who tipped off police, said that she had intended to send the stolen laptop to a friend in Russia for sale to Russian intelligence. Williams pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Events elsewhere:

State capitols and cities:

​This paragraph is an excerpt from 2020–21 United States election protests § January 6 – state capitols and cities.

A number of states experienced demonstrations and armed protests at state capitols or in the streets on January 6, numbering in dozens to hundreds of participants. Precautionary measures, such as closures of state capitols and evacuation of members and staff, were taken in several of the states in response to the events in Washington D.C.

In some states the events were marked by incidents or particular security concerns. Protests were again being held at state capitols in the week before the inauguration.

International:

Internationally, Trump's allegations of a "stolen" election found a small audience among conspiracy theorists and fringe groups. 

In Canada, there were small pro-Trump rallies on January 6 in Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver. At the Vancouver rally, a demonstrator assaulted CBC photojournalist Ben Nelms. 

In Japan, a few hundred people in Tokyo rallied in support of Trump hours before the rally in Washington, D.C.; several people carried the U.S. flag and the Rising Sun Flag, a controversial symbol in East Asia because of its association with Japanese imperialism.

The gathering in Tokyo was backed by Happy Science, a new religious movement that has been described as a cult. 

In New Zealand, a week after the Capitol attack, about 100 participants attended a "freedom rally" outside the New Zealand Parliament in Wellington. The "freedom rally" was organized by conspiracy theorist and New Zealand Public Party leader Billy Te Kahika and featured several participants with pro-Trump banners and flags.

Aftermath:

Political, legal, and social repercussions​:

These paragraphs are an excerpt from Aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

The attack was followed by various political, legal, and social repercussions.

The second impeachment of Donald Trump, who was charged for incitement of insurrection for his conduct, occurred on January 13. At the same time, Cabinet officials were pressured to invoke the 25th Amendment for removing Trump from office. 

Trump was subsequently acquitted in the Senate trial, which was held in February after Trump had already left office. The result was a 57–43 vote in favor of conviction, with every Democrat and seven Republicans voting to convict, but two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes) would have been required to convict. 

Many in the Trump administration resigned. Several large companies announced they were halting all political donations, and others have suspended funding the lawmakers who had objected to certifying Electoral College results. 

A bill was introduced to form an independent commission, similar to the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the events surrounding the attack; it passed the House but was blocked by Republicans in the Senate. The House then approved a House "select committee" to investigate the attack. 

In June, the Senate released the results of its own investigation of the riot. The event led to strong criticism of law enforcement agencies. Leading figures within the United States Capitol Police resigned.

A large-scale criminal investigation was undertaken, with the FBI opening more than 400 case files. Federal law enforcement undertook a nationwide manhunt for the perpetrators, with arrests and indictments following within days. More than 615 people have been charged with federal crimes.

Per his involvement in inciting the storming of the Capitol, Trump was suspended from various social media sites, at first temporarily and then indefinitely. In response to various posts by Trump supporters in favor of the attempts to overturn the election, the social networking site Parler was shut down by its service providers. Corporate suspensions of other accounts and programs associated with participating groups also took place.

The inauguration week was marked by nationwide security concerns. Unprecedented security preparations for the inauguration of Joe Biden were undertaken, including the deployment of 25,000 National Guard members. In May, the House passed a $1.9 billion Capitol security bill in response to the attack.

In the days following the attack on the Capitol, Republican politicians in at least three states introduced legislation creating new prohibitions on protest activity.

Criminal charges:
Main article: Criminal charges in the 2021 United States Capitol attack
​
​​By February 1, 228 people from 39 states and DC had been charged with federal and/or DC offences. 

By April 23, 439 people had been charged. 

By early September, there were over 600 federal defendants, 10% of whom had pled guilty, and hundreds more arrests expected to come. 

By October 13, there were over 630 federal defendants and 100 guilty pleas, and BuzzFeed published a searchable table of the plea deals. 

On January 6, 2022, exactly one year following the attack, over 725 people had been arrested for their involvement.
​
Most defendants face "two class-B misdemeanor counts for demonstrating in the Capitol and disorderly conduct, and two class-A misdemeanor counts for being in a restricted building and disruptive activity," according to BuzzFeed, and therefore most plea deals address those misdemeanors.

Some defendants have been additionally charged with felonies. The median prison sentence, for those convicted thus far, is 45 days, with those who committed violence facing longer incarceration periods. Other punishments include home detention, fines, probation, and community service. 

On January 13, 2022, 10 members of the Oath Keepers, including founder Stewart Rhodes, were arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy.

Domestic reactions:

These paragraphs are an excerpt from Domestic reactions to the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

In the aftermath of the attack, after drawing widespread condemnation from Congress, members of his administration, and the media, Trump released a video-taped statement on January 7 to stop the resignations of his staff and the threats of impeachment or removal from office.

In the statement, he condemned the violence at the Capitol, saying that "a new administration will be inaugurated", which was widely seen as a concession, and his "focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power" to the Biden administration.

Vanity Fair reported that Trump was at least partially convinced to make the statement by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who told Trump a sufficient number of Senate Republicans would support removing him from office unless he conceded. 

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had attempted to distance the administration from the rioters' behavior in a televised statement earlier in the day. 

On January 9, The New York Times reported that Trump had told White House aides he regretted committing to an orderly transition of power and would never resign from office.

In a March 25 interview on Fox News, Trump defended the Capitol attackers, saying they were patriots who posed "zero threat", and he criticized law enforcement for "persecuting" the rioters.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement on January 12 condemning the attack and reminding military personnel everywhere that Biden was about to become their commander-in-chief, saying "... the rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition, and insurrection." 

The statement also said, "As we have done throughout our history, the U.S. military will obey lawful orders from civilian leadership, support civilian authorities to protect lives and property, ensure public safety in accordance with the law, and remain fully committed to protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Mitch McConnell (R–KY), then the Senate Majority Leader, called it a "failed insurrection," that "the mob was fed lies," and "they were provoked by the president and other powerful people."

Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), later characterized the incident as domestic terrorism. President Biden, who described the rioters as "terrorists" aimed at "overturning the will of the American people" later shared this opinion.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the flags at the Capitol lowered to half-staff in Sicknick's honor. Trump initially declined to lower flags at the White House or other federal buildings under his control, before changing his mind four days later.

Biden, Mike Pence, and Pelosi offered condolences to Sicknick's family; Trump did not. 

After Sicknick's death, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) received backlash for previous speeches that were perceived as calls for violence.

A survey by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston taken January 12–20 showed that nearly a third (32%) of Texas Republicans supported the attack, although overall 83% of those who expressed an opinion were opposed to it. 

In a poll of Americans just after the attack, 79% of those surveyed said America is "falling apart". In February 2022, the Republican party leadership called the events of January 6 "legitimate political discourse".

International reactions:

These paragraphs are an excerpt from International reactions to the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

More than seventy countries and international organizations expressed their concerns over the attack and condemned the violence, with some specifically condemning President Donald Trump's own role in inciting the attack. Foreign leaders, diplomats, politicians, and institutions expressed shock, outrage, and condemnation of the events.

Multiple world leaders made a call for peace, describing the riots as "an attack on democracy". The leaders of some countries, including Brazil, Poland and Hungary, declined to condemn the situation, and described it as an internal U.S. affair.

Several NATO intelligence agencies outside the United States also briefed their governments that it was an attempted coup by President Trump which may have had help from federal law-enforcement officials.

Analysis and terminology:
See also: Description of the attempts to overturn the election as an attempted coup

This section is an excerpt from Aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack § Contemporary analysis and terminology.

A week following the attack, journalists were searching for an appropriate word to describe the event. According to the Associated Press, U.S. media outlets first described the developments on January 6 as "a rally or protest", but as the events of the day escalated and further reporting and images emerged, the descriptions shifted to "an assault, a riot, an insurrection, domestic terrorism or even a coup attempt". 

It was variably observed that the media outlets were settling on the terms "riot" and "insurrection". According to NPR, "By definition, 'insurrection,' and its derivative, 'insurgency,' are accurate. 'Riot' and 'mob' are equally correct. While these words are not interchangeable, they are all suitable when describing Jan. 6." 

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "the attack was widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d'état." 

The New York Times assessed the event as having brought the United States "hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis".

Naunihal Singh of the U.S. Naval War College, and author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, wrote that the attack on the Capitol was "an insurrection, a violent uprising against the government" and "sedition" but not a coup because Trump did not order the military "to seize power on his behalf". 

The Coup D'état Project of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, which tracks coups and coup attempts globally, classified the attack as an "attempted dissident coup", defined as an unsuccessful coup attempt "initiated by a small group of discontents" such as "ex-military leaders, religious leaders, former government leaders, members of a legislature/parliament, and civilians [but not police or the military]".

The Cline Center said the "organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition" by displacing Congress met this definition. Some political scientists identified the attack as an attempted self-coup, in which the head of government attempts to strong-arm the other branches of government to entrench power.

Academic Fiona Hill, a former member of Trump's National Security Council, described the attack, and Trump's actions in the months leading up to it, as an attempted self-coup.

The FBI classified the attack as domestic terrorism, and the Congressional Research Service also concluded that the attack appeared to meet the federal definition of domestic terrorism. 

Republican senator Ted Cruz characterized it as terrorism at least eighteen times over the ensuing year, though he was among the Senate Republicans who blocked a bipartisan January 6 commission to investigate it.

On the English Wikipedia, there were several disputes among the site's volunteer editors as to what terminology should be used to describe the event.

Historians' perspective:
For broader coverage of this topic, see Timeline of violent and dangerous incidents at the United States Capitol.
See also:  ​​
While there have been other instances of violence at the Capitol in the 19th and 20th centuries, this event was the most severe assault on the building since the 1814 burning of Washington by the British Army during the War of 1812.

The last attempt on the life of the Vice President was a bomb plot against Thomas Marshall in July 1915. 

For the first time in U.S. history, a Confederate battle flag was flown inside the Capitol. The Confederate States Army had never reached the Capitol, nor come closer than 6 miles (10 km) from the Capitol at the Battle of Fort Stevens, during the American Civil War.

UC Davis Law professor and scholar of legal history Carlton F.W. Larson wrote that the Framers of the Constitution would have denounced the event as a treasonous act, although those who participated in the mob assault were likely shielded from a treason charge by an 1851 precedent.

Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University, remarked on how January 6 would be remembered in American history: "Now every Jan. 6, we're going to have to remember what happened... I worry if we lose the date that it will lose some of its wallop over time." He also wrote about Trump's responsibility during the attack: "There are always going to be puzzle pieces added to what occurred on Jan. 6, because the president of the United States was sitting there watching this on television in the White House, as we all know, allowing it to go on and on."

See also:






​
Donald J. Trump and the Big LiePictured below: Cheney calls out Trump's latest attempt to promote 'BIG LIE' amid criticism from within her own party
" ​Veracity of statements by Donald Trump:

During his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims; one report gave the number as 30,573, an average of about 21 per day.

Characterized as the "firehose of falsehood" propaganda technique, commentators and fact-checkers have described it as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of these falsehoods became a distinctive part of both his business and political identity. Trump often denied having made controversial statements. 

By June 2019, many news organizations had started describing some of his falsehoods as lies, which are false statements that the speaker knows are false. The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of false claims amounts to a campaign based on disinformation. 

Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."

As part of attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had really won the election. Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of "the big lie" (see below).
​
Veracity and politics:

"It has long been a truism that politicians lie," wrote Carole McGranahan for the American Ethnologist journal in 2017. However, "Donald Trump is different" from other politicians, stated McGranahan, citing that Trump is the most "accomplished and effective liar" thus far to have ever participated in American politics. McGranahan felt that "the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented" as a result of Trump.

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University stated that past U.S. presidents have indeed "lied or misled the country," but none of them were a "serial liar" like Trump. 
Donnel Stern, writing in the Psychoanalytic Dialogues journal in 2019, declared: "We expect politicians to stretch the truth. But Trump is a whole different animal," because Trump "lies as a policy," and he "will say anything" to satisfy his supporters or himself.

Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2017, described lies having "always been an integral part of politics and political communication".

However, Trump was "delivering untruths on an unprecedented scale" in U.S. politics, both during his presidential campaign and during his presidency. Skjeseth also commented that no one in French politics was comparable to Trump in his provision of falsehoods.

"Fabrications have long been a part of American politics," wrote Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times in 2017, as several presidents in the previous 50 years have lied. Stolberg cited that Dwight Eisenhower lied about a U.S. spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union, Lyndon Johnson lied to justify U.S. policies regarding Vietnam, and Bill Clinton lied to conceal his sexual affair.

Meanwhile, Stolberg recounts that Richard Nixon was accused of lying in the Watergate scandal, while George W. Bush was accused of lying about the need for the Iraq War (with Donald Trump being one accuser of Bush lying).

However, Stolberg states that "President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called 'the conflict between truth and politics' to an entirely new level ... Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis."

Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times described in 2017 that U.S. presidents "of all stripes" have previously misled the public, either accidentally or "very purposefully". Barabak provided examples of Ronald Reagan, who falsely stated that he had filmed Nazi death camps, and Barack Obama, who falsely stated that "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it" under his Affordable Care Act.

However, Barabak goes on to state that "White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations" is unparalleled.

Business career:
Further information: Wealth of Donald Trump

Real estate:

Within years of expanding his father's property development business into Manhattan in the early 1970s, Trump attracted the attention of The New York Times for his brash and controversial style, with one real-estate financier observing in 1976, "His deals are dramatic, but they haven't come into being. So far, the chief beneficiary of his creativity has been his public image." 

Der Scutt, the prominent architect who designed Trump Tower, said of Trump in 1976, "He's extremely aggressive when he sells, maybe to the point of overselling. Like, he'll say the convention center is the biggest in the world, when it really isn't. He'll exaggerate for the purpose of making a sale."

A 1984 GQ profile of Trump quoted him stating he owned the whole block on Central Park South and Avenue of the Americas. GQ noted that the two buildings Trump owned in that area were likely less than a sixth of the block.

In a 2005 interview with Golf Magazine, Trump said he was able to purchase Mar-a-Lago in 1985 by first purchasing the beach in front of it, then announcing false plans to build large houses between Mar-a-Lago and the ocean.

In his 2016–2020 financial reports, he claimed that the Trump Hotel in the Old Post Office Building in Washington, D.C. had revenue of over $150 million. In 2021, the House Oversight and Reform Committee revealed that, to the contrary, the property had a net loss of $70 million during that period.

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, has opened a civil investigation into Trump's business practices, especially regarding inflated property values. Additionally, she joined the Manhattan district attorney's office in a criminal investigation into possible property tax fraud by the Trump Organization.

The company is suspected of significantly misrepresenting its property values: inflating reports to apply for loans, deflating reports to lower tax bills. Both the civil and criminal probe are ongoing as of January 2022.

Other investments and debt:

In 2018, journalist Jonathan Greenberg released audio recordings from 1984 in which Trump, posing as his own spokesman John Barron, made false assertions of his wealth to secure a higher ranking on the Forbes 400 list of wealthy Americans, including claiming he owned over 90 percent of his family's business.

When the stock market crashed in October 1987, Trump told the press he had sold all his stock a month before and taken no losses. But SEC filings showed that he still owned large stakes in some companies. Forbes calculated that Trump had lost $19 million on his Resorts International holdings alone.

Challenging estimates of his net worth he considered too low, in 1989 Trump said he had very little debt. Reuters reported Trump owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks at the beginning of 1990.

In 1997, Ben Berzin Jr., who had been tasked with recovering at least some of the $100 million his bank had lent Trump, said "During the time that I dealt with Mr. Trump, I was continually surprised by his mastery of situational ethics. He does not seem to be able to differentiate between fact and fiction."

A 1998 New York Observer article entitled "Tricky Donald Trump Beats Jerry Nadler in Game of Politics" reported that "Nadler flatly calls Mr. Trump a 'liar'," quoting Nadler stating, "Trump got $6 million [in federal money] in the dead of night when no one knew anything about it" by slipping a provision into a $200 billion federal transportation bill.

During a 2005 deposition in a defamation lawsuit he initiated about his worth, Trump said: "My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings ... and that can change rapidly from day to day".

Philanthropy:

David Fahrenthold investigated the long history of Trump's claims about his charitable giving and found little evidence the claims are true. Following Fahrenthold's reporting, the Attorney General of New York opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation's fundraising practices, and ultimately issued a "notice of violation" ordering the Foundation to stop raising money in New York. 

The Foundation had to admit it engaged in self-dealing practices to benefit Trump, his family, and businesses. Fahrenthold won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for his coverage of Trump's claimed charitable giving and casting "doubt on Donald Trump's assertions of generosity toward charities".

Sports:

In 1983, when Trump was forming a business relationship with the New Jersey Generals football team, he spoke about the team at a public forum. "He promised the signing of superstar players he would never sign. He announced the hiring of immortal coaches he would never hire. He scheduled a news conference the next day to confirm all of it, and the next day never came,"

CNN reporter Keith Olbermann recalled in 2021. Following the forum, Trump approached Olbermann and, rather than waiting for interview questions, began speaking into Olbermann's microphone about "an entirely different set of coaches and players than he had from the podium."

In 1996, Trump claimed he wagered $1 million on 20-to-1 odds in a Las Vegas heavyweight title boxing match between Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson. The Las Vegas Sun reported that "while everyone is careful not to call Trump a liar," no one in a position to know about such a sizable wager was aware of it.

In a 2004 book, The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports, Trump claimed to have hit "the winning home run" when his school played Cornwall High School in 1964, garnering a headline "TRUMP HOMERS TO WIN THE GAME" in a local newspaper.

Years later, a journalist discovered that Trump's high school did not play Cornwall that year, nor did any such local headline surface. (Furthermore, a classmate recalled a separate incident in high school in which Trump had hit "a blooper the fielders misplayed," sending the ball "just over the third baseman's head," yet Trump insisted to him later: "I want you to remember this: I hit the ball out of the ballpark!" The event had happened at a practice field, not a ballpark.)

After purchasing the Trump National Golf Club in 2009, Trump erected The River of Blood monument between the 14th hole and the 15th tee with a plaque describing the blood of Civil War casualties that turned the river red. No such event ever took place at this site.

Other:

After three Trump casino executives died in a 1989 helicopter crash, Trump claimed that he, too, had nearly boarded the helicopter. The claim was denied 30 years later by a former vice president of the Trump Organization.

Promoting his Trump University after its formation in 2004, Trump asserted he would handpick all its instructors. Michael Sexton, former president of the venture, stated in a 2012 deposition that Trump selected none of the instructors.

During a 2018 interview, television personality Billy Bush recounted a conversation he'd had with Trump years earlier in which he refuted Trump's repeated false claims that The Apprentice was the top-rated television program in America. Bush recalled Trump responding, "Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do."

​Perceptions:

The architect Philip Johnson said in 1984 that Trump often lied, adding "But it's sheer exuberance, exaggeration. It's never about anything important."

Alair Townsend, a former budget director and deputy mayor of New York City during the 1980s, and a former publisher of Crain's New York Business, said "I wouldn't believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized."

Leona Helmsley later used this line as her own when she spoke about Trump in her November 1990 interview in Playboy magazine.

Trump often appeared in New York tabloid newspapers. Recalling her career with New York Post's Page Six column, Susany Mulcahy told Vanity Fair in 2004, "I wrote about him a certain amount, but I actually would sit back and be amazed at how often people would write about him in a completely gullible way. He was a great character, but he was full of crap 90 percent of the time" (Trump told the magazine, "I agree with her 100 percent").

Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive vice president who worked for Trump from 1978 until 1998, said "he would tell the staff his ridiculous lies, and after a while, no one believed a single word he would say".

In The Art of the Deal:
Main article: Trump: The Art of the Deal

Tony Schwartz is a journalist who ghostwrote Trump: The Art of the Deal. In July 2016, Schwartz was interviewed by Jane Mayer for two articles in The New Yorker. In them, he described Trump, who was running for president at the time, highly unfavorably, and described how he came to regret writing The Art of the Deal. 

When Schwartz wrote The Art of the Deal, he created the phrase "truthful hyperbole" as an "artful euphemism" to describe Trump's "loose relationship with the truth". This passage from the book provides the context, written in Trump's voice: "I play to people's fantasies ... People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and it's a very effective form of promotion". He said Trump "loved the phrase".

Schwartz said "deceit" is never "innocent". He added, "'Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?'" Schwartz repeated his criticism on Good Morning America and Real Time with Bill Maher, saying he "put lipstick on a pig".

Fearing that anti-German sentiments during and after World War II would negatively affect his business, Fred Trump began claiming Swedish descent. The falsehood was repeated by Fred's son Donald to the press and in The Art of the Deal, where he claimed that his grandfather, Friedrich Trump, "came here from Sweden as a child". 

In the same book, Donald also said his father was born in New Jersey. Trump later said, "My father is German. Right? Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany, and so I have a great feeling for Germany." Trump's father is of German descent but was born in the Bronx, New York.

September 11 attacks:

For broader coverage of the events, see September 11 attacks.On September 11, 2001, after at least one of the World Trade Center towers was destroyed, Trump gave a telephone interview with WWOR-TV in New York. He said: "40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest, and now it's the tallest." 

Once the Twin Towers had collapsed, the 71-story Trump Building at 40 Wall Street became the second-tallest building in Lower Manhattan, 25 feet (7.6 m) shorter than the building at 70 Pine Street.

At a rally in Columbus, Ohio, in November 2015, Trump said "I have a view—a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center." He added "and I watched those people jump and I watched the second plane hit ... I saw the second plane hit the building and I said, 'Wow that's unbelievable." At the time, Trump lived in Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, more than four miles (6 km) away from where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

In another rally in 2015 on November 21 in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump claimed seeing "thousands and thousands" of Arab Americans were cheering during the Collapse of the World Trade Center on the other side of the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Several newspaper articles like the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The Star-Ledger reported rumors of 9/11 celebrations in New Jersey, but they were each found to be "unfounded", unsourced, or finding that people were memorializing the event rather than celebrating it.

Nobody else was known to remember seeing masses of thousands of people celebrating after 9/11. Furthermore, Trump, living in Midtown Manhattan would not have been able to hear or see people cheering in New Jersey with a clear view.

2016 presidential campaign:

Trump promoted a number of conspiracy theories that have lacked empirical support. These have included those related to Barack Obama's citizenship from 2011. Known as "birther" theories, these allege that Obama was not born in the United States.

In 2011, Trump took credit for pushing the White House to release Obama's "long-form" birth certificate, while raising doubt about its legitimacy, and in 2016 admitted that Obama was a natural-born citizen from Hawaii. He later falsely stated that Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy theories.

In September 2015, Boing Boing reproduced newspaper articles from 1927, which reported that Trump's father had been arrested that year at a Ku Klux Klan march, though had been discharged. Multiple articles on the incident list Fred Trump's address (in Jamaica, Queens), which he is recorded as sharing with his mother in the 1930 census and a 1936 wedding announcement. 

Trump, then a candidate for U.S. president, admitted to The New York Times that the address was "where my grandmother lived and my father, early on." Then, when asked about the 1927 story, he denied that his father had ever lived at that address, and said the arrest "never happened", and that "there was nobody charged."

Within six months of Trump's announcement of his presidential campaign, FactCheck.org declared Trump the "King of Whoppers", stating, "In the 12 years of FactCheck.org's existence, we've never seen his match. He stands out not only for the sheer number of his factually false claims, but also for his brazen refusals to admit error when proven wrong."

In 2016, Trump suggested that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He also claimed that he lost the popular vote in the 2016 election only because of "millions" of illegal voters.

During his campaign, Trump claimed that his father, Fred Trump, had given him "a small loan of a million dollars," which he used to build "a company that's worth more than $10 billion," denying Marco Rubio's allegation that he had inherited $200 million from his father. 

An October 2018 New York Times exposé on Fred and Donald Trump's finances concludes that Donald "was a millionaire by age 8," and that he had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation) from his father's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60 million ($140 million in 2018 currency) in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.

Trump claimed repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2015 that the actual unemployment rate of around 5% "isn't reflective [of reality] ... I've seen numbers of 24%, I actually saw a number of 42% unemployment". PolitiFact rated this claim "Pants on Fire," its rating for the most egregious falsehoods. 

Jeremy Adam Smith, writing for the Greater Good Magazine, said Trump's falsehoods may be "blue lies," which are "told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group". As a result, he posited, Trump's dishonesty does not cause him to lose the support of his political base, even while it "infuriates and confuses almost everyone else".

In November 2015, Buzzfeed News' Andrew Kaczynski reported that Trump, despite having claimed to have the best memory in the world, actually had a history of "conveniently forgetting" people or organizations in ways that benefit him. In July 2016, PolitiFact's Linda Qiu also pointed out that despite Trump's boast for his memory, he "seems to suffer bouts of amnesia when it comes to his own statements".

Both Kaczynski and Qiu cited examples of Trump's stating he did not know anything about former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, despite past statements showing he clearly knew who Duke was.

Border wall with Mexico:
Main article: Trump wall

Throughout his campaign and into his presidency, President Trump repeatedly claimed that he would "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it". President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto said that his country would not pay for the wall, and ultimately never did.

While not unusual for a campaign promise to not pan out, Trump's insistence that Mexico would pay for it was a central element of his campaign and continued for years afterward. At the February 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump again reiterated that Mexico would be paying for the wall, saying, "Mexico is paying for it and it's every bit—it's better than the wall that was projected."

Presidency:

Fact-checking Trump:

Trump's statements as president have engaged a host of fact-checkers. Tony Burman wrote: "The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged—resulting in a growing prominence of 'fact-checkers' and investigative reporting." 

The situation is getting worse, as described by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ashley Parker: "President Trump seems to be saying more and more things that aren't true."

Glenn Kessler said in 2017 that in his job as a fact-checker for The Washington Post there was no comparison between Trump and other politicians. Kessler gave his worst rating to other politicians 15 percent to 20 percent of the time, but gave it to Trump 63 percent to 65 percent of the time. 

Kessler wrote that Trump was the most fact-challenged politician that he had ever encountered and lamented that "the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up". Kessler and others have described how Trump's lying has created an alternate/alternative reality.

The Washington Post fact-checker created a new category of falsehoods in December 2018, the "Bottomless Pinocchio," for falsehoods repeated at least twenty times (so often "that there can be no question the politician is aware his or her facts are wrong"). Trump was the only politician who met the standard of the category, with 14 statements that immediately qualified.

According to the Washington Post, Trump repeated some falsehoods so many times he had effectively engaged in disinformation.

Glenn Kessler wrote: The president keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version of it. He is not merely making gaffes or misstating things, he is purposely injecting false information into the national conversation.

Professor Robert Prentice summarized the views of many fact-checkers: Here's the problem: As fact checker Glenn Kessler noted in August, whereas Clinton lies as much as the average politician, President Donald Trump's lying is "off the charts." No prominent politician in memory bests Trump for spouting spectacular, egregious, easily disproved lies. The birther claim. The vote fraud claim. The attendance at the inauguration claim. And on and on and on.

Every fact checker – Kessler, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, PolitiFact – finds a level of mendacity unequaled by any politician ever scrutinized. For instance, 70 percent of his campaign statements checked by PolitiFact were mostly false, totally false, or "pants on fire" false.

At the end of 2018, Kessler provided a run-down summary of Trump's accelerating rate of false statements during the year:

"Trump began 2018 on a similar pace as last year. Through May, he generally averaged about 200 to 250 false claims a month. But his rate suddenly exploded in June, when he topped 500 falsehoods, as he appeared to shift to campaign mode. He uttered almost 500 more in both July and August, almost 600 in September, more than 1,200 in October and almost 900 in November. In December, Trump drifted back to the mid-200s."

Several major fact-checking sites regularly fact-checked Trump, including:
  • PolitiFact, which awarded Trump its "Lie of the Year" in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
  • FactCheck.org, which dubbed Trump the "King of Whoppers" in 2015.
  • The Washington Post said in January 2020 that Trump had made more than 16,241 false or misleading claims as president, an average of about 14.8 such statements per day.
  • The Toronto Star which said that, as of June 2019, Trump had made 5,276 false statements since his inauguration.

As late as June 2018, the news media were debating whether to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's falsehoods. That month, however, many news organizations, including CNN, Star Tribune, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, and Foreign Policy began describing some of Trump's false statements as lies. The Toronto Star was one of the first outlets to use the word "lie" to describe Trump's statements, and continues to do so frequently. Still, some organizations have continued to shy away from the term.

On June 5, 2019, Paul Farhi wrote that Glenn Kessler, author of The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" column, had used the word lie only once to describe Trump's statements, although he has sometimes used other terminology that implies lying. Since then, The Washington Post's fact-checking team has written the 2020 book Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth. The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies.

By October 9, 2019, The Washington Post's fact-checking team documented that Trump had "made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days". 

On October 18, 2019, the Washington Post Fact Checker newsletter described the situation: "A thousand days of Trump. We often hear from readers wondering how President Trump's penchant for falsehoods stacks up in comparison to previous presidents. But there is no comparison: Trump exists in a league of his own. Deception, misdirection, gaslighting, revisionism, absurd boasts, and in some cases, provable lies, are core to his politics.

After departing the White House on the final day of his presidency, January 20, 2021, Trump gave a farewell address at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland prior to departing on Air Force One for his residence in Palm Beach, Florida. 

The Associated Press fact-checked his speech and reported that it included a number of false statements about his presidency and his administration's accomplishments. These included the statements that he passed the largest tax cuts in history; that the U.S. economy during his tenure was the greatest in U.S. history; that he achieved record job creation; that his administration rebuilt both the U.S. military and the American manufacturing industry; that he destroyed the ISIS caliphate; and a reiteration of his previously repeated falsehood that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act. 

These falsehoods added to the 30,573 falsehoods that The Washington Post's fact-checker had tallied by the end of Trump's presidency, an average of 21 falsehoods a day.

Credibility polling:

According to a September 2018 CNN-SSRS poll of 1,003 respondents, only 32% percent found Trump honest and trustworthy, the worst read in CNN polling history. The number was 33% on election day, November 8, 2016.

In June 2020, a Gallup poll of 1,034 adults within the United States found that 36% found Trump honest and trustworthy. By comparison, 60% of respondents found President Obama honest and trustworthy in June 2012 during his re-election campaign.

Commentary and analysis:

As president, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks. Trump uttered "at least one false or misleading claim per day on 91 of his first 99 days" in office according to The New York Times, and 1,318 total in his first 263 days in office according to the "Fact Checker" political analysis column of The Washington Post. 

By the Post's tally, it took Trump 601 days to reach 5,000 false or misleading statements and another 226 days to reach the 10,000 mark. For the seven weeks leading up to the midterm elections, it rose to an average of 30 per day from 4.9 during his first 100 days in office. 

The Post found that Trump averaged 15 false statements per day during 2018.

The New York Times editorial board frequently lambasted Trump's dishonesty. In September 2018, the board called him "a president with no clear relation to the truth". The following month, the board published an opinion piece titled, "Donald Trump Is Lyin' Up a Storm".

James Comey had frequent discussions with Trump, and in his first major interview after his firing he described Trump as a serial liar who tells "baffling, unnecessary" falsehoods: Sometimes he's lying in ways that are obvious, sometimes he's saying things that we may not know are true or false and then there's a spectrum in between ... he is someone who is—for whom the truth is not a high value.

The Washington Post commentator Greg Sargent pointed out eight instances where government officials either repeated falsehoods or came up with misleading information to support falsehoods asserted by Trump, including various false claims about terrorists crossing or attempting to cross the Mexican border, that a 10% middle class tax cut had been passed, and a doctored video justifying Jim Acosta's removal from the White House press room.

James P. Pfiffner, writing for The Evolving American Presidency book series, wrote that compared to previous presidents, Trump tells "vastly" more "conventional lies" that politicians usually tell to avoid criticism or improve their image.

However, Pfiffner emphasized that "the most significant" lies told by Trump are instead "egregious false statements that are demonstrably contrary to well-known facts," because by causing disagreements about what the facts are, then people cannot properly evaluate their government: "Political power rather than rational discourse then becomes the arbiter."

Selman Özdan, writing in the journal Postdigital Science and Education, describes that "many" of Trump's statements in interviews or on Twitter "may now be classed as bullshit," with their utter disregard for the truth, and their focus on telling "a version of reality that suits Trump's aims". She added that these statements are "often" written in a way which criticizes or mocks others, while offering a misleading version of Trump's accomplishments to improve his image.

Daniel Dale, writing for The Washington Post, described fact-checking Trump as being "like fact-checking one of those talking dolls programmed to say the same phrases for eternity, except if none of those phrases were true", noting that Trump had repeatedly and falsely claimed that he had passed the Veterans Choice Act and that U.S. Steel was building six, seven, eight or nine plants (the company had invested in two existing plants).

Dale added: "Many of Trump’s false claims are so transparently wrong that I can fact-check them with a Google search."

Specific topics:

Inaugural crowd:

Trump's presidency began with a series of falsehoods originating from Trump himself. On the day after his inauguration, he falsely accused the media of lying about the size of the inauguration crowd. He then exaggerated the size, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer backed up his claims. 

When Spicer was accused of intentionally misstating the figures, Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, defended Spicer by saying he merely presented alternative facts. Todd responded by saying, "Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods".

In September 2018, a government photographer admitted that he, at Trump's request, edited pictures of the inauguration to make the crowd appear larger: "The photographer cropped out empty space 'where the crowd ended' for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama's in 2009."

2016 Presidential election results:
Further information: United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote

Trump went on to claim that his electoral college victory in 2016 was a landslide; that three of the states he did not win in the 2016 election had "serious voter fraud"; and that Clinton received 3 million to 5 million illegal votes. 

Trump made his Trump Tower wiretapping allegations in March 2017, which the Department of Justice twice refuted. In January 2018, Trump claimed that texts between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were tantamount to "treason," but The Wall Street Journal reviewed them and concluded that the texts "show no evidence of a conspiracy against" Trump.

Dismissal of FBI director:

On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he had accepted the recommendations of U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey. In their respective letters, neither Trump, Sessions nor Rosenstein mentioned the issue of an FBI investigation into links between Trump associates and Russian officials, with Rosenstein writing that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy, a rationale seconded by Sessions. 

On May 11, Trump said in an NBC News interview: "Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey ... in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story". 

On May 31, Trump wrote on Twitter, "I never fired James Comey because of Russia!"

Personal lawyer:

In 2017 and in the first half of 2018, Trump repeatedly praised his personal attorney Michael Cohen as "a great lawyer," "a loyal, wonderful person," "a good man" and someone Trump "always liked" and "respected".

In the second half of 2018, with Cohen testifying to federal investigations, Trump attacked Cohen as a "rat," "a weak person, and not a very smart person" and described Cohen as "a Public Relations person who did small legal work, very small legal work ... He represented me very little".

In 2018, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he did not know about a payment of $130,000 that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels or where Cohen had obtained the money from. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post described this statement as a lie, as Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen for the payment.

In 2021, several lawyers who had previously worked with Trump reportedly declined to assist him in asserting executive privilege over the subpoenas served by the House Select Committee on January 6. One of these lawyers was William Burck, who had once represented 11 Trump associates regarding the Mueller investigation.

When Trump was asked about the refusal of his former lawyers to involve themselves in his current legal battle, he said: "I don't even know who they are...I am using lawyers who have been with us from the beginning."

Spygate conspiracy theory:

In May 2018, Trump developed and promoted the false Spygate conspiracy theory alleging that the Obama administration planted a spy inside Trump's campaign to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.

2018 California wildfires:
Main article: 2018 California wildfires

During the 2018 California wildfires which ultimately caused $3.5 billion in damages and killed 103 people, Trump misrepresented a method that Finland uses to control wildfires. After speaking with President of Finland Sauli Niinistö, Trump reported on November 17, 2018, that Niinistö had called Finland a "forest nation" and that "they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem."

Trump's comments sparked online memes about raking leaves. President Niinistö later clarified that there is "a good surveillance system and network" for forest management in Finland and that he did not recall having mentioned raking.

Special counsel investigation:

In March 2019, Trump asserted that the special counsel investigation was "illegal".

Previously in June 2018, Trump argued that "the appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!" However, in August 2018, Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed judge on the DC District Court ruled the appointment was constitutional, as did a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in February 2019.

The Mueller Report asserted that Trump's family members, campaign staff, Republican backers, administration officials, and his associates lied or made false assertions, with the plurality of falsehoods from Trump himself (mostly while he was president), whether unintentional or not, to the public, Congress, or authorities, per a CNN analysis.

Also in March 2019, following the release of Attorney General William Barr's summary of the findings of the completed special counsel investigation, Trump tweeted: "No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION". However, Barr had quoted special counsel Mueller as writing that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" on whether he had committed obstruction of justice. Barr declined to bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against the President.

In testimony to Congress in May 2019, Barr said he "didn't exonerate" Trump on obstruction as that was not the role of the Justice Department.

Economy:
See also: Economic policy of Donald Trump

Through his first 28 months in office, Trump repeatedly and falsely characterized the economy during his presidency as the best in American history.

As of March 2019, Trump's most repeated falsehoods, each repeated during his presidency more than a hundred times, were that a U.S. trade deficit would be a "loss" for the country, that his tax cuts were the largest in American history, that the economy was the strongest ever during his administration, and that the wall was already being built.

By August, he had made this last claim at least 190 times. He also made 100 false claims about NATO spending, whether on the part of the United States or other NATO members.

Trump claimed during the campaign that the U.S. real GDP could grow at rate of "5 or even 6" percent under his policies. During 2018, the economy grew at 2.9%, the same rate as 2015 under President Obama. Longer-term projections beyond 2019 by the CBO and Federal Reserve are for growth below 2%. President Obama's advisers explained growth limits as "sluggish worker productivity and shrinking labor supply as baby boomers retire".

Trump claimed in October 2017 he would eliminate the federal debt over eight years, even though it was $19 trillion at the time. However, the annual deficit (debt addition) in 2018 was nearly $800 billion, about 60% higher than the CBO forecast of $500 billion when Trump took office.

The CBO January 2019 forecast for the 2018–2027 debt addition is now 40% higher, at $13.0 trillion rather than $9.4 trillion when Trump was inaugurated. Other forecasts place the debt addition over a decade at $16 trillion, bringing the total to around $35 trillion.

Rather than a debt to GDP ratio in 2028 of 89% had Obama's policies continued, CBO now estimates this figure at 107%, assuming Trump's tax cuts for individuals are extended past 2025.

Trump sought to present his economic policies as successful in encouraging businesses to invest in new facilities and create jobs. In this effort, he took credit on several occasions for business investments that began before he became president.

Trump repeatedly claimed that China or Chinese exporters were bearing the burden of his tariffs, not Americans, a claim PolitiFact rated as "false". Studies indicate U.S. consumers and purchasers of imports are bearing the cost and that tariffs are essentially a regressive tax.

For example, CBO reported in January 2020 that: "Tariffs are expected to reduce the level of [U.S.] real GDP by roughly 0.5 percent and raise consumer prices by 0.5 percent in 2020. As a result, tariffs are also projected to reduce average real household income by $1,277 (in 2019 dollars) in 2020." While Trump has argued that tariffs would reduce the trade deficit, it expanded to a record dollar level in 2018.

Trump repeatedly claimed that the U.S. had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China before his presidency; the actual deficit never reached $400 billion prior to his presidency.

​The following table illustrates some of the key economic variables in the last three years of the Obama Administration (2014–2016) and the first three years of the Trump Administration (2017–2019). Trump often claimed the economy was doing better than it was when he was elected.
President Trump repeatedly made false, misleading or baseless claims in his criticism of voting by mail in the United States. This included claims that other countries would print "millions of mail-in ballots", claims that "80 million unsolicited ballots" were being sent to Americans, and claims that Nevada's presidential election process was "100% rigged". Another claim was alleging massive voter fraud. In September 2020, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed by Trump, testified under oath that the FBI had "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise".

Family separation policy:

For broader coverage of the policy, see Trump administration family separation policy.

President Trump repeatedly and falsely said he inherited his administration's family separation policy from Obama, his predecessor. In November 2018, Trump said, "President Obama separated children from families, and all I did was take the same law, and then I softened the law."

In April 2019, Trump said, "President Obama separated children. They had child separation; I was the one that changed it." In June 2019, Trump said, "President Obama had a separation policy. I didn't have it. He had it. I brought the families together. I'm the one that put them together... I inherited separation, and I changed the plan".

Trump's assertion was false because the Obama administration had no policy systematically separating migrant families, while "zero tolerance" was not instituted until April 2018. PolitiFact quoted immigration experts saying that under the Obama administration families were detained and released together and separations rarely happened.

Article II and unlimited executive power:

In July 2019, during a speech addressing youth at Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit in Washington, The Washington Post reported that, while criticizing the Mueller investigation, Trump falsely claimed Article Two of the United States Constitution ensures, "I have the right to do whatever I want as president". The Post clarified that "Article II grants the president 'executive power'. It does not indicate the president has total power".

Hurricane Dorian:
Further information: Hurricane Dorian–Alabama controversy

​As Hurricane Dorian approached the Atlantic coast in late August 2019, Trump presented himself as closely monitoring the situation, tweeting extensively about it as The New York Times reported he was "assuming the role of meteorologist in chief". On September 1, Trump tweeted that Alabama, among other states, "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated" by Dorian. 

By that time, no weather forecaster was predicting Dorian would impact Alabama and the eight National Hurricane Center forecast updates over the preceding 24 hours showed Dorian steering well away from Alabama and moving up the Atlantic coast. 

The Birmingham, Alabama office of the National Weather Service (NWS) contradicted Trump 20 minutes later, tweeting that Alabama "will NOT see any impacts from Dorian." After ABC News White House reporter Jonathan Karl reported the correction, Trump tweeted it was "Such a phony hurricane report by lightweight reporter @jonkarl".

On September 4, in the Oval Office, Trump displayed a modified version of an August 29 diagram by the National Hurricane Center of the projected track of Dorian. The modification was done with a black marker and extended the cone of uncertainty of the hurricane's possible path into southern Alabama. Modifying official government weather forecasts is illegal in the United States. 

A White House official later told The Washington Post Trump had altered the diagram with a Sharpie marker. Trump said he did not know how the map came to be modified and defended his claims, saying he had "a better map" with models that "in all cases [showed] Alabama was hit".

Later on September 4, Trump tweeted a map by the South Florida Water Management District dated August 28 showing numerous projected paths of Dorian; Trump falsely asserted "almost all models" showed Dorian approaching Alabama. A note on the map stated it was "superseded" by National Hurricane Center publications and that it was to be discarded if there were any discrepancies.

On September 5, after Fox News correspondent John Roberts reported about the story live from the White House, Trump summoned him to the Oval Office. Roberts later characterized Trump as "just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk—even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet". 

Later that day, Trump's Homeland Security Advisor Peter Brown issued a statement asserting Trump had been provided a graphic on September 1 showing tropical storm force winds touching the southeastern corner of Alabama; a White House source told CNN that Trump had personally instructed Brown to issue the statement.

On September 6, at Trump's direction, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross to order acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs to fix the contradiction by Birmingham NWS, and Ross threatened to fire top NOAA officials if he did not. 

NOAA then tweeted a statement by an unnamed spokesman disavowing the Birmingham NWS tweet, asserting "the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama," adding that the Birmingham tweet "spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time". 

The president of the NWS Employees Organization responded, "the hard-working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight". Former senior NOAA executives were also sharply critical. 

That evening, Trump tweeted a video of a CNN hurricane forecast from the Wednesday before his Sunday tweet in which the forecaster mentioned Alabama could be affected by Dorian—with the video altered to show "Alabama" being repeated several times; the video ended with a CNN logo careening off a road and bursting into flames. 

Trump continued to insist he was correct through September 7, asserting "The Fake News Media was fixated" on the matter and tweeting forecast maps from at least two days before his original Sunday tweet, as the media dubbed the episode "Sharpiegate".

Numerous commentators expressed bafflement that Trump chose to continue insisting he was correct about what might otherwise have passed as a relatively minor gaffe.

On September 9, NWS director Louis Uccellini said the Birmingham NWS had not tweeted in response to Trump's tweet, but rather in response to numerous phone calls and social media contacts their office had received in response to Trump's tweet. "Only later, when the retweets and politically based comments started coming to their office, did they learn the sources of this information," he said.

Meeting with Iran:

On September 16, 2019, Trump tweeted that "the fake news" was incorrectly reporting that he was willing to meet with Iran with no pre-conditions. Trump had said in July 2018 and June 2019 that he was willing to meet with Iran with no pre-conditions, and secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed this to be Trump's position during a White House press briefing five days before Trump's tweet.

Obamagate conspiracy theory:
Main article: Allegations of Obama spying on Trump

Trump and some of his supporters allege that Obama and his administration conspired to politically surveil Trump's presidential campaign and presidential transition through inappropriate investigations by the Department of Justice, the United States Intelligence Community, and the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Trump nicknamed the series of events, which he called a major scandal, Obamagate. Trump's critics called it an unfounded conspiracy theory.

On May 10, 2020—one day after former president Barack Obama criticized the Trump administration's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic —Trump posted a one-word tweet: "OBAMAGATE!" 

On May 11, Philip Rucker of The Washington Post asked Trump what crime former president Barack Obama committed. Trump's reply was: "Obamagate. It's been going on for a long time ... from before I even got elected and it's a disgrace that it happened.... Some terrible things happened and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again."

When Rucker again asked what the crime was, Trump said: "You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours." On May 15, Trump tweeted that Obamagate was the "greatest political scandal in the history of the United States".

This was the third time Trump claimed to be suffering from a scandal of such magnitude, after previously giving Spygate and the Russia investigation similar labels. Also on May 15, Trump linked Obamagate to the "persecution" of Michael Flynn, and a missing 302 form.

Trump called for Congress to summon Obama to testify about "the biggest political crime". Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that he did not expect to summon Obama, but would summon other Obama administration officials. 

Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr stated that he did not "expect" Obama to be investigated of a crime. Some of Trump's allies have suggested that the "crime" involved the FBI launching an investigation into incoming national security advisor Michael Flynn, or possibly the "unmasking" by outgoing Obama officials to find out the name of a person who was reported in intelligence briefings to be conversing with the Russian ambassador.

In a May 2020 op-ed at the news website RealClearPolitics, Charles Lipson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago analyzed the content of "Obamagate". He claimed that the concept refers to three intertwined scandals: (1) The Obama administration conducted mass surveillance through the NSA; (2) the Obama administration used surveillance against Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and (3) the Obama administration did not transfer power seamlessly to the new Trump administration.

Lipson further claimed that "these abuses didn't simply follow each other; their targets, goals, and principal players overlapped. Taken together, they represent some of the gravest violations of constitutional norms and legal protections in American history".

The Associated Press (AP) in May 2020 addressed Obamagate in a fact check, stating that there was "no evidence" of Trump's suggestion that "the disclosure of Flynn's name as part of legal U.S. surveillance of foreign targets was criminal and motivated by partisan politics." AP stated that there is not only "nothing illegal about unmasking," but also that the unmasking of Flynn was approved using the National Security Agency's "standard process."

Unmasking is allowed if officials feel that it is needed to understand the collected intelligence. AP further pointed out that the Trump administration was conducting even more unmasking than the Obama administration in the final year of Obama's presidency. In May 2020, attorney general Bill Barr appointed federal prosecutor John Bash to examine unmasking conducted by the Obama administration. 

The inquiry concluded in October with no findings of substantive wrongdoing. By October 2020, the complex "Obamagate" narrative served as an evolution and rebranding of the "Spygate" conspiracy.

​Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy theory:

​Trump repeatedly advocated a baseless conspiracy theory suggesting that television host Joe Scarborough was involved in the 2001 death of a staffer who worked for Scarborough while the latter was a member of Congress. 

Trump labeled the woman's death an unsolved "cold case" in one of multiple tweets and called on his followers to continue to "keep digging" and to "use forensic geniuses" to find out more about the death. Scarborough's wife and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski called the president a "cruel, sick, disgusting person" for his tweets and urged Twitter to remove Trump's tweets. Scarborough called Trump's tweet "unspeakably cruel".

Lori Klausutis was a constituent services coordinator in one of Scarborough's congressional offices in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Klausutis was found dead on the floor near her desk in that office on July 19, 2001. 

An autopsy by Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Berkland revealed a previously undiagnosed heart-valve irregularity, floppy mitral valve disease, that caused a cardiac arrhythmia that in turn halted her heart, stopped her breathing, and caused the 28-year-old to lose consciousness, fall, and hit her head on the edge of a desk.

Klausutis' cause of death was determined at the time of death to be due to natural causes, and local authorities have never attempted to re-investigate because there was no evidence of an alternative explanation for her death. Scarborough was in Washington, D.C. at the time of her death in Florida.

In May 2020, Klausutis's widower, Timothy Klausutis, called for the removal of Trump's tweets. He wrote a letter to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, saying: "I'm asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him—the memory of my dead wife—and perverted it for perceived political gain". 

Twitter refused to take down Trump's false tweets, and the White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, only stated that her heart was with the family. Twitter stated that statements by the President, even false ones, are newsworthy.

Advances for black Americans:

In 2020, Trump claimed multiple times that he or his administration had "done more for the black community than any president," in some cases compared to all presidents, and in other cases to all presidents "since Abraham Lincoln" (who abolished slavery in the United States).

Prominent historians instead pointed to Lyndon B. Johnson as the president who did most for the black community since Lincoln, for his Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his Voting Rights Act of 1965. The historians also highlighted that the presidencies of Harry Truman, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama had done much for the black community. Trump's own achievements were dismissed as minor, while Trump was faulted for racially divisive rhetoric and attacks on voting rights.

Republican Party approval rating tweets:

After Trump took office in 2017, he routinely tweeted an approval rating between 94% and 98% in the Republican Party without citing a source. Trump tweeted these approval ratings almost weekly, with a percentage around 96%.

For example, a tweet from June 16, 2020, by Trump says "96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you!" Another tweet from August 23, 2019, says "94% Approval Rating within the Republican Party. Thank you!"

Trump's approval rating in the Republican Party was found to be around 88% in a Fox News poll, 90% in a Gallup poll and 79% in an AP-NORC poll but there is no evidence to support his tweets of the approval ratings around 96%.

The Pew Research Center has reported an average approval rating of 87% amongst Republicans.

COVID-19 pandemic:
Further information: 
Trump denied responsibility for his Administration's disbanding of the US Pandemic Response Team headed by Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer in 2018.

Trump made various false, misleading, or inaccurate statements related to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as "We have it under control. It's going to be just fine" (January 22, 2020); "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away" (February 10), and "Anybody that wants a test can get a test" (March 6). Trump also repeatedly claimed that the pandemic would "go away", even as the number of daily new cases rose.

On February 24, Trump tweeted: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA," and the next day Trump said, "I think that whole situation will start working out. We're very close to a vaccine," when none was known to be near production.

In late February, the Trump Administration stated that the outbreak containment was "close to airtight" and that the virus is only as deadly as the seasonal flu. Including that, the administration also stated that the outbreak was "contained" in early March even as the number of U.S. cases continued to increase, regardless of being publicly challenged.

While on Fox News, Trump contradicted the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that the global mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is 3.4%, saying. "Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number — and this is just my hunch — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild, they'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people," and said his "hunch" is that the real figure is "way under 1%".

Trump also speculated that "thousands or hundreds of thousands" of people might have recovered "by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work but they get better," contradicting medical advice to slow disease transmission. On March 17, Trump stated, "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained in a Science interview that before COVID-19 press conferences, the task force presents its consensus to Trump "and somebody writes a speech. Then (Trump) gets up and ad libs on his speech". Fauci explained that afterwards, the task force tells him to "be careful about this and don't say that," adding "I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time".

Trump made 33 false claims about the coronavirus crisis in the first two weeks of March, per a CNN analysis. Trump made various other incorrect COVID-19 related statements. One false claim was that the United States had the highest rate per capita of COVID-19 testing, which it did not at the time, compared to South Korea, Italy, and Germany. 

Trump's misrepresentations often attempt to paint the federal coronavirus response in an excessively positive light, such as claiming that hospitals "even in the really hot spots" were "really thrilled" with the level of medical supplies, when in fact hospitals nationwide were concerned about shortages of medications, personal protective equipment, and ventilators.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted from April 13–15, 900 registered voters, found that 36% of Americans trusted Trump for information on COVID-19, and 52% distrusted him for that information.

On April 14, Trump said that he had "total" authority to reopen states, then said the next day that state governors had to make their own decision on when to reopen.

On April 16, Trump said "Our experts say the curve has flattened, and the peak in new cases is behind us." Trump added that "Nationwide, more than 850 counties, or nearly 30 percent of our country, have reported no new cases in the last seven days." The 30 percent of the counties in the country represented 6 percent of the population. Cases were added in counties where 94 percent of the population lived.

On April 28, while discussing his own response to the pandemic, Trump falsely suggested that in late February, Dr. Anthony Fauci had said that the American COVID-19 outbreak was "no problem" and was "going to blow over". Contrary to Trump's claims, Fauci had said in a February 29 interview that "now the risk is still low, but this could change ... You've got to watch out because although the risk is low now ... when you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread ... this could be a major outbreak."

​Also on February 29, Fauci had stressed during a press conference that "we want to underscore that this is an evolving situation"

​On May 19, Trump tweeted a statement claiming that the World Health Organization had consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in December 2019 including reports from The Lancet. 

The Lancet rejected Trump's claims, saying "The Lancet published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China. The first reports the journal published were on January 24, 2020". The Lancet also wrote that the allegations that Trump made against the WHO were "serious and damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control this pandemic". The Lancet also said that "It is essential that any review of the global response is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in December and January".

On June 20, at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump suggested that America should slow down testing. In response to the high number of tests, he said that "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases, so I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'" White House officials claimed that Trump was only joking.

In an interview, Trump said that while he never gave an order to slow down testing, he claimed that if the United States slowed down the testing, they would look like they're doing better. "I wouldn't do that," he said, "but I will say this: We do so much more than other countries it makes us, in a way, look bad but actually we're doing the right thing." At the time, the percentage of positive cases in the United States was over 2 times higher than recommended by the World Health Organization.

On July 4, 2020, Trump falsely stated that "99 percent" of COVID-19 cases are "totally harmless". In the same speech, Trump contradicted several public health experts by saying that the U.S. will "likely have a therapeutic and/or vaccine solution long before the end of the year". FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn declined to state whether Trump's "99 percent" statement was accurate or to say how many cases are harmless. 

In March, the World Health Organization estimated 15% of COVID-19 cases become severe and 5% become critical.

As the U.S. COVID-19 daily new case count increased from about 20,000 on June 9 to over 50,000 by July 7, Trump repeatedly insisted that the case increase was a function of increased COVID-19 testing. Trump's claims were contradicted by the facts that states having increased case counts as well as those having decreased case counts had increased testing, that the positive test rate increased in all ten states with the largest case increases, and that case rate increases consistently exceeded testing rate increases in states with the most new cases.

On August 5, 2020, Trump asserted that children should go back to school and learn in an in-person setting. He said, "If you look at children, children are almost, I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. So few. Hard to believe. I don't know how you feel about it but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. They don't have a problem."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children account for about 7.3% of COVID-19 cases. While children may be less likely to contract the virus than adults, a study reported in Science Magazine showed that "children under age 14 are between one-third and one-half as likely as adults to contract the virus."

Facebook took action against President Trump's claim that children are "almost immune," removing a video of him making this claim that was posted on his official Facebook account. Twitter took action against a similar tweet made by Trump's campaign, stating that the account would be restricted from tweeting until the tweet is removed. The Trump campaign account removed the tweet later that day.

Trump noted New Zealand's success in dealing with COVID-19 while referring on August 18, 2020, to a "big surge in New Zealand"—on a day when New Zealand had 13 new reported cases of infection, a cumulative total of 1,643 COVID-19 cases and a cumulative total of 22 COVID-19-related deaths, with no new COVID-19-related deaths reported since late May 2020.

Local commentators in New Zealand called Trump's terminology into question—Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters noted: "The American people can work out that what we have for a whole day, they have every 22 seconds of the day [...]." (New Zealand has a total population about 1.5 percent of that of the United States.)

In a series of eighteen interviews from December 5, 2019, to July 21, 2020, between Donald Trump and Bob Woodward, Trump admitted that he deceived the public about the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. On February 7, he told Woodward, "This is deadly stuff. You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one.

That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu." On March 19, he said in another interview, "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." Many audio recordings of these interviews were released on September 9, 2020.

The military and veterans:

In 2014, a bipartisan initiative for veterans' healthcare, led by Senators Bernie Sanders and John McCain, was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The Veterans Choice program enables eligible veterans to receive government funding for healthcare provided outside the VA system.

In 2018, Trump signed the VA MISSION Act to expand the eligibility criteria. Over the next two years, Trump falsely claimed over 150 times that he had created the Veterans Choice program itself. When reporter Paula Reid questioned him about this in August 2020, noting that he repeatedly made a "false statement" in taking credit for the program, Trump abruptly walked out of the news conference.

In a speech given at Al Asad Airbase to US military personnel on Christmas 2018, Trump boasted that the military had not gotten a raise in ten years, and that he would be giving them a raise of over 10 percent. In fact, American military personnel received a pay hike of at least one percent for the past 30 years, got a 2.4 percent pay increase in 2018, and would receive a 2.6 percent pay increase for 2019.

Voting by mail:
Further information: 
On November 4, Trump delivered a speech inside the White House falsely claiming he had already won the 2020 presidential election. He made numerous false and misleading statements to support his belief that vote counting should stop and that he should be confirmed as the winner.

After Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed Biden had won through ballot fraud against him. He repeated and tweeted false and misleading claims about vote counting, Dominion Voting Systems, poll watchers, alleged voting irregularities, and more.

​During the two-month transition period to the Biden administration, according to a Huffington Post count of his false claims, Trump said the election was rigged (he made this claim 68 times), stolen (35 times), determined by fraudulent or miscounted votes (250 times), and impacted by malfunctioning voting machines (45 times).

Regarding the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump said "hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people" had gathered to hear him speak whereas the Associated Press reported it as "several thousand." (About 2,000 later entered the Capitol.)

Public opinion:

A June 2019 Gallup poll found that 34% of American adults think Trump "is honest and trustworthy".

A March 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation poll estimated that 19% of Democrats and 88% of Republicans trusted Trump to provide reliable information on COVID-19.

A May 2020 SRSS poll for CNN concluded that 36% of people in the U.S. trusted Trump on information about the COVID-19 outbreak. Only 4% of Democrats trusted that information from Trump, compared to 84% of Republicans.

See also
​






Links between Trump Associates and Russian Officials Pictured below: Why Did Putin Want Trump to Win?*
Since Donald Trump was a 2016 candidate for the office of President of the United States, numerous links between Trump associates and people with ties to the Russian government have been identified by the FBI, Special counsel and several United States congressional committees, as part of their investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (See below).

Following intelligence reports about the Russian interference, Trump and some of his campaign members, business partners, administration nominees, and family members have been subjected to intense scrutiny to determine whether they have had improper dealings during their contacts with Russian officials.

Several people connected to the Trump campaign made false statements about those links and obstructed investigations.

Starting in 2015, several allied foreign intelligence agencies began reporting secret contacts between Trump campaigners and known or suspected Russian agents in multiple European cities.

In November 2016, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov contradicted Trump's denials by confirming the Trump campaign had been in contact with Russia, stating in a 2016 Interfax news agency interview: "Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage," adding "I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives."

Ultimately, Mueller's investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities"

​Overview:

For many years, there has been intensive public scrutiny of Trump's ties to Russia. In a book excerpt published in Politico, former Guardian Russia correspondent Luke Harding stated that files declassified in 2016 indicated that Czech spies closely followed Trump and then-wife Ivana Trump in Manhattan and during trips to Czechoslovakia in the time after their marriage in 1977. 

Natalia and Irina Dubinin, daughters of then-Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin, are cited as indicating that a seemingly chance meeting of their father with Trump in the autumn of 1986, was part of Dubinin's assignment to establish contact with America's business elite and a determined effort by the Soviet government to cultivate Trump in particular.

This effort extended through a series of subsequent events, also documented in Donald Trump's book The Art of the Deal, including a meeting in 1986 between the Ambassador and Trump at Trump Tower and Dubinin's subsequent invitation to Trump to visit Moscow (which was handled via KGB-affiliated Intourist and the future Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin).

Harding also asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB... The spy chief [Vladimir Kryuchkov] wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans." Harding cited Trump as writing in The Art that the trip included a tour of "a half dozen potential sites for a hotel, including several near Red Square" and that he "was impressed with the ambition of Soviet officials to make a deal".

By April 19, 2019, The New York Times had documented that "Donald J. Trump and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition."

The Moscow Project — an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund — had, by June 3, 2019, documented "272 contacts between Trump's team and Russia-linked operatives ... including at least 38 meetings.... None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them."

The New York Times reported in June 2021 that in 2017 and 2018 Trump's Justice Department subpoenaed metadata from the iCloud accounts of at least a dozen people associated with the House Intelligence Committee, including that of Democrat ranking member Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, and family members, to investigate leaks to the press about contacts between Trump associates and Russia.
ecords of the inquiry did not implicate anyone associated with the committee, but upon becoming attorney general Bill Barr revived the effort, including by appointing a federal prosecutor and about six others in February 2020. 

The Times reported that, apart from corruption investigations, subpoenaing communications information of members of Congress is nearly unheard-of, and that some in the Justice Department saw Barr's approach as politically motivated. Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz announced an inquiry into the matter the day after the Times report.

2015-2016 foreign surveillance:

In late 2015, GCHQ, the British eavesdropping agency, during the course of routine surveillance, used "electronic intelligence" to collect information from Russian targets. They found that "Russians were talking to people associated with Trump...According to sources in the US and the UK, [the conversations] formed a suspicious pattern." 

The British passed this information about "suspicious 'interactions'" between "members of Donald Trump's campaign team" and "known or suspected Russian agents" to U.S intelligence agencies. Over the next six months, European allies began to "pass along information about people close to Mr. Trump meeting with Russians in the Netherlands, Britain and other countries." 

Reports of these "contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians" were shared by several allied foreign intelligence agencies (reportedly those of the United Kingdom, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Australia, France, and the Netherlands).

Later, "US agencies began picking up conversations in which Russians were discussing contacts with Trump associates".

In March 2017, The New York Times reported that British and Dutch agencies had evidence of meetings between "Russian officials — and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump". Separately, U.S. intelligence had overheard Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, talking about contacts with Trump associates.

Some Russian officials were arguing about how much to interfere in the election. Then cyber attacks on state electoral systems led the Obama administration to directly accuse the Russians of interfering.

Because they are not allowed to surveil the private communications of American citizens without a warrant, the "FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of these contacts between Trump's team and Moscow."

2016 campaign:

During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly praised Russian president Vladimir Putin as a strong leader. Peter Conradi, in GQ magazine, described this relationship as a "bromance".

Between 2013 and 2015, Trump stated "I do have a relationship with" Putin, "I met him once", and "I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin, who could not have been nicer." From 2016, during his election campaign, his stance changed. During a press conference in July 2016, he claimed, "I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is ... Never spoken to him", and in a July interview said, "I have no relationship with him."

In November 2016, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency, "Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage", and "I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives."

2017:

Several Trump advisers, including former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, have been connected to Russian officials, or to Viktor Yanukovich and other pro-Russian Ukrainian officials.

The New York Times wrote on May 24, 2017, citing intelligence sources, that Russian agents were overheard during the campaign saying they could use Manafort and Flynn to influence Trump. 

Members of Trump's campaign, and later his White House staff, particularly Flynn and Jared Kushner, were in contact with Russian government officials both before and after the November election, including some contacts which they initially did not disclose.

Newspaper reports:

The Wall Street Journal reported that United States intelligence agencies monitoring Russian espionage found Kremlin officials discussing Trump's associates in the spring of 2015. At the time, U.S. intelligence analysts were reportedly confused, but not alarmed, by these intercepted conversations. In July 2017, the conversations were re-examined in light of a recently disclosed Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The New York Times reported that multiple Trump associates, including Manafort and other members of his campaign, had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016, although officials said that, so far, they do not have evidence that Trump's campaign had cooperated with the Russians to influence the election. Manafort said he did not knowingly meet any Russian intelligence officials.

Meetings with Kislyak:

After Senator Jeff Sessions, who was part of the Trump campaign, first denied he had any contact with Russians during the campaign, even though he had met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and Michael Flynn, also a member of the campaign, lied twice about meetings with Kislyak, the media focused negative attention on Kislyak.

National security experts "generally agree that Sessions and other Trump campaign officials have handled the Russia issue poorly. Sessions, they say, should have told Congress about his meeting with Kislyak. And they say Flynn was reckless and wrong to speak with Russian diplomats about sanctions during the transition period when Obama was still president."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN that the "electoral process" was not discussed during these meetings, and that Kislyak had also met with "people working in think tanks advising Hillary or advising people working for Hillary" during the campaign.

In particular, Kislyak met with several Trump campaign members, transition team members, and administration nominees. Involved people dismissed those meetings as routine conversations in preparation for assuming the presidency. Trump's team has issued at least twenty denials concerning communications between his campaign and Russian officials; several of which later turned out to be false.

The Trump administration reportedly asked the FBI for help in countering the news reports about alleged contacts with Russia. Former ambassadors Michael McFaul and John Beyrle said they were "extremely troubled" by the evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. election.

Both supported an independent investigation into the matter, but dismissed as "preposterous" the allegations that Kislyak participated in it, particularly through his meetings with the Trump campaign: "Kislyak's job is to meet with government officials and campaign people," McFaul stated. "People should meet with the Russian Ambassador and it's wrong to criminalize that or discourage it."

December 2016 Trump Tower meeting:

In March, 2017, Trump's White House disclosed that Kushner, Kislyak, and Flynn had met at Trump Tower in December 2016. At that meeting, the Washington Post reported that Kushner requested that a direct, Russian-encrypted communications channel be set up to allow secret communication with Russia and to circumvent safeguards in place by the United States intelligence community. 

Some sources told the Post that the purpose of such a link would have been to allow Flynn to speak directly to Russian military officials about Syria and other issues, while others pointed out that there would be no reason for such discussions to be concealed from appropriate US government officials. No such communications channel was actually set up, according to the sources.

After the meeting, Kislyak sent a report of the meeting to the Kremlin using what he thought were secure channels, but the report was intercepted by American intelligence. Kislyak was reportedly taken aback by the request and expressed concern about the security implications at stake in having an American use secure communications between the Kremlin and diplomatic outposts.

March 2017:

Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell stated in March 2017 that he had seen no evidence of conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin: "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all."

In a March 2017 interview with Chuck Todd, James Clapper, who had been the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama until January 20, 2017, revealed the state of his knowledge at that time:
  • CHUCK TODD: Were there improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials?
  • JAMES CLAPPER: We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, “our,” that’s N.S.A., F.B.I. and C.I.A., with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that…
  • CHUCK TODD: I understand that. But does it exist?
  • JAMES CLAPPER: Not to my knowledge.
  • Todd pressed him to elaborate.
  • CHUCK TODD: If [evidence of collusion] existed, it would have been in this report?
  • JAMES CLAPPER: This could have unfolded or become available in the time since I left the government.

​Clapper had stopped receiving briefings on January 20 and was "not aware of the counterintelligence investigation Director Comey first referred to during his testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence on the 20th of March". CNN stated that Clapper had "taken a major defense away from the White House."

2019:

After 22 months of investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report to the Justice Department on March 22, 2019. The investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities".

Attorney General William Barr ordered the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General under Michael E. Horowitz to investigate the FBI investigation of the 2016 Donald Trump campaign. The investigation was largely based on a May 2016 conversation between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London.

Papadopolous reportedly said he heard that Russia had thousands of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The Inspector General released his report on December 9, 2019, concluding that the investigation was justified and done correctly, although some mistakes were made. 

Barr rejected key findings from the report, although he cannot order Horowitz to alter his report because the inspector general operates independently from the department.

President Trump called the report "a disgrace" and said he was waiting for a parallel report done by John Durham, the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut.

2020:

On August 17, 2020, Roger Stone dropped his appeal of seven felony convictions related to the House of Representatives investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. This came after Trump commuted Stone's 40-month prison term and $20,000 fine.

The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its final report on August 18, 2020. The report concluded that there were significant ties between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia. In particular, they noted that Paul Manafort had hired Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a "Russian intelligence officer," and that Kilimnik was possibly connected to the 2016 hack and leak operation.

The investigation was led by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) until Burr stepped aside for an unrelated investigation into allegedly illegal stock trades: Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) then led the committee.

Trump administration members:

Michael Flynn:
See also: Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019) § Michael Flynn

​In Decmber 2015, Michael Flynn was paid $45,000 by Russia Today, a Kremlin-supported television channel, for delivering a talk in Moscow, and Russia provided him a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip. As a retired military intelligence officer, Flynn was required to obtain prior permission from the Defense Department and the State Department before receiving any money from foreign governments; Flynn apparently did not seek that approval before the RT speech. 

Two months later, in February 2016 when he was applying for renewal of his security clearance, he stated he had received no income from foreign companies and had only "insubstantial contact" with foreign nationals. Glenn A. Fine, the acting Defense Department Inspector General, confirmed he was investigating Flynn.

On November 10, 2016, President Obama warned President-elect Trump against hiring Flynn. Trump appointed Flynn as National Security Advisor on November 18, 2016, but Flynn was forced to resign on February 13, 2017, after it was revealed that on December 29, 2016, the day Obama announced sanctions against Russia, Flynn discussed the sanctions by phone with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had earlier acknowledged speaking to Kislyak but denied discussing the sanctions.

On March 2, 2017, The New York Times reported that Flynn and Kushner met with Kislyak in December 2016 to establish a line of communication between the Trump administration and the Russian government. 

In May 2017, it was further reported that at that December meeting, Kushner and Flynn asked the Russians to set up a direct, encrypted communications channel with Moscow, so that Flynn could speak directly to Russian military officials about Syria and other matters without the knowledge of American intelligence agencies. Kislyak was hesitant to allow Americans access to Russia's secure communications network, and no such channel was actually set up.

On May 31, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee served Flynn with subpoenas for testimony and production of personal documents and business records. On September 13, The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn promoted a Russian-backed, multibillion-dollar Middle Eastern nuclear plant project while working in the White House.

The project involved building 40 nuclear reactors across the Middle East, with security provided by Rosoboron, a Russian state-owned arms exporter that is under American sanctions. On September 15, BuzzFeed reported that Flynn, Kushner, and Bannon secretly met with King Abdullah II of Jordan on January 5, 2017, to press for the nuclear power plant project.

On December 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was later pardoned by Trump.

Jared Kushner:

The special counsel investigated Kushner's finances, business activities, and meetings with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

In April 2017, it was reported that Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, on his application for top secret security clearance, failed to disclose numerous meetings with foreign officials, including Sergey Kislyak and Sergey Gorkov, the head of the Russian state-owned bank Vnesheconombank.

Kushner's lawyers called the omissions "an error". Vnesheconombank said the meeting was business-related, in connection with Kushner's management of Kushner Companies. The Trump administration said it was a diplomatic meeting.

According to U.S. officials, investigators believe that Kushner has important information regarding the FBI investigation. In mid-December 2016, when Trump "was openly feuding with American intelligence agencies", Kushner met for thirty minutes with Russian banker Sergey N. Gorkov, "whose financial institution was deeply intertwined with Russian intelligence" and is "under sanction by the United States".

By late May 2017, the meeting had "come under increasing scrutiny" by the Senate Intelligence Committee, as "current and former American officials" said "it may have been part of an effort by Mr. Kushner to establish a direct line to Mr. Putin outside established diplomatic channels."

Wilbur Ross:

As reported in the Paradise Papers, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has shares in Navigator, a publicly traded shipping company that has contracts with Russian gas company Sibur, held in off-shore accounts. Co-owners of Sibur have ties to Vladimir Putin and are under U.S. sanctions.

Anthony Scaramucci:

In July 2017, Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump campaign member who was appointed White House Communications Director, was involved in discussions about joint investments between his firm and a sanctioned Russian government fund. Scaramucci met with Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a $10 billion state investment firm under U.S. government sanctions.

Scaramucci confirmed the meeting took place, saying he had "long known" Dmitriev, and criticized American sanctions as ineffective. In June 2017, CNN published a story about an alleged congressional investigation into Scaramucci's relationship with the fund. The story was quickly retracted as "not solid enough to publish as-is", and resulted in the resignation of three CNN employees.

Jeff Sessions:
See also: Jeff Sessions § Controversies about Russia

​In March 2017, it was revealed that while still a U.S. Senator, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an early and prominent supporter of Trump's campaign, spoke twice with Russian ambassador Kislyak before the election – once in July 2016 and once in September 2016.

At his January 10 confirmation hearing to become Attorney General, he stated he was not aware of any contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, adding that he "did not have communications with the Russians."

On March 1, 2017, he stated his answer had not been misleading, clarifying that he had "never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign." 

On March 2, 2017, after meeting with senior career officials at the Justice Department, Sessions announced that he would recuse himself from any investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

In such investigations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has served as the Acting Attorney General. On January 23, 2018, The New York Times reported that Sessions had been interviewed by Mueller's team the previous week.

Rex Tillerson:

Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who was appointed Secretary of State by President Trump, had close ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin. He managed the Russia account of ExxonMobil, and was appointed Exxon CEO in 2006 largely on the strength of his Russian relationships.

In 2011, Tillerson struck a major deal with Russia and its state-owned oil company Rosneft, giving ExxonMobil access to oil resources in the Russian Arctic. In recognition, Tillerson was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship, Russia's highest decoration for foreign citizens. Tillerson has known Putin since his work in Russia during the 1990s, and according to John Hamre, "he has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger".

Trump campaign members:

Michael R. Caputo:

Republican public relations and media consultant Michael R. Caputo worked for Gazprom in Russia, and later as an adviser on the Trump campaign. Caputo lived in Russia from 1994 to 2000, employed by Gazprom-Media, and at the end of that period he contracted with Gazprom to do public relations work oriented toward raising Vladimir Putin's support level in the U.S. 

He returned to the U.S. where his former mentor Roger Stone convinced him to move to Miami Beach, Florida; there Caputo founded a media advising company. Caputo moved back to Europe in 2007 while advising a politician's campaign for parliament in Ukraine. Caputo worked as the campaign manager for Carl Paladino's 2010 run for Governor of New York state. 

Caputo was put in charge of the Trump campaign's communications for the New York state Republican primary from approximately November 2015 to April 2016, then left the campaign in the summer of 2016. In an inquiry by the House Intelligence Committee as part of their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Caputo denied having ties to the Russian government while working on the Trump campaign.

On June 18, 2018, Caputo admitted in a CNN interview that he told the Mueller investigation about his contacts with Henry Greenberg, a Russian claiming to have information about Hillary Clinton, in contrast to what he told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017. 

Caputo has since modified his testimony to the now closed House Intelligence Committee investigation to reflect his contact with Henry Greenberg.

Paul Manafort:
Further information: Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019) § Paul Manafort and Rick Gates
See also: Trials of Paul Manafort

On February 14, 2017, The New York Times reported that Paul Manafort had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016. Manafort said he did not knowingly meet any Russian intelligence officials. Intercepted communications during the campaign show that Russian officials believed they could use Manafort to influence Trump. 

On June 2, 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller assumed the criminal probe into Manafort, which predated the 2016 election and the counterintelligence probe that in July 2016 began investigating possible collusion between Moscow and associates of Trump. Manafort was forced to resign as Trump campaign chairman in August 2016 amid questions over his business dealings in Ukraine years earlier. 

On September 18, 2017, CNN reported that the FBI wiretapped Manafort from 2014 until an unspecified date in 2016 and again from the fall of 2016 until early 2017, pursuant to two separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders. It has not been confirmed that Trump's conversations with Manafort were intercepted as part of this surveillance. CNN also confirmed that "Mueller's team ... has been provided details of these communications."

In October 2017, Manafort was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on twelve criminal charges including conspiracy, money laundering, failure to register as an agent of a foreign power, and false statements. The charges arose from his consulting work for a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and are unrelated to the Trump campaign. 

Manafort pleaded not guilty and was placed under house arrest. On February 22, 2018, Manafort was indicted on 32 federal charges including tax evasion, money laundering and fraud relating to their foreign lobbying before, during and after the 2016 campaign. The following day, after Rick Gates pleaded guilty to some charges, he was indicted on two additional charges relating to pro-Russian lobbying in the United States.

On September 14, Manafort entered a plea deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy against the US and a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice, while also agreeing to co-operate with the Special Counsel investigation. Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that while supposedly co-operating Manafort had repeatedly lied about a variety of matters, breaching the terms of his plea agreement. 

​On December 7, 2018, the special counsel's office filed a document with the court listing five areas in which they say Manafort lied to them. In January 2019, Manafort's lawyers submitted a filing to the court in response to this accusation.

Through an error in redacting, the document accidentally revealed that while he was campaign chairman, Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is believed to be linked to Russian intelligence. The filing says Manafort gave him polling data related to the 2016 campaign and discussed a Ukrainian peace plan with him.

Rick Gates:

Rick Gates, a longtime business partner and protégé of Paul Manafort, was a senior member of the Trump campaign. He continued to work for Trump after Manafort's resignation and Trump's election as president, but in April 2017 was forced to resign from a pro-Trump lobbying group "amid new questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election".

Records reviewed by The New York Times showed that Gates held meetings in Moscow with associates of Oleg Deripaska, and "His name appears on documents linked to shell companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe." Gates worked with Manafort to promote Viktor Yanukovych and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine. Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska was the biggest investor in Davis Manafort, a lobbying and investment firm that employed Gates.

In October 2017, Gates was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on twelve criminal charges including conspiracy, money laundering, failure to register as an agent of a foreign power, and false statements. 

The charges arose from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government in Ukraine and are unrelated to the Trump campaign. Gates pleaded not guilty and was placed under house arrest. On February 22, 2018, Gates was indicted on 38 federal charges including tax evasion, money laundering and fraud relating to their foreign lobbying before, during and after the 2016 campaign. 

The following day, Gates pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and conspiracy to defraud the United States and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation. The second set of indictments were to stand pending Gates' cooperation and assistance in the Mueller investigation.

Carter Page:

In a March 2016 interview, Trump identified Carter Page, who had previously been an investment banker in Moscow, as a foreign policy adviser in his campaign. Page became a foreign policy adviser to Trump in the summer of 2016. During the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, Page's past contacts with Russians came to public attention. 

In 2013, Page met with Viktor Podobnyy, then a junior attaché at the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, at an energy conference, and provided him with documents on the U.S. energy industry. Page later said he provided only "basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents" to Podobnyy.

Podobnyy was later one of a group of three Russian men charged by U.S. authorities for participation in a Russian spy ring. Podobnyy and one of the other men were protected by diplomatic immunity from prosecution; a third man, who was spying for Russia under non-diplomatic cover, pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent and was sentenced to prison. 

The men had attempted to recruit Page to work for the SVR, a Russian intelligence service. The FBI interviewed Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and never accused Page of wrongdoing. 

Page has been the subject of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, the first in 2014, at least two years earlier than was indicated in the stories concerning his role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. 2017 news accounts about the warrant indicated it was granted because of Page's ties to Buryakov, Podobnyy, and the third Russian who attempted to recruit him, Igor Sporyshev.

Page was dropped from the Trump team after reports that he was under investigation by federal authorities. The FBI and the Justice Department obtained a FISA warrant to monitor Page's communications during October 2016, after they made the case that there was probable cause to think Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. Page told The Washington Post that he considered that to be "unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance." 

According to the Nunes memo, the 90-day warrant was renewed three times.
In February 2017, Page stated he had no meetings with Russian officials during 2016, but two days later did not deny meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Page's revised account occurred after news reports revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had likewise met with Kislyak.

In March 2017, Page was called on by the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russian government. On March 9, 2017, Hope Hicks, a Trump spokesperson, distanced the campaign from Page, stating that Page was an "informal foreign policy adviser" who did "not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign."

In September 2017, Page filed a defamation lawsuit against the media company Oath Inc. for its outlets' reporting of his alleged meetings with Russian officials. The suit was dismissed in March 2018 for lacking factual accusations of defamation. 

On February 11, 2021, Page lost a defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and HuffPost for their articles which described his activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. The judge said that Page admitted the articles about his potential contacts with Russian officials were essentially true.

In January 2021, an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was sentenced to probation for "making a false statement" by intentionally altering an internal FBI email in connection with a FISA request to continue government surveillance on former Trump campaign official Carter Page in 2016 and 2017.

George Papadopoulos:

​In March 2016, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign, sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line "Meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin", offering to set up "a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump". Trump campaign advisers Sam Clovis and Charles Kubic objected to this proposed meeting. 

In May 2016, Ivan Timofeev, an official for the Russian International Affairs Council, emailed Papadopoulos about setting up a meeting with Trump and Russian officials in Moscow. Papadopoulos forwarded the email to Paul Manafort, who responded, "We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips."

Papadopoulos was arrested in July 2017 and subsequently cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. In October 2017 he pleaded guilty to a single charge of making a false statement to FBI investigators. The guilty plea was part of a plea bargain in which he agreed to cooperate with the government and "provide information regarding any and all matters as to which the Government deems relevant."

Following this, on September 7, 2018, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison, 12 months supervised release, 200 hours of community service and was fined $9,500. He was later pardoned by Trump in December 2020.

Roger Stone:

Roger Stone, a former adviser to Donald Trump and self-proclaimed political "dirty trickster", said in March 2017 that during August 2016, he had been in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker persona who publicly claimed responsibility for at least one hack of the DNC, believed to be operated by Russian intelligence. 

In a 2019 filing, prosecutors claimed Stone communicated with Wikileaks, and sought details about the scope of information stolen from the Democratic Party. Just prior to the election, the Clinton campaign accused Stone of having prior knowledge of the hacks, after he wrote, "Trust me, it will soon be Podesta's time in the barrel" on Twitter shortly before Wikileaks released the Podesta emails. 

Stone claimed he was actually referring to reports of the Podesta Group's own ties to Russia. In his opening statement before the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on September 26, 2017, Stone reiterated this explanation: "Note that my tweet of August 21, 2016, makes no mention whatsoever of Mr. Podesta's email, but does accurately predict that the Podesta brothers' business activities in Russia ... would come under public scrutiny." 

Stone has reportedly stated privately to some Republican colleagues that he has communicated with Julian Assange on at least one occasion, although Stone and his two attorneys have since denied this. Instead, Stone has "clarified ... that the two have a mutual journalist friend", who Stone ultimately named as Randy Credico.

On January 25, 2019, Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida home in connection with Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements. He pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing in press interviews. 

Stone was convicted on all seven counts on November 15, 2019, and was due to be sentenced in February 2020. His sentence was later commuted by Trump.

Donald Trump Jr.:

In May 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met with Aleksandr Torshin and Maria Butina at an National Rifle Association-sponsored dinner. Both Torshin and Butina worked to broker a secret meeting between then-candidate Trump and Russian president Putin.

Main article: Trump campaign–Russian meeting:

On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after being promised information about Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. told The New York Times the meeting was about the Magnitsky Act. 

In emails proposing the meeting, publicist Rob Goldstone did not mention the Magnitsky Act and instead promised "documents and information that would incriminate Hillary" as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump", to which Donald Trump Jr. responded, "if it's what you say I love it."

On October 9, 2017, CNN reported that Scott S. Balber, formerly a lawyer for Donald Trump and now the billionaire Aras Agalarov's lawyer, obtained a memo from Veselnitskaya which showed that her focus at the meeting was repealing the Magnitsky Act sanctions, "not providing damaging information on Clinton". Subsequently, Foreign Policy published the full memo she took to the meeting.

Trump business partners:

Michael Cohen:

On May 30, 2017, as inquiries into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election expanded, both the House and Senate congressional panels asked President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who was one of Trump's closest confidants, to provide information and testimony about any communications he had with people connected to the Kremlin.

On May 31, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Cohen to testify and produce personal documents and business records.

Trump supporters:

Nigel Farage:

On June 1, 2017, The Guardian reported that Nigel Farage, former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party and one of the first non-American political figures to meet Trump following the election, was a person of interest in the FBI investigation, which Farage denied. Farage had previously met the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko, Roger Stone and Julian Assange, and The Guardian's source was quoted as saying, "If you triangulate Russia, WikiLeaks, Assange and Trump associates, the person who comes up with the most hits is Nigel Farage".

Andrei Nikolaev:

Andrei Nikolaev, son of Russian billionaire businessman Konstantin Nikolaev who financially supported foreign agent Maria Butina from 2012 to 2014, worked at the Trump Campaign headquarters and was in the Washington D.C. Trump International Hotel during Trump's inauguration in January 2017.

Erik Prince:

On April 3, 2017, The Washington Post reported that around January 11, 2017, nine days before Donald Trump's inauguration, Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security company, secretly met with an unidentified Russian who was close to Vladimir Putin, in the Seychelles.

The Trump administration said it was "not aware of any meetings" and said that Prince was not involved in the Trump transition. According to U.S., European, and Arab officials, the meeting was arranged by the United Arab Emirates and the purpose was to establish a back-channel link between Trump and Putin.

The UAE and Trump's associates reportedly tried to convince Russia to limit its support to Iran and Syria. Prince also appeared to have close ties to Trump's chief strategist, Stephen Bannon.

The Seychelles meeting took place after previous meetings in New York between Trump associates and officials from Russia and the Emirates, while official contacts between the Trump administration and Russian agents were coming under close scrutiny from the press and the U.S. intelligence community. U.S. officials said the FBI is investigating the Seychelles meeting; the FBI refused to comment.

Two intelligence officials confirmed to NBC News that the Seychelles meeting took place. One of them corroborated The Washington Post's account, but said it is not clear whether the initiative to arrange a meeting came from the UAE or Trump's associates and that no Trump transition people were directly involved. A second official said that the meeting was about "Middle East policy, to cover Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran", not Russia.

Prince's spokesperson said, "Erik had no role on the transition team, this is a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?" A senior Trump administration official called the story of a Trump-Putin back-channel "ridiculous".

The New York Times reported on May 19, 2018, that Donald Trump Jr. met with intermediary George Nader, Erik Prince, and Joel Zamel in Trump Tower on August 3, 2016. Nader reportedly told Trump Jr. the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE were eager to help his father win the election, and Zamel pitched a social media manipulation campaign.

Trump Jr. reportedly responded favorably and Nader subsequently had frequent meetings with Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner. The Times reported that Prince had arranged the August 2016 meeting; Prince had stated in his November 30, 2017, testimony to the House Intelligence Committee that he had no formal communications or contact, nor any unofficial role, with the Trump campaign.

FBI and congressional Intelligence Committee investigations:

FBI investigations began in late July 2016. In May 2017, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed as a special counsel in an expansion of the FBI's investigation. The Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee also conducted inquiries. 

In May 2017, Glenn A. Fine, the acting Defense Department Inspector General, confirmed he was investigating Michael Flynn for misleading Pentagon investigators about his income from companies in Russia and contacts with officials there when he applied for a renewal of his top-secret security clearance. 

In October 2017, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted and arrested. George Papadopoulos and Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation.

Papadopolous served a sentence. Flynn was pardoned by President Trump following the decision by the Department of Justice to drop the charges but Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed granting the dismissal.

After 22 months of investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report to the Justice Department on March 22, 2019. The investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities".

Media reports:

The New York Times reported on February 14, 2017, that phone records and communications intercepts showed that Trump associates—including members of the Trump campaign—had "repeated contacts" with senior Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign. Paul Manafort was the only Trump associate who was specifically identified as participating in these communications. 

In congressional testimony the following June, former FBI director James Comey, regarding the report by the New York Times, stated “in the main, it was not true”. The Times reported that during the intervening months, its sources continued to believe the reporting was "solid."

In July 2020, the Senate Judiciary Committee released notes taken contemporaneously with the Times report by FBI Counterintelligence Division chief Peter Strzok indicating his skepticism about the Times' reporting, writing, “We have not seen evidence of any officials associated with the Trump team in contact with [intelligence officers]" and "“We are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.” 

Despite this, the Times still stood by its account, claiming that the released notes did not provide a fully accurate representation of Strzok's knowledge. CNN reported on March 23, 2017, that the FBI was examining "human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings" indicating that Trump associates may have coordinated with "suspected Russian operatives" to release damaging information about the Hillary Clinton campaign. 

CNN reported on September 19, 2017, that Manafort had been a target of a FISA wiretap both before and after the 2016 election—beginning sometime after he became the subject of an FBI investigation in 2014—and extending into early 2017. Some of the intercepted communications raised concerns among investigators that Manafort had solicited assistance from Russians for the campaign, although the evidence was reportedly inconclusive. 

On April 30, 2018, The New York Times published a list of interview questions for Trump that the Mueller investigation had provided to the president's attorneys. Among the questions was "What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?"

Steele dossier:
Main article: Steele dossier

The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a largely unsubstantiated political opposition research report written from June to December 2016 containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and co-operation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign. 

The media, the intelligence community, and most experts have treated the dossier with caution due to its unverified allegations, while Trump denounced it as fake news.
Lawfare has noted that the "Mueller investigation has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier.

And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele's reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials."

CNN described Paul Manafort's role in its report of intercepted communications among "suspected Russian operatives discussing their efforts to work with Manafort ... to coordinate information that could damage Hillary Clinton's election prospects ... The suspected operatives relayed what they claimed were conversations with Manafort, encouraging help from the Russians." 

These reported intercepts are considered "remarkably consistent with the raw intelligence in the Steele Dossier ... [which] states that the 'well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership ... was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT'."

David A. Graham, staff writer at The Atlantic, has written: "It's no wonder Trump is upset about the dossier, but his mantra that 'there was no collusion [and] everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion' rings false these days.

While there's not yet any public evidence to indicate a crime was committed, or that Trump was involved, it is clear that the Trump campaign and later transition were eager to work with Russia, and to keep that secret."

See also:






​
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections:​Pictured below: CBS Poll from 2017 About Russian Interference in the 2016 Elections.
Russsian interference in the 2016 United States elections:

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States.

According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta—was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.

The Internet Research Agency (IRA), based in Saint Petersburg, Russia and described as a troll farm, created thousands of social media accounts that purported to be Americans supporting radical political groups and planned or promoted events in support of Trump and against Clinton. They reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017.

Fabricated articles and disinformation were spread from Russian government-controlled media, and promoted on social media. Additionally, computer hackers affiliated with the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) infiltrated information systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Clinton campaign officials, notably chairman John Podesta, and publicly released stolen files and emails through DCLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks during the election campaign.

Several individuals connected to Russia contacted various Trump campaign associates, offering business opportunities to the Trump Organization and proffering damaging information on Clinton.

Russian government officials have denied involvement in any of the hacks or leaks.
Russian interference activities triggered strong statements from United States intelligence agencies, a direct warning by then-U.S. President Barack Obama to Russian President Vladimir Putin, renewed economic sanctions against Russia, and closures of Russian diplomatic facilities and expulsion of their staff.

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees conducted their own investigations into the matter. Trump denied the interference had occurred, contending that it was a "hoax" perpetrated by the Democratic Party to explain Clinton's loss.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Russian interference in July 2016, including a special focus on links between Trump associates (see above) and Russian officials and suspected coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Russian attempts to interfere in the election were first disclosed publicly by members of the United States Congress in September 2016, confirmed by US intelligence agencies in October 2016, and further detailed by the Director of National Intelligence office in January 2017. The dismissal of James Comey, the FBI director, in May 2017, was partly because of Comey's investigation of the Russian interference.

The FBI's work was taken over in May 2017 by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who led a Special Counsel investigation until March 2019. Mueller concluded that Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he indicted twenty-six Russian citizens and three Russian organizations.

The investigation also led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans, on unrelated charges. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019 in which they concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed".

The first volume also concluded that the assessment was "proper", learning from analysts that there was "no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions". The final and fifth volume, which was the result of three years of investigations, was released in August 2020, ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries." 

The Committee report found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers.

In November 2020, newly released passages from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report indicated that "Although WikiLeaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone—a close associate to Donald Trump—appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators "did not have sufficient evidence" to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing."

Background and Russian actors:
See also: Anti-American sentiment in Russia, Cold War II, and Russia–United States relations § Obama's tenure (2009–2017)

Prior Russian election interference in Ukraine:

The May 2014 Ukrainian presidential election was disrupted by cyberattacks over several days, including the release of hacked emails, attempted alteration of vote tallies, and distributed denial-of-service attacks to delay the final result. They were found to have been launched by pro-Russian hackers.

Malware that would have displayed a graphic declaring far-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh the electoral winner was removed from Ukraine's Central Election Commission less than an hour before polls closed. Despite this, Channel One Russia falsely reported that Yarosh had won, fabricating a fake graphic from the election commission's website.

Political scientist Peter Ordeshook said in 2017, "These faked results were geared for a specific audience in order to feed the Russian narrative that has claimed from the start that ultra-nationalists and Nazis were behind the revolution in Ukraine." The same Sofacy malware used in the Central Election Commission hack was later found on the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). 

Around the same time as Russia's attempt to hack the 2014 elections, the Obama administration received a report suggesting that the Kremlin was building a disinformation program which could be used to interfere in Western politics.

Vladimir Putin:

​In December 2016, two senior intelligence officials told several U.S. news media outlets that they were highly confident that the operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election was personally directed by Vladimir Putin. 

Under Putin's direction, the goals of the operation evolved from first undermining American's trust in their democracy to undermining Clinton's campaign, and by the fall of 2016 to directly helping Trump's campaign, because Putin thought Trump would ease economic sanctions. Her presidential campaign's Russia policy advisor was Richard Lourie.

The officials believe Putin became personally involved after Russia accessed the DNC computers, because such an operation would require high-level government approval. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest and Obama foreign policy advisor and speechwriter Ben Rhodes agreed with this assessment, with Rhodes saying operations of this magnitude required Putin's consent.

In January 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, delivered a declassified report, (representing the work of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA) with a similar conclusion:

President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. 

Putin blamed Clinton for the 2011–2012 mass protests in Russia against his rule, according to the report  (Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State at the time). 

FBI Director James Comey also has testified that Putin disliked Clinton and preferred her opponent, and Clinton herself has accused Putin of having a grudge against her. Michael McFaul, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia, said the operation could be a retaliation by Putin against Clinton.

Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov has said, "[The Kremlin] believes that with Clinton in the White House it will be almost impossible to lift sanctions against Russia. So it is a very important question for Putin personally. This is a question of national security."

Russian officials have denied the allegations multiple times. In June 2016, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any connection of Russia to the DNC hacks. In December 2016, when U.S. intelligence officials publicly accused Putin of being directly involved in the covert operation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he was "astonished" by this "nonsense". 

Putin also has denied any Kremlin involvement in the election campaign, though in June 2017 he told journalists that "patriotically minded" Russian hackers may have been responsible for the campaign cyberattacks against the U.S., and in 2018 he stated that he had wanted Trump to win the election "because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal."

U.S. counter-disinformation team:

The United States Department of State planned to use a unit formed with the intention of combating disinformation from the Russian government, but it was disbanded in September 2015 after department heads missed the scope of propaganda before the 2016 U.S. election.

The unit had been in development for eight months prior to being scrapped. Titled the Counter-Disinformation Team, it would have been a reboot of the Active Measures Working Group set up by the Reagan Administration. It was created under the Bureau of International Information Programs. Work began in 2014, with the intention of countering propaganda from Russian sources such as TV network RT (formerly called Russia Today). 

A beta website was ready, and staff were hired by the U.S. State Department for the unit prior to its cancellation. U.S. Intelligence officials explained to former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer John R. Schindler writing in The New York Observer (published at the time by Jared Kushner) that the Obama Administration decided to cancel the unit, as they were afraid of antagonizing Russia. 

A State Department representative told the International Business Times after being contacted regarding the closure of the unit, that the U.S. was disturbed by propaganda from Russia, and the strongest defense was sincere communication. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel was the point person for the unit before it was canceled. 

Stengel had written in 2014 that RT was engaged in a disinformation campaign about Ukraine.

Russian Institute for Strategic Studies:
Further information: Russian Institute for Strategic Studies

​In April 2017, Reuters cited several unnamed U.S. officials as having stated that the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) had developed a strategy to sway the U.S. election to Donald Trump and, failing that, to disillusion voters. 

The development of strategy was allegedly ordered by Putin and directed by former officers of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), retired SVR general Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov being head of the RISS at the time. The Institute had been a part of the SVR until 2009, whereafter it has worked for the Russian Presidential Administration.

The U.S. officials said the propaganda efforts began in March 2016. The first set of recommendations, issued in June 2016, proposed that Russia support a candidate for U.S. president more favorable to Russia than Obama had been, via Russia-backed news outlets and a social media campaign.

It supported Trump until October, when another conclusion was made that Hillary Clinton was likely to win, and the strategy should be modified to work to undermine U.S. voters′ faith in their electoral system and a Clinton presidency by alleging voter fraud in the election. RISS director Mikhail Fradkov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations.

Preparation:

According to a February 2018 criminal indictment, more than two years before the election, two Russian women obtained visas for what the indictment alleged was a three-week reconnaissance tour of the United States, including battleground states such as Colorado, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico, to gather intelligence on American politics.

The 2018 indictment alleged that another Russian operative visited Atlanta in November 2014 on a similar mission. In order to establish American identities for individuals and groups within specific social media communities, hundreds of email, PayPal and bank accounts and fraudulent driver's licenses were created for fictitious Americans—and sometimes real Americans whose Social Security numbers had been stolen.

Social media and Internet trolls:
Further information: Internet Research Agency

According to the special counsel investigation's Mueller Report (officially named "Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election"), the first method of Russian interference used the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Kremlin-linked troll farm, to wage "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton". 

The Internet Research Agency also sought to "provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States".

By February 2016, internal IRA documents showed an order to support the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, while IRA members were to "use any opportunity to criticize" Hillary Clinton and the rest of the candidates. From June 2016, the IRA organized election rallies in the U.S. "often promoting"

​Trump's campaign while "opposing" Clinton's campaign. The IRA posed as Americans, hiding their Russian background, while asking Trump campaign members for campaign buttons, flyers, and posters for the rallies.

Russian use of social media to disseminate propaganda content was very broad. Facebook and Twitter were used, but also Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, YouTube, Vine, and Google+ (among other sites). Instagram was by far the most used platform, and one that largely remained out of the public eye until late 2018. 

The Mueller report lists IRA-created groups on Facebook including "purported conservative groups" (e.g. 'Tea Party News'), "purported Black social justice groups" (e.g. 'Blacktivist') "LGBTQ groups" ('LGBT United'), and "religious groups" ('United Muslims of America'). 

The IRA Twitter accounts included @TEN_GOP (claiming to be related to the Tennessee Republican Party), @jenn_abrams and @Pamela_Moore13; both claimed to be Trump supporters and both had 70,000 followers.
​
Several Trump campaign members (Donald J. Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale and Michael T. Flynn) linked or reposted material from the IRA's @TEN_GOP Twitter account listed above. Other people who responded to IRA social media accounts include Michael McFaul, Sean Hannity, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn Jr.

Advertisements bought by Russian operatives for the Facebook social media site are estimated to have 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.

The most strident Internet promoters of Trump were paid Russian propagandists/trolls, who were estimated by The Guardian to number several thousand. (By 2017 the U.S. news media was focusing on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter and Russian operatives moved on to Instagram.) 

The Mueller Report found the IRA spent $100,000 for more than 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements. In comparison, Clinton and Trump campaigns spent $81 million on Facebook ads.

Fabricated articles and disinformation:

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

Monitoring 7,000 pro-Trump social media accounts over a 2+1⁄2-year period, researchers J. M. Berger, Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts found the accounts denigrated critics of Russian activities in Syria and propagated falsehoods about Clinton's health. Watts found Russian propaganda to be aimed at fomenting "dissent or conspiracies against the U.S. government and its institutions", and by autumn of 2016 amplifying attacks on Clinton and support for Trump, via social media, Internet trolls, botnets, and websites.

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 sources. 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.

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. Criticized for failing to stop fake news from spreading on its platform during the 2016 election, 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.

According to an analysis by Buzzfeed, the "20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook." 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. 

The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, primarily focused on divisive social issues; roughly 25% were geographically targeted. Facebook has also turned over information about the Russian-related ad buys to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Approximately 3,000 adverts were involved, and these were viewed by between four and five million Facebook users prior to the election. 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. 

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" even "picked up by mainstream print media."

Cyberattack on Democrats:

​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".

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, they harvested tens of thousands of emails and attachments and deleted computer logs and files to obscure evidence of their activities. These were saved and released in stages to the public during the three months before the 2016 election. 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 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.

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.

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. (The Russians registered the domain dcleaks.com, using principally Bitcoin to pay for the domain and the hosting.)

Podesta hack:
Main article: Podesta emails

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 password "immediately" by clicking on a link. This allowed Russian hackers to access around 60,000 emails from Podesta's private account.

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."

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 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."

It initially released 2,050 of these. 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. 

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."

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.

DNC hack:
Main articles: 
The United States Intelligence Community concluded by January 2017 that the GRU (using the names 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, when they began leaking the stolen information via the Guccifer 2.0 online persona, DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks. 

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. 

​Emails leaked included personal information about Democratic Party donors, with credit card and Social Security number, emails by Wasserman Schultz calling a Sanders campaign official a "damn liar". 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.

Intelligence analysis of attack:

In June and July 2016, cybersecurity experts and firms, including the following, 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, also known respectively as APT28 and APT29 / The Dukes:
ThreatConnect also noted possible links between the DC Leaks project and Russian intelligence operations because of a similarity with Fancy Bear attack patterns.

SecureWorks added that the actor group was operating from Russia on behalf of the Russian government. 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. American, British, and Dutch intelligence services had also observed stolen DNC emails on Russian military intelligence networks.

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 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.

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 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."
​
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, extremely useful in targeting messages to "key constituencies" that Clinton needed to mobilize. These voters were later bombarded by Russian operatives with negative information about Clinton on social media.

WikiLeaks:

​In April 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said WikiLeaks was a 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.

WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange 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.

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".

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 Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country."

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". 

In earlier statements, an FBI official stated Russian attempts to access the RNC server were unsuccessful, or had reportedly told the RNC chair that their servers were secure, 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.) One state Republican Party (Illinois) may have had some of its email accounts hacked.

Civil DNC lawsuit against Russian Federation:
Main article: Democratic National Committee v. 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 defendants and Russia during the 2016 presidential election".

Calls by Trump for Russians to hack 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.

"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." — Donald J. Trump

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

The July 2018 federal indictment of Russian GRU agents said that the first 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. While no direct link with Trump's remark was alleged in the indictment, journalist Jane Mayer called the timing "striking".

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.

Targeting of important voting blocs and institutions:

In her analysis of the Russian influence on the 2016 election, Kathleen Hall 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.

​Attempts to suppress African American votes and spread alienation:

According to Vox, the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) focused on the culture of Muslims, Christians, Texas, and LGBTQ people, to engage those communities as part of a broader strategy to deepen social and political divisions within the U.S., but no other group received as much attention as Black Americans, whose voter turnout has been historically crucial to the election of Democrats.

Russia's influence campaign used an array of tactics aiming to reduce their vote for Hillary Clinton, according to a December 2018 report (The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency) commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A total 30 Facebook pages targeting Black Americans and 10 YouTube channels that posted 571 videos related to police violence against African-Americans. The covertly Russian Instagram account @blackstagram had more than 300,000 followers. 

A variety of Facebook pages targeting African Americans and later determined to be Russian amassed a total of 1.2 million individual followers, the report found. The Facebook page for (the Russian) Blacktivist, garnered more hits than Black Lives Matter's (non-Russian) Facebook page.

Influence operations included recruiting typically unknowing assets who would stage events and spread content from Russian influencers, spreading videos of police abuse and spreading misleading information about how to vote and whom to vote for. The attempt to target Black Americans has been compared to the KGB's attempt to foster racial tensions during Operation INFEKTION.

Arousing conservative voters:

At least 25 social media pages drawing 1.4 million followers were created by Russian agents to target the American political right and promote the Trump candidacy. An example of the targeting was the adding of Blue Lives Matter material to social media platforms by Russian operatives after the Black Lives Matter movement moved to the center of public attention in the America and sparked a pro-police reaction.

Jamieson noted there was reason to believe Donald Trump would under-perform among two normally dependable conservative Republican voting blocs—churchgoing Christians and military service members and their families.

It was thought pious Christians were put off by Trump's lifestyle as a Manhattan socialite, known for his three marriages and many affairs but not for any religious beliefs, who had boasted of groping women. 

Military personnel might lack enthusiasm for a candidate who avoided service in Vietnam but who described himself as a "brave soldier" in having to face his "personal Vietnam" of the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, and who mocked Gold Star parents and former prisoner of war John McCain.

To overcome Trump's possible poor reputation among evangelicals and veterans, Russian trolls created memes that exploited typical conservative social attitudes about people of color, Muslims, and immigrants. One such meme juxtaposed photographs of a homeless veteran and an undocumented immigrant, alluding to the belief that undocumented immigrants receive special treatment.

CNN exit polls showed that Trump led Clinton among veterans by 26 percentage points and won a higher percentage of the evangelical vote than either of the two previous Republican presidential nominees, indicating that this tactic may have succeeded.

Intrusions into state election systems:

A 2019 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found "an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure" by Russian intelligence in 2016. The activity occurred in "all 50 states" and is thought by "many officials and experts" to have been "a trial run ... to probe American defenses and identify weaknesses in the vast back-end apparatus—voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, electronic poll books and other equipment" of state election systems. The report warned that the United States "remains vulnerable" in the 2020 election.

Of "particular concern" to the committee report was the Russians' hacking of three companies "that provide states with the back-end systems that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters' identities and registration status."

Intrusions into state voter-registration systems:

During the summer and fall of 2016, Russian hackers intruded into voter databases and software systems in 39 different states, alarming Obama administration officials to the point that they took the unprecedented step of contacting Moscow directly via the Moscow–Washington hotline and warning that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.

As early as June 2016, the FBI sent a warning to states about "bad actors" probing state-elections systems to seek vulnerabilities. In September 2016, FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI was investigating Russian hackers attempting to disrupt the 2016 election and that federal investigators had detected hacker-related activities in state voter-registration databases, which independent assessments determined were soft targets for hackers. 

Comey stated there were multiple attempts to hack voter database registrations. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper attributed Russian hacking attempts to Vladimir Putin.

In August 2016, the FBI issued a nationwide "flash alert" warning state election officials about hacking attempts. In September 2016, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials and the National Association of Secretaries of State announced that hackers had penetrated, or sought to penetrate, the voter-registration systems in more than 20 states over the previous few months. 

Federal investigators attributed these attempts to Russian government-sponsored hackers, and specifically to Russian intelligence agencies. Four of the intrusions into voter registration databases were successful, including intrusions into the Illinois and Arizona databases. Although the hackers did not appear to change or manipulate data,

Illinois officials said information on up to 200,000 registered voters was stolen. The FBI and DHS increased their election-security coordination efforts with state officials as a result. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson reported that 18 states had requested voting-system security assistance from DHS. The department also offered risk assessments to the states, but just four states expressed interest, as the election was rapidly approaching. 

The reports of the database intrusions prompted alarm from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, who wrote to the FBI saying foreign attempts to cast doubt on free and fair elections was a danger to democracy not seen since the Cold War.

September 22, 2017, federal authorities notified the election officials of 21 states that their election systems had been targeted. "In most cases, states said they were told the systems were not breached." Over a year after the initial warnings, this was the first official confirmation many state governments received that their states specifically had been targeted. 

Moreover, top elections officials of the states of Wisconsin and California have denied the federal claim. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said, "California voters can further rest assured that the California Secretary of State elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors ... Our notification from DHS last Friday was not only a year late, it also turned out to be bad information."

In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its interim report on election security. The committee concluded, on a bipartisan basis, that the response of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Russian government-sponsored efforts to undermine confidence in the U.S. voting process was "inadequate".

The committee reported that the Russian government was able to penetrate election systems in at least 18, and possibly up to 21, states, and that in a smaller subset of states, infiltrators "could have altered or deleted voter registration data," although they lacked the ability to manipulate individual votes or vote tallies. The committee wrote that the infiltrators' failure to exploit vulnerabilities in election systems could have been because they "decided against taking action" or because "they were merely gathering information and testing capabilities for a future attack". 

To prevent future infiltrations, the committee made a number of recommendations, including that "at a minimum, any machine purchased going forward should have a voter-verified paper trail and no WiFi capability".
​
Investigation into financial flows:

By January 2017, a multi-agency investigation, conducted by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Justice Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the DNI, was underway looking into how the Russian government may have secretly financed efforts to help Trump win the election had been conducted over several months by six federal agencies. 

Investigations into Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were underway on January 19, the eve of the presidential inauguration.

Money funneled through the NRA:

By January 2018, the FBI was investigating the possible funneling of illegal money by Aleksandr Torshin, a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, through the National Rifle Association, which was then used to help Donald Trump win the presidency. 

Torshin is known to have close connections both to Russia's president Vladimir Putin and to the NRA, and he has been charged with money laundering in other countries.

The NRA reported spending $30 million to support the 2016 Trump campaign, three times what it spent on Mitt Romney in 2012, and spent more than any other independent group including the leading Trump superPAC. Sources with connections to the NRA have stated that the actual amount spent was much higher than $30 million. The subunits within the organization which made the donations are not generally required to disclose their donors.

Spanish special prosecutor José Grinda Gonzalez has said that in early 2018 the Spanish police gave wiretapped audio to the FBI of telephone discussions between Torshin, and convicted money launderer and mafia boss Alexander Romanov. Torshin met with Donald Trump Jr. at an NRA event in May 2016 while attempting to broker a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Maria Butina, a Russian anti-gun control activist who has served as a special assistant to Torshin and came to the U.S. on a student visa to attend university classes in Washington, claimed both before and after the election that she was part of the Trump campaign's communications with Russia. Like Torshin, she cultivated a close relationship with the NRA. 

In February 2016, Butina started a consulting business called Bridges LLC with Republican political operative Paul Erickson. During Trump's presidential campaign Erickson contacted Rick Dearborn, one of Trump's advisors, writing in an email that he had close ties both to the NRA and to Russia, and asking how a back-channel meeting between Trump and Putin could be set up.

The email was later turned over to federal investigators as part of the inquiry into Russia's meddling in the presidential election. On July 15, 2018, Butina was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered Russian agent who had attempted to create a backchannel of communications between American Republicans/conservatives and Russian officials by infiltrating the National Rifle Association, the National Prayer Breakfast, and conservative religious organizations.

Money from Russian oligarchs:

As of April 2018, Mueller's investigators were examining whether Russian oligarchs directly or indirectly provided illegal cash donations to the Trump campaign and inauguration.

Investigators were examining whether oligarchs invested in American companies or think tanks having political action committees connected to the campaign, as well as money funneled through American straw donors to the Trump campaign and inaugural fund. At least one oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, was detained and his electronic devices searched as he arrived at a New York area airport on his private jet in early 2018. 

Vekselberg was questioned about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made to Michael Cohen after the election, through Columbus Nova, the American affiliate of Vekselberg's Renova Group. Another oligarch was also detained on a recent trip to the United States, but it is unclear if he was searched. Investigators have also asked a third oligarch who has not traveled to the United States to voluntarily provide documents and an interview.

Intelligence analysis and reports:

Non-U.S. intelligence:

In part because U.S. agencies cannot surveil U.S. citizens without a warrant, the U.S. was slow to recognize the pattern of Russia's efforts. From late 2015 until the summer of 2016, during routine surveillance of Russians, several countries discovered interactions between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

The UK, Germany, Estonia, Poland, and Australia (and possibly the Netherlands and France) relayed their discoveries to the U.S.

Because the materials were highly sensitive, GCHQ director Robert Hannigan contacted CIA director John O. Brennan directly to give him information. Concerned, Brennan gave classified briefings to U.S. Congress' "Gang of Eight" during late August and September 2016. 

Referring only to intelligence allies and not to specific sources, Brennan told the Gang of Eight he had received evidence that Russia might be trying to help Trump win the U.S. election. It was later revealed that the CIA had obtained intelligence from "sources inside the Russian government" that stated that Putin gave direct orders to disparage Clinton and help Trump.

​On May 23, 2017, Brennan stated to the House Intelligence Committee that Russia "brazenly interfered" in the 2016 U.S. elections. He said he first picked up on Russia's active meddling "last summer", and that he had on August 4, 2016, warned his counterpart at Russia's FSB intelligence agency, Alexander Bortnikov, against further interference.

The first public U.S. government assertion of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election came in a joint statement on September 22, 2016, by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively.

October 2016 ODNI / DHS joint statement:
​
At the Aspen security conference in summer 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Vladimir Putin wanted to retaliate against perceived U.S. intervention in Russian affairs with the 2011–13 Russian protests and the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych in the Revolution of Dignity. 

July 2016, consensus grew within the CIA that Russia had hacked the DNC. In a joint statement on October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressed confidence that Russia had interfered in the presidential election by stealing emails from politicians and U.S. groups and publicizing the information. 

Intelligence sources told CNN they had gained confidence that Russia's efforts were aimed at helping Trump win the election.

On October 7, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of hacking the DNC's computer networks to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with the help of organizations like WikiLeaks.

The Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security claimed in their joint statement, "The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts." 

This was corroborated by a report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in conjunction with the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA on January 6, 2017.

December 2016 CIA report:

On December 9, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community had concluded, in a consensus view, that Russia conducted operations to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency, stating that "individuals with connections to the Russian government", previously known to the intelligence community, had given WikiLeaks hacked emails from the DNC and John Podesta. 

The agencies further stated that Russia had hacked the RNC as well, but did not leak information obtained from there. These assessments were based on evidence obtained before the election.

FBI inquiries:

FBI has been investigating the Russian government's attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election—including whether campaign associates of Donald Trump's were involved in Russia's efforts—since July 31, 2016.

Following the July 22 publication of a large number of emails by WikiLeaks, the FBI announced that it would investigate the theft of DNC emails.

An earlier event investigated by the FBI was a May 2016 meeting between the Donald Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, and Alexander Downer in a London wine bar, where Papadopoulos disclosed his inside knowledge of a large trove of Hillary Clinton emails that could potentially damage her campaign.

Papadopoulos had gained this knowledge on March 14, 2016, when he held a meeting with Joseph Mifsud, who told Papadopoulos the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of thousands of stolen emails. This occurred before the hacking of the DNC computers had become public knowledge, and Papadopoulos later bragged "that the Trump campaign was aware the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton". 

In February 2019, Michael Cohen implicated Trump before the U.S. Congress, writing that Trump had knowledge that Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about releasing emails stolen from the DNC in 2016.

John Podesta later testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that in April 2016, the DNC did not know their computers had been hacked, leading Adam Schiff to state: "So if the campaign wasn't aware in April that the hacking had even occurred, the first campaign to be notified the Russians were in possession of stolen emails would have been the Trump campaign through Mr. Papadopoulos."

In June 2016, the FBI notified the Illinois Republican Party that some of its email accounts may have been hacked. In December 2016, an FBI official stated that Russian attempts to access the RNC server were unsuccessful. 

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, RNC chair Reince Priebus stated they communicated with the FBI when they learned about the DNC hacks, and a review determined their servers were secure. 

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".

On October 31, 2016, The New York Times said the FBI had been examining possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but did not find any clear links. At the time, FBI officials thought Russia was motivated to undermine confidence in the U.S. political process rather than specifically support Trump. 

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing in early December, the CIA said it was certain of Russia's intent to help Trump. On December 16, 2016, CIA Director John O. Brennan sent a message to his staff saying he had spoken with FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and that all agreed with the CIA's conclusion that Russia interfered in the presidential election with the motive of supporting Donald Trump's candidacy.

On December 29, 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an unclassified report that gave new technical details regarding methods used by Russian intelligence services for affecting the U.S. election, government, political organizations and private sector.

The report included malware samples and other technical details as evidence that the Russian government had hacked the Democratic National Committee. Alongside the report, DHS published Internet Protocol addresses, malware, and files used by Russian hackers. 

An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung discussed the difficulty of proof in matters of cybersecurity. One analyst told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that U.S. intelligence services could be keeping some information secret to protect their sources and analysis methods. Clapper later said the classified version contained "a lot of the substantiation that could not be put in the [public] report".

On March 20, 2017, during public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into Russian interference and Russian links to the Trump campaign, including the question of whether there had been any coordination between the campaign and the Russians. 

He said the investigation began in July 2016. Comey made the unusual decision to reveal the ongoing investigation to Congress, citing benefit to the public good. 

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 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.

The statement also noted that the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia to influence public opinion there. On December 29, 2016, DHS and FBI released a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) which further expands on that statement by providing details of the tools and infrastructure used by Russian intelligence services to compromise and exploit networks and infrastructure associated with the recent U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities.

January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment:

On January 6, 2017, after briefing the president, the president-elect, and members of the Senate and House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a de-classified version of the report on Russian activities. 

The intelligence community assessment (ICA), produced by the CIA, the FBI, the NSA​, and the ODNI, asserted that Russia had carried out a massive cyber operation ordered by Russian President Putin with the goal to sabotage the 2016 U.S. elections. 

The agencies concluded that Putin and the Russian government tried to help Trump win the election by discrediting Hillary Clinton and portraying her negatively relative to Trump, and that Russia had conducted a multipronged cyber campaign consisting of hacking and the extensive use of social media and trolls, as well as open propaganda on Russian-controlled news platforms.

The ICA contained no information about how the data was collected and provided no evidence underlying its conclusions. Clapper said the classified version contained substantiation that could not be made public. A large part of the ICA was dedicated to criticizing Russian TV channel RT America, which it described as a "messaging tool" for a "Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the U.S. Government and fuel political protest."

​On March 5, 2017, James Clapper said, in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that the January 2017 ICA did not have evidence of collusion, but that it might have become available after he left the government. He agreed with Todd that the "idea of collusion" was not proven at that time. 

On May 14, 2017, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Clapper explained more about the state of evidence for or against any collusion at the time of the January IC assessment, saying "there was no evidence of any collusion included in that report, that's not to say there wasn't evidence". He also stated he was also unaware of the existence of the formal investigation at that time. 

​In November 2017, Clapper explained that at the time of the Stephanopoulos interview, he did not know about the efforts of George Papadopoulos to set up meetings between Trump associates and Kremlin officials, nor about the meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer.

In June 2017, E. W. Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, told the PBS Newshour program that Russian intelligence "used fake news and propaganda and they also used online amplifiers to spread the information to as many people as possible" during the election.

James Comey testimony:
​
In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, former FBI Director James Comey said he had "no doubt" Russia interfered in the 2016 election and that the interference was a hostile act. 

Concerning the motives of his dismissal, Comey said, "I take the president at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. Something about the way I was conducting it, the president felt, created pressure on him he wanted to relieve." He also said that, while he was director, Trump was not under investigation.

U.S. government response:

At least 17 distinct investigations were started to examine aspects of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

U.S. Senate:

Members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee traveled to Ukraine and Poland in 2016 and learned about Russian operations to influence their elections. Senator McCain called for a special select committee of the U.S. Senate to investigate Russian meddling in the election, and called election meddling an "act of war".

The Senate Intelligence Committee began work on its bipartisan inquiry in January 2017. In May, the committee voted unanimously to give both Chairmen solo subpoena power.

Soon after, the committee issued a subpoena to the Trump campaign for all Russia-related documents, emails, and telephone records.

In December, it was also looking at the presidential campaign of Green Party's Jill Stein for potential "collusion with the Russians".

In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the interim findings of their bipartisan investigation, finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump gain the presidency, stating: "Our staff concluded that the [intelligence community's] conclusions were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton."

On January 10, 2018, Senator Ben Cardin of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee released, "Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security." The report said the interference in the 2016 United States elections was a part of Putin's "asymmetric assault on democracy" worldwide, including targeting elections in a number of countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, by "Moscow-sponsored hacking, internet trolling and financing for extremist political groups".

2018 committee reports:

The Senate Intelligence Committee commissioned two reports that extensively described the Russian campaign to influence social media during the 2016 election.

One report (The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency) was produced by the New Knowledge cybersecurity company aided by researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. 

Another (The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018) by the Computational Propaganda Project of Oxford University along with the social media analysis company Graphika The New Knowledge report highlighted "the energy and imagination" of the Russian effort to "sway American opinion and divide the country", and their focus on African-Americans. 

The report identified more than 263 million "engagements" (likes, comments, shares, etc.) with Internet Research Agency content and faulted U.S. social media companies for allowing their platforms to be co-opted for foreign propaganda". 

Examples of efforts included "campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016", "encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational", and "spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum."

2020 committee report:
Main article: Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election

On April 21, 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a unanimous, heavily redacted report reviewing the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian interference. The committee felt that the assessment brought a "coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election", specifically that the interference was unprecedented in its "manner and aggressiveness". 

The Senate committee heard "specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump", and that Putin "approved and directed" the interference.

The committee praised the assessment as an "impressive accomplishment", noting that the assessment "reflects proper analytic tradecraft" despite a limited timeframe. The committee also stated that "interviews with those who drafted and prepared the ICA affirmed that analysts were under no political pressure to reach specific conclusions." 

A disagreement between the CIA and the NSA of the agencies' confidence level of Russia's preference for Trump "was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated among the agencies and analysts." Additionally, the committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments".

On August 17, 2020, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume of their 996-page report, ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries." The Committee report, which was based on three years of investigations, found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some members of Trump's own advisers. 

Volume 5 said the Trump administration had used "novel claims" of executive privilege to obstruct the inquiry. The report said that Trump's 2016 campaign staff were eager to accept Russia's help, however after the release of the report, acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Marco Rubio issued a statement stating the committee "found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."

U.S. House of Representatives:

After bipartisan calls to action in December 2016, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence launched an investigation in January 2017 about Russian election meddling, including possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee launched its own parallel probe in January as well. 

Fifteen months later, in April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee's Republican majority released its final report, amid harsh criticism from Democratic members of the committee. The report found "no evidence" of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

On February 24, 2017, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa called for a special prosecutor to investigate whether Russia meddled with the U.S. election and was in contact with Trump's team during the presidential campaign, saying it would be improper for Trump's appointee, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to lead the investigation. 

In March 2017, Democratic ranking committee member Adam Schiff said there was sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation, and claimed to have seen "more than circumstantial evidence" of collusion.

On April 6, 2017, Republican committee chairman Devin Nunes temporarily recused himself from the investigation after the House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate accusations that he had disclosed classified information without authorization. He was replaced by Representative Mike Conaway. Nunes was cleared of wrongdoing on December 8, 2017

The committee's probe was shut down on March 12, 2018, acknowledging that Russians interfered in the 2016 elections through an active measures campaign promoting propaganda and fake news, but rejecting the conclusion of intelligence agencies that Russia had favored Trump in the election (although some Republican committee members distanced themselves from this assertion). 

The committee's report did not find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government's efforts; Conaway said they had uncovered only "perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings".
​
Democrats on the committee objected to the Republicans' closure of the investigation and their refusal to press key witnesses for further testimony or documentation which might have further established complicity of the Trump campaign with Russia. 

Schiff issued a 21-page "status report" outlining plans to continue the investigation, including a list of additional witnesses to interview and documents to request.

Obama administration
​
​U.S. President Obama and Vladimir Putin had a discussion about computer security issues in September 2016, which took place over the course of an hour and a half. During the discussion, which took place as a side segment during the then-ongoing G20 summit in China, Obama made his views known on cyber security matters between the U.S. and Russia. 

Obama said Russian hacking stopped after his warning to Putin. One month after that discussion the email leaks from the DNC cyber attack had not ceased, and President Obama decided to contact Putin via the Moscow–Washington hotline, commonly known as the red phone, on October 31, 2016. Obama emphasized the gravity of the situation by telling Putin: "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace."

On December 9, 2016, Obama ordered the U.S. Intelligence Community to investigate Russian interference in the election and report before he left office on January 20, 2017.

U.S. Homeland Security Advisor and chief counterterrorism advisor to the president Lisa Monaco announced the study, and said foreign intrusion into a U.S. election was unprecedented and would necessitate investigation by subsequent administrations. 

​The intelligence analysis would cover malicious cyberwarfare occurring between the 2008 and 2016 elections. A senior administration official said the White House was confident Russia interfered in the election. The official said the order by President Obama would be a lessons learned report, with options including sanctions and covert cyber response against Russia.

On December 12, 2016, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was critical of Trump's rejection of the conclusions of the U.S. Intelligence Community that Russia used cyberattacks to influence the election. United States Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on December 15, 2016, about President Obama's decision to approve the October 2016 joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Obama said the U.S. government would respond to Russia via overt and covert methods, in order to send an unambiguous symbol to the world that any such interference would have harsh consequences in a December 15, 2016, interview by NPR journalist Steve Inskeep. He added that a motive behind the Russian operation could better be determined after completion of the intelligence report he ordered. 

Obama emphasized that Russian efforts caused more harm to Clinton than to Trump during the campaign. At a press conference the following day, he highlighted his September 2016 admonition to Putin to cease engaging in cyberwarfare against the U.S. Obama explained that the U.S. did not publicly reciprocate against Russia's actions due to a fear such choices would appear partisan. President Obama stressed cyber warfare against the U.S. should be a bipartisan issue.

In the last days of the Obama administration, officials pushed as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses and attempted to keep reports at relatively low classification levels as part of an effort to widen their visibility across the federal government. The information was filed in many locations within federal agencies as a precaution against future concealment or destruction of evidence in the event of any investigation.

Punitive measures imposed on Russia:
See also: Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, International sanctions during the Ukrainian crisis, and Magnitsky Act

On December 29, 2016, the U.S. government announced a series of punitive measures against Russia. The Obama administration imposed sanctions on four top officials of the GRU and declared persona non grata 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying; they were ordered to leave the country within 72 hours.

On December 30, two waterfront compounds used as retreats by families of Russian embassy personnel were shut down on orders of the U.S. government, citing spying activities: one in Upper Brookville, New York, on Long Island, and the other in Centreville, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. 

Further sanctions against Russia were undertaken, both overt and covert. A White House statement said that cyberwarfare by Russia was geared to undermine U.S. trust in democracy and impact the election. President Obama said his decision was taken after previous warnings to Russia. In mid-July 2017, the Russian foreign ministry said the U.S. was refusing to issue visas to Russian diplomats to allow Moscow to replace the expelled personnel and get its embassy back up to full strength.

Initially Putin refrained from retaliatory measures to the December 29 sanctions and invited all the children of the U.S. diplomats accredited in Russia to New Year's and Christmas celebrations at the Kremlin. He also said that steps for restoring Russian-American relations would be built on the basis of the policies developed by the Trump administration.

Later in May 2017, Russian banker Andrey Kostin, an associate of President Vladimir Putin, accused "the Washington elite" of purposefully disrupting the presidency of Donald Trump.

Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act:
Main article: Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act

​In June 2017, the Senate voted 98 to 2 for a bill that had been initially drafted in January by a bipartisan group of senators over Russia's continued involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Syria and its meddling in the 2016 election that envisaged sanctions on Russia as well as Iran, and North Korea; the bill would expand the punitive measures previously imposed by executive orders and convert them into law. An identical bill, introduced by Democrats in the House in July, passed 419 to 3.

The law forbids the president from lifting earlier sanctions without first consulting Congress, giving them time to reverse such a move. It targets Russia's defense industry by harming Russia's ability to export weapons, and allows the U.S. to sanction international companies that work to develop Russian energy resources. The proposed sanctions also caused harsh criticism and threats of retaliatory measure on the part of the European Union, Germany and France. 

On January 29, 2018, the Trump administration notified Congress that it would not impose additional sanctions on Russia under 2017 legislation designed to punish Moscow's meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. The administration insisted that the mere threat of the sanctions outlined in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act would serve as a deterrent, and that implementing the sanctions would therefore be unnecessary.

Counter-sanctions by Russia:

On July 27, as the sanctions bill was being passed by the Senate, Putin pledged a response to "this kind of insolence towards our country". Shortly thereafter, Russia's foreign ministry Sergey Lavrov demanded that the U.S. reduce its diplomatic and technical personnel in the Moscow embassy and its consulates in St Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and Vladivostok to 455 persons—the same as the number of Russian diplomats posted in the U.S, and suspended the use of a retreat compound and a storage facility in Moscow. 

Putin said he had made this decision personally, and confirmed that 755 employees of the U.S. diplomatic mission must leave Russia.

Impact on election result:

As of October 2018, the question of whether Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Russian interference had not been given much focus—being declared impossible to determine, or ignored in favor of other factors that led to Trump's victory.

Joel Benenson, the Clinton campaign's pollster, said we probably will never know, while Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said "we cannot calculate the impact that foreign meddling and social media had on this election". Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the NSA, believes that although the Russian attacks were "the most successful covert influence operation in history," what impact they had is "not just unknown, it's unknowable." 

Statistician Nate Silver, writing in February 2018, described himself as "fairly agnostic" on the question, but notes "thematically, the Russian interference tactics were consistent with the reasons Clinton lost."

Clinton supporters have been more likely to blame her defeat on campaign mistakes, Comey's reopening of the criminal investigation into her emails, or to direct attention to whether Trump colluded with Russia. In their book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, reporters Jonathan J.M. Allen and Amie Parnes report that Robby Mook and John Podesta decided to emphasize right after the election that Russian hacking, rather than the email scandal or campaign mistakes, was the unreported story of the campaign and the real reason for the defeat.

Several high-level Republicans believe Russian interference did not determine the election's outcome, including those who would have benefited from Russia's efforts. President Trump has asserted that "the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever", and Vice President Pence has claimed "it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said "the intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election". 

In fact, the official intelligence assessment of January 2017 did not evaluate whether Russian activities had any impact on the election's outcome, and CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said Pompeo's remark was erroneous. Paul Ryan also claimed it is "clear" that the Russian interference "didn't have a material effect on our elections."

On the other hand, a number of former intelligence and law enforcement officials, at least one political scientist and one former U.S. president argue that Russian interference was decisive because of the sophistication of the Russian propaganda on social media, the hacking of Democratic Party emails and the timing of their public release, the small shift in voter support needed to achieve victory in the electoral college, and the relatively high number of undecided voters (who may be more readily influenced). 

James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, told Jane Mayer, "it stretches credulity to think the Russians didn't turn the election ... I think the Russians had more to do with making Clinton lose than Trump did." Ex-FBI agent, Clint Watts, writes that "without the Russian influence ... I believe Trump would not have even been within striking distance of Clinton on Election Day." 

Former president Jimmy Carter has publicly said he believes Trump would not have gotten elected without the Russian interference. Carter believes "that Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf." When questioned, he agreed that Trump is an "illegitimate president".

Three states where Trump won by very close margins—margins significantly less than the number of votes cast for third-party candidates in those states—gave him an electoral college majority. Mayer writes that if only 12% of these third-party voters "were persuaded by Russian propaganda—based on hacked Clinton-campaign analytics—not to vote for Clinton", this would have been enough to win the election for Trump. 

Political scientist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, in a detailed forensic analysis concludes that Russian trolls and hackers persuaded enough Americans "to either vote a certain way or not vote at all", thus impacting election results. 

Specifically, Jamieson argues that two events that caused a drop in intention to vote for Clinton reported to pollsters can be traced to Russian work: the publicizing of excerpts of speeches by Clinton made to investment banks for high fees stolen from campaign emails during the presidential debates, and the effect of Russian disinformation on FBI head Comey's public denunciation of Clinton's actions as "extremely careless" (see above).

2017 developments:
Further information: 
Dismissal of FBI Director James Comey:
Main article: Dismissal of James Comey

On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed Comey, attributing his action to recommendations from United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump had been talking to aides about firing Comey for at least a week before acting, and had asked Justice Department officials to come up with a rationale for dismissing him. 

After he learned that Trump was about to fire Comey, Rosenstein submitted to Trump a memo critical of Comey's conduct in the investigation about Hillary Clinton's emails. Trump later confirmed that he had intended to fire Comey regardless of any Justice Department recommendation. 

Trump himself also tied the firing to the Russia investigation in a televised interview, stating, "When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'"

The dismissal came as a surprise to Comey and most of Washington, and was described as immediately controversial and having "vast political ramifications" because of the Bureau's ongoing investigation into Russian activities in the 2016 election. It was compared to the Saturday Night Massacre, President Richard Nixon's termination of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had been investigating the Watergate scandal, and to the dismissal of Sally Yates in January 2017. 

Comey himself stated "It's my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted."

During a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on May 10, 2017, in the Oval Office, Trump told the Russian officials that firing the F.B.I. director, James Comey, had relieved "great pressure" on him, according to a White House document. Trump stated, "I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job ... I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off." In 2019, The Washington Post revealed that Trump also told Lavrov and Kislyak during this meeting that he wasn't concerned about Russia interfering in American elections.

Investigation by special counsel:
Main article: Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019)

​On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to direct FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors investigating election interference by Russia and related matters. 

As special counsel, Mueller has the power to issue subpoenas, hire staff members, request funding, and prosecute federal crimes in connection with his investigation.

Mueller assembled a legal team. Trump engaged several attorneys to represent and advise him, including his longtime personal attorney Marc Kasowitz as well as Jay Sekulow, Michael Bowe, and John M. Dowd. All but Sekulow have since resigned. In August 2017 Mueller was using a grand jury.

2017 charges:

In October 2017 Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier in the month to making a false statement to FBI investigators about his connections to Russia. 

In the first guilty plea of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, George Papadopoulos admitted lying to the FBI about contact with Russian agents who offered the campaign "thousands" of damaging emails about Clinton months before then candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to "find" Hillary Clinton's missing emails.

His plea agreement said a Russian operative had told a campaign aide "the Russians had emails of Clinton". Papadopoulos agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of the plea bargain.

Later that month, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort surrendered to the FBI after being indicted on multiple charges. His business associate Rick Gates was also indicted and surrendered to the FBI. The pair were indicted on one count of conspiracy against the United States, one count of conspiracy to launder money, one count of being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, one count of making false and misleading FARA statements, and one count of making false statements.

Manafort was charged with four counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts while Gates was charged with three. All charges arise from their consulting work for a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and are unrelated to the campaign. It was widely believed that the charges against Manafort are intended to pressure him into becoming a cooperating witness about Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

In February 2018, Gates pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges and agreed to testify against Manafort. 

In April 2018, when Manafort's lawyers filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained during the July 26 raid on Manafort's home, the warrants for the search were revealed and indicated that, in addition to seeking evidence related to Manafort's work in Ukraine, Mueller's investigation also concerned Manafort's actions during the Trump campaign including the meeting with a Russian lawyer and a counterintelligence officer at the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016.

In March 2018 the investigation revealed that the prosecutors have established links between Rick Gates and an individual with ties to Russian intelligence which occurred while Gates worked on Trump's campaign. A report filed by prosecutors, concerning the sentencing of Gates and Manafort associate Alex van der Zwaan who lied to Mueller's investigators, alleges that Gates knew the individual he was in contact with had these connections.

2018 developments:
Further information: 
2018 indictments:

On February 16, 2018, a Federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, and fraud with identification documents, in connection with the 2016 United States national elections. 

The 37-page indictment cites the illegal use of social media "to sow political discord, including actions that supported the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and disparaged his opponent, Hillary Clinton." 

On the same day, Robert Mueller announced that Richard Pinedo had pleaded guilty to using the identities of other people in connection with unlawful activity.

​Lawyers representing Concord Management and Consulting appeared on May 9, 2018, in federal court in Washington, to plead not guilty to the charges. The prosecutors subsequently withdrew the charges

​On July 13, 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein released indictments returned by a grand jury charging twelve Russian intelligence officials, who work for the Russian intelligence agency GRU, with conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections. 

The individuals, posing as "a Guccifer 2.0 persona", are accused of hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, as well as state election boards and secretaries of several states. In one unidentified state, the Russians stole information on half a million voters.

The indictment also said a Republican congressional candidate, also unidentified, had been sent campaign documents stolen by the group, and that a reporter was in contact with the Russian operatives and offered to write an article to coincide with the release of the stolen documents.

Claims by Anastasia Vashukevich:

In March 2018, Anastasia Vashukevich, a Belarusian national arrested in Thailand, said she had over 16 hours of audio recordings that could shed light on possible Russian interference in American elections. She offered the recordings to American authorities in exchange for asylum, to avoid being extradited to Belarus. 

Vashukevich said she was close to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin and business links to Paul Manafort, and asserted the recordings included Deripaska discussing the 2016 presidential election. She said some of the recorded conversations, which she asserted were made in August 2016, included three individuals who spoke fluent English and who she believed were Americans.

Vashukevich's claims appeared to be consistent with a video published in February 2018 by Alexei Navalny, about a meeting between Deripaska and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko. In the video, Navalny claims Deripaska served as a liaison between the Russian government and Paul Manafort in connection with Russian interference efforts.

In August 2018, Vashukevich said she no longer has any evidence having sent the recordings to Deripaska without having made them public, hoping he would be able to gain her release from prison, and has promised Deripaska not to make any further comment on the recordings' contents.

2019 developments:
Further information: Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2019–2020)

On March 24, Attorney General Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress regarding the Special Counsel's findings regarding Russian interference and obstruction of justice. 

Barr said that on the question of Russian interference in the election, Mueller detailed two ways in which Russia attempted to influence the election in Trump's favor, but "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr said that Mueller wrote "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." "The Special Counsel's decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it 'to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime ... Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense."

On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of the final Mueller Report was released to the public. The Mueller Report found that the Russian government interfered in the election in "sweeping and systematic fashion" and violated U.S. criminal laws.

On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. He reiterated that his report did not exonerate the president and that legal guidelines prevented the indictment of a sitting president, stating that "the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing." 

Saying, "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. He emphasized that the central conclusion of his investigation was "that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."

Soon after the release of the Mueller Report, Trump began urging an investigation into the origins of the Russian investigation, wanting to "investigate the investigators". In April 2019, Attorney General William Barr announced that he had launched a review of the origins of the FBI's investigation. 

The origins of the probe were already being investigated by the Justice Department's inspector general and by U.S. attorney John Huber, who was appointed in 2018 by Jeff Sessions. He assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead it.

Durham was given the authority "to broadly examin[e] the government's collection of intelligence involving the Trump campaign's interactions with Russians," reviewing government documents and requesting voluntary witness statements. 

Trump directed the American intelligence community to "promptly provide assistance and information" to Barr, and delegated to him the "full and complete authority" to declassify any documents related to his probe. 

In September 2019, it was reported that Barr has been contacting foreign governments to ask for help in this mission. He personally traveled to the United Kingdom and Italy to seek information, and at Barr's request Trump phoned the prime minister of Australia about the subject.

2020 developments:

On November 2, the Special Counsel's office released previously redacted portions of the Mueller report. In September, a federal judge ordered the passages disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed News and the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, while allowing other portions to remain redacted.

In summary, per Buzzfeed: "Although Wikileaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone — a close associate to Donald Trump — appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators 'did not have sufficient evidence' to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing.

In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump’s election chances …"

The newly released material also stated: "While the investigation developed evidence that the GRU’s hacking efforts in fact were continuing at least at the time of the July 2016 WikiLeaks dissemination, … the Office did not develop sufficient admissible evidence that WikiLeaks knew of — or even was willfully blind to — that fact." As reported by Buzzfeed, "Likewise, prosecutors faced what they called factual hurdles in pursuing Stone for the hack."

On November 2, 2020, the day before the presidential election, New York magazine reported that:
  • According to two sources familiar with the probe, there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of investigation, to support Barr's claims that Trump was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election. (The probe remains ongoing.) In fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation has so far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or Barack Obama, or that they were even involved with the Russia investigation. There 'was no evidence … not even remotely … indicating Obama or Biden did anything wrong,' as one person put it.

Links between Trump associates and Russian officials:
Main article: Links between Trump associates and Russian officials

During the course of the 2016 presidential campaign and up to his inauguration, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had numerous contacts with Russian nationals, with WikiLeaks, or with intermediaries between the two. As of January 28, The New York Times had tallied more than a hundred in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter between the Trump Campaign and Russians or WikiLeaks.

In spring of 2015, U.S. intelligence agencies started overhearing conversations in which Russian government officials discussed associates of Donald Trump. British and the Dutch intelligence have given information to United States intelligence about meetings in European cities between Russian officials, associates of Putin, and associates of then-President-elect Trump.

American intelligence agencies also intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates. Multiple Trump associates were reported to have had contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016, although in February 2017 U.S. officials said they did not have evidence that Trump's campaign had co-operated with the Russians to influence the election. 

As of March 2017, the FBI was investigating Russian involvement in the election, including alleged links between Trump's associates and the Russian government.

​In particular, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak has met several Trump campaign members and administration nominees; the people involved have dismissed those meetings as routine conversations in preparation for assuming the presidency.

Trump's team has issued at least twenty denials concerning communications between his campaign and Russian officials; several of these denials turned out to be false. In the early months of 2017, Trump and other senior White House officials asked the Director of National Intelligence, the NSA director, the FBI director, and two chairs of congressional committees to publicly dispute the news reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia.

Paul Manafort:
Further information: Paul Manafort and Trials of Paul Manafort

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had several contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials during 2016, which he denied. Intercepted communications during the campaign show that Russian officials believed they could use Manafort to influence Trump. 

The Mueller investigation and the Senate Intelligence Committee found that, as Trump's campaign manager in August 2016, Manafort shared Trump campaign internal polling data with Ukrainian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the Mueller Report linked to Russian intelligence, while the Intelligence Committee characterized him as a "Russian intelligence officer." 

Manafort gave Kilimnik data for Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states the Russian Internet Research Agency specifically targeted for social media and ad campaigns. Trump won those three states by narrow margins and they were key to his election.

In 2017 Manafort was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on various charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014, as well as in the Eastern District of Virginia for eight charges of tax and bank fraud. He was convicted of the fraud charges in August 2019 and sentenced to 47 months in prison by Judge T.S. Ellis.

Although all the 2017 charges arose from the Special Counsel investigation, none of them were for any alleged collusion to interfere with U.S. elections. On March 13, 2019, Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to an additional 43 months in prison. 

Minutes after his sentencing, New York state prosecutors charged Manafort with sixteen state felonies. On December 18, 2019, the state charges against him were dismissed because of the doctrine of double jeopardy. On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement due to the threat of COVID-19. On December 23, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Manafort.

Michael Flynn:
Further information: Michael Flynn and United States v. Flynn

In December 2015, retired Army general Michael Flynn was photographed at a dinner seated next to Vladimir Putin. He was in Moscow to give a paid speech which he failed to disclose as is required of former high-ranking military officers. Also seated at the head table are Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and members of Putin's inner circle, including Sergei Ivanov, Dmitry Peskov, Vekselberg, and Alexey Gromov.

In February 2016, Flynn was named as an advisor to Trump's presidential campaign. Later that year, in phone calls intercepted by U.S. intelligence, Russian officials were overheard claiming they had formed a strong relationship with Trump advisor Flynn and believed they would be able to use him to influence Trump and his team.

In December 2016 Flynn, then Trump's designated choice to be National Security Advisor, and Jared Kushner met with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak and requested him to set up a direct, encrypted line of communication so they could communicate directly with the Kremlin without the knowledge of American intelligence agencies.

Three anonymous sources claimed that no such channel was actually set up. On December 29, 2016, the day President Obama announced sanctions against Russia, Flynn discussed the sanctions with Kislyak, urging that Russia not retaliate. 

Flynn initially denied speaking to Kislyak, then acknowledged the conversation but denied discussing the sanctions. When it was revealed in February 2017 that U.S. intelligence agencies had evidence, through monitoring of the ambassador's communications, that he actually had discussed the sanctions, Flynn said he couldn't remember if he did or not.

Upon Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017, he appointed Flynn his National Security Advisor. On January 24, Flynn was interviewed by the FBI. Two days later, acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed the White House that Flynn was "compromised" by the Russians and possibly open to blackmail. Flynn was forced to resign as national security advisor on February 13, 2017.

On December 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to a single felony count of making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak. His plea was part of a plea bargain with special counsel Robert Mueller, under which Flynn also agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation which led to his sentencing being postponed several times.

In June 2019, Flynn fired his initial counsel from the firm Covington and Burling and hired Sidney Powell. Powell moved to compel production of additional Brady material and newly discovered evidence in October 2019, which was denied by Sullivan in December 2019. Flynn then moved to withdraw his guilty plea in January 2020, claiming that the government had acted in bad faith and breached the plea agreement.

In May 2020, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn with prejudice, asserting that it no longer believed it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Flynn had made false statements to the FBI or that the statements, even if false, were materially false in regards to the FBI's investigation. Sullivan then appointed an amicus, John Gleeson, to prepare an argument against dismissal. Sullivan also allowed amici to file briefs regarding the dismissal motion.

Powell filed an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus in the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking (1) that Judge Sullivan be ordered to grant the government's motion to dismiss, (2) for Sullivan's amicus appointment of Gleeson to be vacated, and (3) for the case be assigned to another judge for any additional proceedings.

The appellate court panel assigned to the case ordered Sullivan to respond, and briefs were also filed by the DOJ and amici. In June 2020, the appeals court panel ruled 2–1 in favor of Flynn on the first two requests, and the panel unanimously rejected the third request. Judge Sullivan petitioned the Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing, a request opposed by Flynn and the DOJ.

The appellate court granted Sullivan's petition in an 8-2 decision and vacated the panel's ruling. The case was ultimately dismissed as moot on December 8, 2020, after President Trump pardoned Flynn on November 25, 2020.

George Papadopoulos:
Further information: George Papadopoulos

In March 2016 Donald Trump named George Papadopoulos, an oil, gas, and policy consultant, as an unpaid foreign policy advisor to his campaign. Shortly thereafter Papadopoulos was approached by Joseph Mifsud, a London-based professor with connections to high-ranking Russian officials. Mifsud told him the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails" "apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign". 

The two met several times in March 2016. In May 2016 at a London wine bar, Papadopoulos told the top Australian diplomat to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer, that Russia "had a dirt file on rival candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked Democratic Party emails". 

After the DNC emails were published by WikiLeaks in July, the Australian government told the FBI about Papadopoulos' revelation, leading the FBI to launch a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, known by its code name: Crossfire Hurricane, which has been criticized by Trump as a "witch hunt."[

Papadopoulos' main activity during the campaign was attempting, unsuccessfully, to set up meetings between Russian officials (including Vladimir Putin) and Trump campaign officials (including Trump himself). In pursuit of this goal he communicated with multiple Trump campaign officials including Sam Clovis, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Corey Lewandowski.

On January 27, 2017, Papadopoulos was interviewed by FBI agents. On July 27, he was arrested at Washington-Dulles International Airport, and he has since been cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation. On October 5, 2017, he pleaded guilty to one felony count of making false statements to FBI agents relating to contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign.

Papadopoulos's arrest and guilty plea became public on October 30, 2017, when court documents showing the guilty plea were unsealed. Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison, 12 months supervised release, 200 hours of community service and was fined $9,500, on September 7, 2018. He was later pardoned by Trump in December 2020.

Veselnitskaya meeting:
Main article: Trump Tower meeting

In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was accompanied by some others, including Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, after Trump Jr. was informed that Veselnitskaya could supply the Trump campaign with incriminating information about Hillary Clinton such as her dealings with the Russians. 

The meeting was arranged following an email from British music publicist Rob Goldstone who was the manager of Emin Agalarov, son of Russian tycoon Aras Agalarov. 

In the email, Goldstone said the information had come from the Russian government and "was part of a Russian government effort to help Donald Trump's presidential campaign". 

​Trump Jr. replied with an e-mail saying "If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer" and arranged the meeting. Trump Jr. went to the meeting expecting to receive information harmful to the Clinton campaign, but he said none was forthcoming, and instead the conversation then turned to the Magnitsky Act and the adoption of Russian children.

The meeting was disclosed by The New York Times on July 8, 2017. On the same day, Donald Trump Jr. released a statement saying it had been a short introductory meeting focused on adoption of Russian children by Americans and "not a campaign issue". Later that month The Washington Post revealed that Trump Jr.'s statement had been dictated by President Donald Trump, who had overruled his staff's recommendation that the statement be transparent about the actual motivation for the meeting: the Russian government's wish to help Trump's campaign.

Other Trump Associates:
​
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an early and prominent supporter of Trump's campaign, spoke twice with Russian ambassador Kislyak before the election—once in July 2016 at the Republican convention and once in September 2016 in Sessions' Senate office. In his confirmation hearings, Sessions testified that he "did not have communications with the Russians". On March 2, 2017, after this denial was revealed to have been false, Sessions recused himself from matters relating to Russia's election interference and deferred to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Roger Stone, a former adviser to Donald Trump and business partner of Paul Manafort, said he had been in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker persona believed to be a front for Russian intelligence operations, who had publicly claimed responsibility for at least one hack of the DNC. 

During the campaign, Stone had stated repeatedly and publicly that he had "actually communicated with Julian Assange"; he later denied having done so. In August 2016, Stone had cryptically tweeted "Trust me, it will soon [sic] the Podesta's time in the barrel" shortly after claiming to have been in contact with WikiLeaks and before WikiLeaks' release of the Podesta emails. 

Stone has denied having any advance knowledge of the Podesta e-mail hack or any connection to Russian intelligence, stating that his earlier tweet was actually referring to reports of the Podesta Group's own ties to Russia. Stone ultimately named Randy Credico, who had interviewed both Assange and Stone for a radio show, as his intermediary with Assange.

In June 2018 Stone disclosed that he had met with a Russian individual during the campaign, who wanted Trump to pay two million dollars for "dirt on Hillary Clinton". This disclosure contradicted Stone's earlier claims that he had not met with any Russians during the campaign. The meeting Stone attended was set up by Donald Trump's campaign aide, Michael Caputo and is a subject of Robert Mueller's investigation.

Oil industry consultant Carter Page had his communications monitored by the FBI under a FISA warrant beginning in 2014, and again beginning in October 2016, after he was suspected of acting as an agent for Russia. Page told The Washington Post he considered that to be "unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance". 

Page spoke with Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention, acting as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump. In 2013 he had met with Viktor Podobnyy, then a junior attaché at the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, at an energy conference, and provided him with documents on the U.S. energy industry. 

Podobnyy was later charged with spying, but was protected from prosecution by diplomatic immunity. The FBI interviewed Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into Podonyy's spy ring, but never accused Page of wrongdoing.

The Mueller Report also found that Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MbZ) approached Richard Gerson, a financier and Jared Kushner's friend, to arrange his meetings with Trump. A Russian businessman Kirill Dmitriev, who was close to Vladimir Putin and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, discussed a "reconciliation plan" with Gerson for the U.S. and Russia, which was later shared with Kushner.

MbZ also advised Trump on the dangers of Iran and about Palestinian peace talks. On January 11, 2017, UAE officials organized a meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Dmitriev. They discussed a back channel between Trump and Putin along with Middle East policy, notably about Syria and Iran. U.S. officials said the FBI was investigating the meeting.

​Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, on his application for top secret security clearance, failed to disclose numerous meetings with foreign officials, including Ambassador Kislyak and Sergei Gorkov, the head of the Russian state-owned bank Vnesheconombank. Kushner's lawyers called the omissions "an error". 

Vnesheconombank has said the meeting was business-related, in connection with Kushner's management of Kushner Companies. However, the Trump administration provided a different explanation, saying it was a diplomatic meeting.

On May 30, 2017, the House and Senate congressional panels both asked President Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen to "provide information and testimony" about any communications Cohen had with people connected to the Kremlin. Cohen had attempted to contact Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov during the 2016 campaign, asking for help in advancing plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow.

In May 2017 longtime Republican operative Peter W. Smith confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that during the 2016 campaign he had been actively involved in trying to obtain emails he believed had been hacked from Hillary Clinton's computer server. In that quest he contacted several known hacker groups, including some Russian groups. He claimed he was working on behalf of Trump campaign advisor (later national security advisor) Michael Flynn and Flynn's son. At around the same time, there were intelligence reports that Russian hackers were trying to obtain Clinton's emails to pass to Flynn through an unnamed intermediary.

Five of the hacker groups Smith contacted, including at least two Russian groups, claimed to have Clinton's emails. He was shown some information but was not convinced it was genuine, and suggested the hackers give it to WikiLeaks instead. A document describing Smith's plans claimed that Flynn, Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, and other campaign advisors were coordinating with him "to the extent permitted as an independent expenditure". 

The White House, a campaign official, Conway, and Bannon all denied any connection with Smith's effort. British blogger Matt Tait said Smith had contacted him—curiously, around the same time Trump called for the Russians to get Hillary Clinton's missing emails—to ask him to help authenticate any materials that might be forthcoming. Ten days after his interview with The Wall Street Journal, Smith committed suicide in a Minnesota hotel room, citing declining health.

Steele dossier:
Main article: Steele dossier

​In June 2016, Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, was hired by Fusion GPS to produce opposition research on Donald Trump. In October 2015, before Steele was hired, Trump's Republican political opponents had hired Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump.

When they stopped their funding, Fusion GPS hired Steele to continue that research, but with more focus on Trump's Russian connections. In the beginning, he did not know the identities of Fusion GPS's ultimate clients, which were the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. His reports, based on information provided by his witting and unwitting Russian sources and sources close to the Trump campaign, included alleged kompromat that may make Trump vulnerable to blackmail from Russia.

In October 2016, a 33-page compilation was shared with Mother Jones magazine, which described some of its contents, but other mainstream media would not report on it because they could not confirm the material's credibility. In December 2016, two more pages were added alleging efforts by Trump's lawyer to pay those who had hacked the DNC and arranging to cover up any evidence of their deeds. 

On January 5, 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump on the existence of these documents. Eventually, the dossier was published in full by BuzzFeed on January 10.

In October 2016, the FBI used the dossier as part of its justification to obtain a FISA warrant to resume monitoring of former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page. However, officials would not say exactly what or how much of the dossier was actually corroborated.

Ongoing investigations:

In December 2019, Switzerland extradited Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin to the United States, where he will reportedly face questions about the Russian government's interference in the 2016 election, though the US Government has not publicly implicated him.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Russian Interference in Our 2016 General Elections:







Donald Trump's disclosures of classified information: ​Pictured below: President Trump with Russians (L) Sergey Lavrov and (R) Sergey Kislyak
On May 10, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump disclosed classified information to Russian government representatives, creating political and security concerns in the United States and its allies, especially Israel.

Soon after the meeting, American intelligence extracted a high-level covert source from within the Russian government, on concerns the individual could be at risk due, in part, to Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandling classified intelligence.

​Oval Office disclosure to Russia:

Disclosure in May 2017:

President Donald Trump discussed classified information provided by a U.S. ally regarding a planned Islamic State operation during an Oval Office meeting on May 10, 2017 with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, providing sufficient details that could be used by the Russians to deduce the identity of the ally and the manner in which it was collected, according to current and former government officials.

The meeting had been closed to the U.S. press, although a photographer from the Russian press contingent was present. The disclosure was first reported in The Washington Post on May 15, 2017. White House staff initially denied the report, but the following day Trump defended the disclosure, stating that he has the "absolute right" to "share" intelligence with Russia.

It was later reported that Israel was the source of the information. Israel did not confirm or deny the report but released a statement stating full confidence in the intelligence sharing relationships with the United States. 

Ynetnews, an Israeli news website, had previously reported on January 12 that in a meeting held in early January (during Trump's presidential transition), U.S. intelligence officials advised Israeli Mossad and other intelligence officials to "be careful" when transferring intelligence information to the Trump White House and administration until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Christopher Steele's report (commonly referred as the Trump–Russia dossier), has been fully investigated. 

U.S. officials were concerned that the information, particularly about sensitive intelligence sources, could be passed to Russia and then to Iran. Two Israeli intelligence officials confirmed privately that Trump's disclosure of the intelligence to Russia was "for us, our worst fears confirmed." They said the disclosure jeopardizes Israel's "arrangement with America which is unique to the world of intelligence sharing" and that Israeli officials were "boiling mad and demanding answers".

The report was described as "shocking" and "horrifying" by some commentators and former U.S. intelligence officials. According to current and former U.S. officials interviewed by ABC News, Trump's disclosure endangered the life of a spy placed by Israel in ISIL-held territory in Syria. The classified information Trump shared came from a source described as the most valuable of any current sources on any current external plotting, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Reporting:
​
Russian use of social media to disseminate propaganda content was very broad. Facebook and Twitter were used, but also Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, YouTube, Vine, and Google+ (among other sites). Instagram was by far the most used platform, and one that largely remained out of the public eye until late 2018. 

The Mueller report lists IRA-created groups on Facebook including the following:
  • "purported conservative groups" (e.g. 'Tea Party News'),
  • "purported Black social justice groups" (e.g. 'Blacktivist')
  • "LGBTQ groups" ('LGBT United'), and
  • "religious groups" ('United Muslims of America').
  • ​The IRA Twitter accounts included @TEN_GOP (claiming to be related to the Tennessee Republican Party),
  • @jenn_abrams and @Pamela_Moore13; both claimed to be Trump supporters and both had 70,000 followers.

Several Trump campaign members (Donald J. Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale and Michael T. Flynn) linked or reposted material from the IRA's @TEN_GOP Twitter account listed above.

​Other people who responded to IRA social media accounts include Michael McFaul, Sean Hannity, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn Jr.

Advertisements bought by Russian operatives for the Facebook social media site are estimated to have 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. The most strident Internet promoters of Trump were paid Russian propagandists/trolls, who were estimated by The Guardian to number several thousand. 

(By 2017 the U.S. news media was focusing on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter and Russian operatives moved on to Instagram.)

The Mueller Report found the IRA spent $100,000 for more than 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements.

In comparison, Clinton and Trump campaigns spent $81 million on Facebook ads.

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

Monitoring 7,000 pro-Trump social media accounts over a 2+1⁄2-year period, researchers J. M. Berger, Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts found the accounts denigrated critics of Russian activities in Syria and propagated falsehoods about Clinton's health. 

Watts found Russian propaganda to be aimed at fomenting "dissent or conspiracies against the U.S. government and its institutions", and by autumn of 2016 amplifying attacks on Clinton and support for Trump, via social media, Internet trolls, botnets, and websites.

On May 15, 2017, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that the intelligence was about an ISIL plot to stealthily use laptops as weapons that can then explode in Western countries, and that a Middle Eastern ally provided the intelligence, which was codeword-classified, meaning that its distribution was restricted only to those who were explicitly cleared to read it, and was not intended to be shared beyond the United States and certain allies. 

The incident was later reported by The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and Reuters. The officials talking to BuzzFeed said, "it's far worse than what has already been reported."

Immediately after Trump's disclosure, "which one of the officials described as spontaneous", "senior White House officials appeared to recognize quickly that Trump had overstepped and moved to contain the potential fallout." Immediately after the meeting, Thomas P. Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, telephoned the directors of the CIA and the NSA to inform them what had occurred.

The incident was seen as a pivot away from traditional American allies, and towards closer relations with Russia, and raised questions on Trump's respect for the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement.

Several commentators stated that by releasing classified information to Russia, Trump jeopardized American and allied intelligence sources, breached the trust relationship with America's foreign partners, threatened the long term national security of the country and violated his oath of office through "gross negligence". All of these actions are possible legal grounds towards efforts to impeach Donald Trump. 

Aides privately defended the President, stating that Trump did not have sufficient interest or knowledge of the intelligence gathering process to leak specific sources or methods of intelligence gathering; National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster publicly maintained that Trump had not been briefed on the origins of the intelligence in question, and therefore could not have compromised the source.

According to conservative commentator Erick Erickson, multiple sources have stated that the leaks were far worse than the current reports, and the leaker is a strong supporter of Trump who believed it was necessary to publicly disclose the story because of Trump's inability to accept criticism.

White House response:

White House staff initially denied the veracity of the report during the evening of May 15. In a press briefing on the same day, McMaster denied The Washington Post report, saying, "At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.

Two other senior officials who were present, including the secretary of state, remember the meeting the same way and have said so. And their on-the-record accounts should outweigh those of anonymous sources." He concluded by saying, "I was in the room, it didn't happen." McMaster said that "it was wholly appropriate to share" the information because of a similar ISIL plot two years earlier.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that "common efforts and threats regarding counter-terrorism" were discussed in the meeting with Lavrov, but not "sources, methods or military operations". Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy Dina Habib Powell flatly rejected the Post article, saying: "This story is false. The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced."

On May 16, Trump implicitly confirmed a disclosure in a tweet, claiming that, "As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining ... to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism."

Origin of the intelligence:

The May 15 The Washington Post article reported that the intelligence came from an unnamed Middle Eastern ally. On May 16, The New York Times named the relevant ally and source of the intelligence as Israel, saying that as a consequence, Trump's boasts to the Russian envoys could damage America's relationship with Israel and endanger Israel's security if Russia passes the intelligence on to Iran, Israel's main threat in the Middle East.

The intelligence was so sensitive that it hadn't even been shared among key U.S. allies.
Israeli intelligence officials were reportedly horrified by the disclosure. In public comments, Israeli officials including intelligence minister Yisrael Katz, Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the intelligence services of the two countries would continue to share information, with Dermer saying "Israel has full confidence in our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States."

However, speaking privately, unnamed Israeli sources said they might need to reassess what intelligence they share with the U.S. Israeli officials stated that it is Israel's "worst fears confirmed" about Donald Trump. The officials also stated that Israeli intelligence officers were "boiling mad and demanding answers" on its current intelligence-sharing agreement with the US.

On May 22, while visiting Israel, Trump appeared to confirm both the disclosure and the identity of Israel as the source, telling the press "Folks, folks, just so you understand, just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel during that conversation."

It had been widely reported before May 22 that Israel was the source.

Reactions:

U.S. Congress:

Speaker of the House Republican Paul Ryan said through a spokesman that he "hopes for a full explanation of the facts from the administration".

Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the allegations were "very, very troubling" if true. 

Senator John McCain called the report "deeply disturbing" and said that "Reports that this information was provided by a U.S. ally and shared without its knowledge sends a troubling signal to America's allies and partners around the world and may impair their willingness to share intelligence with us in the future." 

McCain stated: "Regrettably, the time President Trump spent sharing sensitive information with the Russians was time he did not spend focusing on Russia's aggressive behavior, including its interference in American and European elections, its illegal invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, its other destabilizing activities across Europe, and the slaughter of innocent civilians and targeting of hospitals in Syria."

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said, "The president owes the intelligence community, the American people and Congress a full explanation". and Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate Democratic Whip, said that Trump's conduct was "dangerous" and "reckless". 

Senator Jack Reed, the ranking Democratic member of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, said, "President Trump's recklessness with sensitive information is deeply disturbing and clearly problematic." The Democratic National Committee issued a statement, which included this: "If Trump weren't president, his dangerous disclosure to Russia could end with him in handcuffs."

Foreign countries:

Reaction from foreign countries was generally negative. A top European intelligence official said that sharing of intelligence with the United States would cease if the country confirms that Trump did indeed share classified information with Russia, because sharing intel with Americans while Trump is president could put their sources at risk.

Burkhard Lischka, a member of the German Bundestag's intelligence oversight committee, said that if Trump "passes this information to other governments at will, then Trump becomes a security risk for the entire western world".

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied the U.S. media reports.

Academics:

Several professors of law, political science, and international relations, as well as intelligence experts, were alarmed by Trump's disclosure.

Intelligence expert Amy Zegart of Stanford University noted that Trump revealed code word intelligence, which is the highest layer of classification, even higher than the "top secret" classification. Such information, if revealed, could reasonably be expected to cause "exceptionally grave damage" to the national security of the United States. She wrote, "so just how bad is the damage? On a scale of 1 to 10—and I'm just ball parking here—it's about a billion."

Counterterrorism expert Daniel Byman of Georgetown University said that disclosures such as Trump's could jeopardize intelligence sharing relationships, which "perhaps more than any other policy instrument ... play a vital role in counterterrorism against global terrorist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda." The effects could be "disastrous".

Professor Jack Goldsmith and other contributors to the Lawfare Blog said that Trump's release of classified information could be a violation of the President's oath of office: "There's thus no reason why Congress couldn't consider a grotesque violation of the President's oath as a standalone basis for impeachment—a high crime and misdemeanor in and of itself. This is particularly plausible in a case like this, where the oath violation involves giving sensitive information to an adversary foreign power. That's getting relatively close to the "treason" language in the impeachment clauses; it's pretty easy to imagine a hybrid impeachment article alleging a violation of the oath in service of a hostile foreign power. So legally speaking, the matter could be very grave for Trump even though there is no criminal exposure." 

While the authors argued Trump "did not violate any criminal law concerning the disclosure of classified information" because of the president's broad authority to declassify information, another legal scholar, Professor Stephen Vladeck, wrote that the president's "constitutional power over national security information" is not unfettered and that Trump's disclosure "may actually have been illegal under federal law."

Harvard Law emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz called the incident "the most serious charge ever made against a sitting president" and said that it was "devastating", with "very serious political, diplomatic, and international implications".

Aftermath:

Leaking of sensitive information by the U.S. has led to the review of intelligence sharing arrangements by key allies, and also a review by the Department of Justice regarding the leaks from the United States.

Soon after the Oval Office meeting, intelligence officials reportedly became concerned about the safety of a high-level CIA source within the Putin government, and decided to bring him out of Russia.

The source had refused an earlier offer to extract him. The extraction, or "exfiltration", was carried out sometime in 2017. CNN and other news sources reported on this extraction in September 2019, along with details about the Russian. One source told CNN that the decision to remove him was based in part on concern about the Trump administration's mishandling of classified information. 

However, other sources said the concern for his safety was primarily based on a 2017 CIA report about Russian interference in the election (see above topic), which had such specific information it might make Russia suspect a high-placed spy. A CIA spokesperson said the news reports were "misguided speculation", and a White House spokesperson said the reporting was "incorrect" and "has the potential to put lives in danger," although they did not specify why they considered the reporting flawed.

Other disclosures of intelligence:

In an April 29, 2017, phone call, Trump told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte that the U.S. had positioned two nuclear submarines off the coast of North Korea. This was during a time when Trump was warning of a possible "major, major conflict" with North Korea.

The locations of nuclear submarines are a closely guarded secret, even from the Navy command itself. "As a matter of national security, only the captains and crew of the submarines know for sure where they're located."

On May 24, 2017, Britain strongly objected to the United States leaking to the press information about the Manchester Arena bombing, including the identity of the attacker and a picture of the bomb, before it had been publicly disclosed, jeopardizing the investigation. 

British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a public rebuke, and British police said they would stop passing information to U.S. counterparts.

In July 2017, after a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit, Trump took the unusual step of confiscating and keeping his interpreter's notes. This led U.S. intelligence officials to express concern that Trump "may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia."

On Christmas 2018, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump flew to Al Asad Airbase where Trump posted video to Twitter of several members of Seal Team Five in their camouflage and night-vision goggles, revealing the team's location and un-blurred faces.

On August 30, 2019, Trump tweeted a reportedly classified image of recent damage to Iran's Imam Khomeini Spaceport that supposedly occurred as a result of an explosion during testing of a Safir SLV. Multiple concerns were raised regarding the public release of what appeared to be a surveillance photo with exceptionally high resolution, revealing highly classified U.S. surveillance capabilities. 

Within hours of the tweet, amateur satellite trackers had determined the photograph came from National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite USA-224. Before Trump's tweet, the only confirmed photographs from a KH-11 satellite were leaked in 1984 by a U.S. Navy analyst who went to prison for espionage. Trump defended the tweet by saying he had "the absolute right" to release the photo.

In a December 2019 interview with Bob Woodward, Trump stated, "I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody's ever had in this country before," adding, "We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There's nobody. What we have is incredible."

See also: ​






​
Donald Trump's Attempts to Overturn the 2020 United States Presidential ElectionPictured below: The electoral map for the 2020 election. Blue denotes the 306 electoral votes for Biden, while Red denotes the 232 electoral votes for Trump.
After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, then-incumbent Donald Trump pursued an aggressive and unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support and assistance from his campaign, his proxies, his political allies, and many of his supporters.

These efforts culminated in the 2021 United States Capitol attack, which was widely described as an attempted coup d'état. 

​One week later, Trump was impeached a second time for incitement of insurrection but was acquitted by the Senate. Depending on the findings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, which is expected to release its report in 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice may decide to investigate whether Trump committed a crime.

Trump and his allies promoted a "big lie" of numerous false claims and conspiracy theories claiming that the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines, electoral fraud and an international communist conspiracy. These allegations were dismissed as baseless by numerous state and federal judges, election officials, governors, and government agencies. 

On December 1, 2020, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents had investigated complaints and allegations of fraud, but found none of significance. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said no evidence had been found of foreign interference. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs called the election "the most secure in American history", leading Trump to fire him and Trump attorney Joseph diGenova to call for his execution.

Hundreds of elected Republicans, including members of Congress and governors, refused to acknowledge Biden's victory. Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, delayed the start of the presidential transition until sixteen days after most media outlets had projected Biden to be the winner. 

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had received a presidential pardon shortly after the election, on December 1 publicly called on the president to suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military supervision.

A small group of Trump loyalists, including Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows and several Republican lawmakers from the House Freedom Caucus, attempted to keep Trump in power. At the state level, their tactics targeted state legislatures and the electoral vote certification at the Capitol. Trump and his allies encouraged state officials to throw out legally cast ballots, challenge vote-certification processes, and overturn certified election results. 

In an early January 2021 phone call, Trump pressed the Georgia secretary of state to "find" the 11,780 votes needed to secure his victory in the state. He repeatedly urged Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the legislature to overturn Biden's certified victory in the state, and he made a similar plea to the Pennsylvania Speaker of the House.

On a conference call, Trump asked 300 Republican state legislators to seek ways to reverse certified election results in their states. Republican officials in seven states, directed by Trump's personal attorney, created fraudulent electoral certificates of ascertainment to falsely assert Trump had been reelected.

Trump pressed Justice Department leaders to challenge the election results and publicly state the election was corrupt. His legal team sought a path to bring a case before the Supreme Court, but none of the 63 lawsuits they filed were successful. They especially pinned their hopes on Texas v. Pennsylvania, but on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear that case.

After the failure of Texas, Trump reportedly considered military intervention, seizing voting machines and another appeal to the Supreme Court, as well as challenging the congressional counting of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.

By December 30, multiple Republican members of the House and Senate indicated they would try to force both chambers to debate whether to certify the Electoral College results. Mike Pence, who as vice president would preside over the proceedings, signaled his endorsement of the effort, stating on January 4, "I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress."

Additionally, Trump and some supporters promoted a false "Pence card" theory that, even if Congress were to certify the results, the vice president had the authority to reject them.

After the vote certification, some Republicans changed their positions to acknowledge Biden's victory, while others continued to support Trump's claims. As of February 2022, despite no new credible evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to insist that the election was “stolen“.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Attempt to Overthrow the 2020 Presidential Elections:







The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists (January 11, 2021 article by Scientific American)
Forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee explains the outgoing president’s pathological appeal and how to wean people from it:

The violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building last week, incited by President Donald Trump, serves as the grimmest moment in one of the darkest chapters in the nation’s history. Yet the rioters’ actions—and Trump’s own role in, and response to, them—come as little surprise to many, particularly those who have been studying the president’s mental fitness and the psychology of his most ardent followers since he took office.

One such person is Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition.* Lee led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as the Goldwater rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person.

“Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”

Lee recently wrote Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, a psychological assessment of the president against the backdrop of his supporters and the country as a whole. These insights are now taking on renewed importance as a growing number of current and former leaders call for Trump to be impeached. On January 9 Lee and her colleagues at the World Mental Health Coalition put out a statement calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office.

Scientific American asked Lee to comment on the psychology behind Trump’s destructive behavior, what drives some of his followers—and how to free people from his grip when this damaging presidency ends.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

What attracts people to Trump? What is their animus or driving force?
The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive.

The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Why does Trump himself seem to gravitate toward violence and destruction?
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. First, I wish to clarify that those with mental illness are, as a group, no more dangerous than those without mental illness. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, however, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.

In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.

​Do you think Trump is truly exhibiting delusional or psychotic behavior? Or is he simply behaving like an autocrat making a bald-faced attempt to hold onto his power?
I believe it is both. He is certainly of an autocratic disposition because his extreme narcissism does not allow for equality with other human beings, as democracy requires. Psychiatrists generally assess delusions through personal examination, but there is other evidence of their likelihood.

First, delusions are more infectious than strategic lies, and so we see, from their sheer spread, that Trump likely truly believes them. Second, his emotional fragility, manifested in extreme intolerance of realities that do not fit his wishful view of the world, predispose him to psychotic spirals. Third, his public record includes numerous hours of interviews and interactions with other people—such as the hour-long one with the Georgia secretary of state—that very nearly confirm delusion, as my colleague and I discovered in a systematic analysis.

Where does the hatred some of his supporters display come from? And what can we do to promote healing?
In Profile of a Nation, I outline the many causes that create his followership. But there is important psychological injury that arises from relative—not absolute—socioeconomic deprivation. Yes, there is great injury, anger and redirectable energy for hatred, which Trump harnessed and stoked for his manipulation and use.

The emotional bonds he has created facilitate shared psychosis at a massive scale. It is a natural consequence of the conditions we have set up. For healing, I usually recommend three steps: (1) Removal of the offending agent (the influential person with severe symptoms). (2) Dismantling systems of thought control—common in advertising but now also heavily adopted by politics. And (3) fixing the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to poor collective mental health in the first place.

What do you predict he will do after his presidency?
I again emphasize in Profile of a Nation that we should consider the president, his followers and the nation as an ecology, not in isolation. Hence, what he does after this presidency depends a great deal on us. This is the reason I frantically wrote the book over the summer: we require active intervention to stop him from achieving any number of destructive outcomes for the nation, including the establishment of a shadow presidency. He will have no limit, which is why I have actively advocated for removal and accountability, including prosecution. We need to remember that he is more a follower than a leader, and we need to place constraints from the outside when he cannot place them from within.

What do you think will happen to his supporters?
If we handle the situation appropriately, there will be a lot of disillusionment and trauma. And this is all right—they are healthy reactions to an abnormal situation. We must provide emotional support for healing, and this includes societal support, such as sources of belonging and dignity.

Cult members and victims of abuse are often emotionally bonded to the relationship, unable to see the harm that is being done to them. After a while, the magnitude of the deception conspires with their own psychological protections against pain and disappointment. This causes them to avoid seeing the truth. And the situation with Trump supporters is very similar. The danger is that another pathological figure will come around and entice them with a false “solution” that is really a harnessing of this resistance.

How can we avert future insurrection attempts or acts of violence?
Violence is the end product of a long process, so prevention is key. Structural violence, or inequality, is the most potent stimulant of behavioral violence. And reducing inequality in all forms—economic, racial and gender—will help toward preventing violence. For prevention to be effective, knowledge and in-depth understanding cannot be overlooked—so we can anticipate what is coming, much like the pandemic. The silencing of mental health professionals during the Trump era, mainly through a politically driven distortion of an ethical guideline, was catastrophic, in my view, in the nation’s failure to understand, predict and prevent the dangers of this presidency.

Do you have any advice for people who do not support Trump but have supporters of him or “mini-Trumps” in their lives?
This is often very difficult because the relationship between Trump and his supporters is an abusive one, as an author of the 2017 book I edited, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, presciently pointed out. When the mind is hijacked for the benefit of the abuser, it becomes no longer a matter of presenting facts or appealing to logic. Removing Trump from power and influence will be healing in itself.

But, I advise, first, not to confront [his supporters’] beliefs, for it will only rouse resistance. Second, persuasion should not be the goal but change of the circumstance that led to their faulty beliefs. Third, one should maintain one’s own bearing and mental health, because people who harbor delusional narratives tend to bulldoze over reality in their attempt to deny that their own narrative is false.

As for mini-Trumps, it is important, above all, to set firm boundaries, to limit contact or even to leave the relationship, if possible. Because I specialize in treating violent individuals, I always believe there is something that can be done to treat them, but they seldom present for treatment unless forced.

*Editor’s Note (1/12/21): This sentence has been revised after posting to correct Bandy X. Lee’s current affiliation.







​
Mary L. Trump, Niece of Donald Trump
Mary Lea Trump (born May 3, 1965) is an American psychologist and author. A niece of former president Donald Trump, she has been critical of him as well as the rest of the Trump family. Her 2020 book about him and the family, Too Much and Never Enough, sold nearly one million copies on the day of its release.

Early life and education:

Mary Lea Trump was born in May 1965 to flight attendant Linda Lee Clapp and Fred Trump Jr., a commercial airline pilot of Trans World Airlines and son of real-estate developer Fred Trump (Donald Trump's father).

Her older brother is Frederick Trump III.

Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump Jr., died on September 29, 1981, at the age of 42 from a heart attack caused by alcoholism, when she was aged 16. She was at school, watching a film in the auditorium with other children when a teacher pulled her aside and made her call home. She found out after a series of phone calls that her father had died. Mary was not able to see her father's body despite her request to do so and had to be content with saying her goodbye to a closed coffin at the funeral.

Mary Lea Trump graduated from the Ethel Walker School in 1983. She studied English literature at Tufts University, earned a master's degree in English literature at Columbia University, for which she studied the works of William Faulkner and his dysfunctional fictional Compson family, and holds a PhD in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University.

Will of Fred Trump Sr.:
Further information: Fred Trump § Wealth and death
See also: New York investigations of The Trump Organization

​Fred Trump Sr.'s will left the bulk of his estate, in equal shares, to his surviving children, while each of his grandchildren was left $200,000. In 1981, when Mary's father predeceased him, Fred Sr.'s lawyers had recommended amending his will, to leave Fred Trump Jr.'s children larger shares than the grandchildren with living parents, writing that "Given the size of your estate, this is tantamount to disinheriting them. You may wish to increase their participation in your estate to avoid ill will in the future." However, Fred Trump Sr. refused to do so.

Fred Sr. was diagnosed with "mild senile dementia" in 1991 and about two years later began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Donald Trump, at the time facing financial ruin, sought control of his elderly father's estate, leading to an epic family fight. When Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999, Mary Trump and her brother, Fred Trump III, contested their grandfather's will.

Shortly after Fred Sr.'s death, Fred III's wife gave birth to a son named William, who has infantile spasms, a rare and debilitating medical condition requiring a lifetime of care.

Fred Sr. had established a foundation that paid the medical expenses of his family. Mary Trump and her brother filed suit against Donald Trump and two of his three living siblings, Maryanne Trump Barry and Robert Trump, for exerting undue influence on the elderly Fred Sr.'s will. 

In response, Donald, Maryanne and Robert cut off Mary and Fred III's medical insurance, including coverage for William. The lawsuit was settled in 2001, with Mary and Fred III selling their interests in the family business (which included ground leases for two of Fred Sr.'s major properties). Mary Trump's lawyer argued that these assets were "significantly and deliberately undervalued" by the other Trumps.

In September 2020, Trump sued her uncle Donald, aunt Maryanne, and the estate of her late uncle Robert, claiming that they defrauded her of tens of millions of dollars from her interests in Fred Sr.'s real-estate portfolio. The defendants' lawyers asked for dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming that she had waited too long to file suit. Trump's lawyers responded that "[r]easonable diligence would not have uncovered the fraud" more than a decade earlier.

In a January 2022 hearing, lawyers for Donald Trump, Maryanne Trump Barry, and the estate of Robert Trump asked for Mary Trump's lawsuit to be dismissed, arguing that she had waited too long to file her lawsuit because she had had access to the relevant documents since 2001 and that a six-year statute of limitations imposed by the 2001 settlement had expired.

In September 2021, Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against his niece and The New York Times for upwards of $100 million over the 2018 article alleging that he had "participated in dubious tax schemes ... including instances of outright fraud", which Mary Trump had provided source documents for, including some Trump family tax returns. 

The suit accuses Mary Trump and the three New York Times journalists of being "engaged in an insidious plot" to gain confidential documents in a "personal vendetta" against him. Mary Trump called the lawsuit an act of "desperation", stating about her uncle, "I think he is a fucking loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can."

Career:

Trump worked for one year at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center while working on her PhD research. She is a contributor to the book Diagnosis: Schizophrenia, published by Columbia University Press in 2001. She has taught graduate courses in developmental psychology, trauma, and psychopathology. 

She is the founder and chief executive officer of The Trump Coaching Group, a life-coaching company, and has also owned and operated a number of small businesses in the Northeast.

Too Much and Never Enough:
Main article: Too Much and Never Enough

Trump's first book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, is an unauthorized biography of Donald Trump published on July 14, 2020, by Simon & Schuster.

According to Trump's note at the beginning of the book, all accounts in the book come either from her own memory or from recorded conversations with family, friends, and others. Other sources are legal, financial and family documents, email correspondence, and the New York Times investigative article by David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner. 

The book details how Mary Trump was the anonymous source who provided The New York Times with Trump family tax returns. The New York Times report won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize.

Upon the announcement of Trump's book Too Much and Never Enough in June 2020, her uncle Robert Trump attempted to block its release, stating that she signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of the 2001 lawsuit settlement. 

The filing of a temporary restraining order against Trump was dismissed by a New York court for a lack of jurisdiction, and the book was published on July 14, 2020.

The book sold close to one million copies on its first day of sales.

The Reckoning
Main article: The Reckoning (Mary Trump book)

Trump's second book, The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, was published by St. Martin's Press on August 17, 2021. Drawing from American history, Trump posits that the country has suffered trauma from its inception because of its inclusion of systemic racism and its failure to address the existence of white supremacy, especially by Republicans in recent decades.

The Mary Trump Show:

Trump has a podcast, titled The Mary Trump Show, on which she discusses politics and other matters. On February 1, 2022, she announced that she would be removing her show from Spotify to protest alleged COVID-19 misinformation being spread on The Joe Rogan Experience, which is exclusively distributed on Spotify.

Politics:

Trump supported Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.

In 2018, David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of The New York Times published "an exhaustive 18-month investigation of Donald Trump's finances that debunked his statements of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges", for which they were awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. 

Mary Trump has stated that she was a key source of information for that study, having come into possession of Donald Trump's tax documents during the discovery process in the dispute over her grandfather's estate.

On July 15, 2020, Mary Trump said in an ABC News interview conducted by George Stephanopoulos that Donald Trump should resign as president, as he was "utterly incapable of leading this country, and it's dangerous to allow him to do so". 

In an interview later that month on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Trump stated that Donald Trump exhibited sociopathic tendencies but not at a high-functioning level like his father. She said the president was institutionally insulated from responsibilities throughout his childhood and was never held accountable for his actions.

After the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Trump said her uncle should be "barred from ever running for public office again."

Personal life:

Trump is openly gay. In Too Much and Never Enough, she states that her entire family's homophobia and bigotry caused her to stay in the closet for many years out of fear of being disowned and disinherited. She wrote that her grandmother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, frequently referred to Elton John as a "faggot", and consequently, Trump decided not to come out and tell her grandmother or other immediate family that she was going to marry a woman, with whom she would later raise a daughter. 

Trump has since divorced, and lives on Long Island, New York, with her 20-year-old daughter, who was conceived by in-vitro fertilization with a sperm donor.

See Also:
​






Steve Bannon, Trump ConfidantPictured below: Bannon faces potential jail time for contempt of Congress. Bryan Smith/AFP via Getty Images
​Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker, who served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News, and previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy for seven years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After his military service, he worked for two years at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker.

In 1993, Bannon became acting director of the research project Biosphere 2. He became an executive producer in Hollywood and produced 18 films between 1991 and 2016. In 2007, he co-founded Breitbart News, a far-right website which he described in 2016 as "the platform for the alt-right".

In 2016, Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and was appointed chief strategist and senior counselor to the president following Trump's election. He left the position eight months later, and rejoined Breitbart. In January 2018, Bannon was disavowed by Trump for critical comments reported in the book Fire and Fury, and left Breitbart.

After leaving the White House, Bannon opposed the Republican Party establishment and supported insurgent candidates in Republican primary elections. Bannon's reputation as a political strategist was questioned when former Alabama state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, despite Bannon's support, lost the 2017 United States Senate election in Alabama to Democrat Doug Jones. 

Bannon had declared his intention to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement." Accordingly, he has supported many national populist conservative political movements around the world, including creating a network of far-right groups in Europe.

In August 2020, Bannon and three others were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection to the We Build the Wall campaign.

The defendants allegedly enriched themselves, despite promising that all contributions would go to building a wall. Bannon pleaded not guilty and was pardoned by Trump before his trial date.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Steve Bannon:







FBI investigation into Donald Trump's handling of presidential documents Pictured below: Donald Trump's Florida Home @ Mar-a-Lago
The FBI investigation into Donald Trump's handling of presidential documents is an ongoing criminal investigation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation into former President Donald Trump's handling of classified and national defense-related government documents, which could have violated the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice. 

The investigation is being conducted under the direction of Christopher A. Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017 to replace James Comey.

Origin and presidential transition:
See also: Donald Trump's disclosures of classified information

Following Trump's loss in the 2020 United States presidential election, talks began between the Trump administration and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regarding transferring documents related to the Trump administration.

Under the Presidential Records Act (44 U.S.C. §§ 2201–2209), any presidential documents under the current administration must be transferred to the Archivist of the United States by the end of their term. 

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows informed the National Archives during this period that he would take care of the documents. On January 18, 2021, at least two moving trucks were spotted outside the Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

Pictures were taken on the day of his departure showing boxes of materials that he had taken with him.

In May 2021, the National Archives would become aware of missing documents. Among the missing material were correspondence letters with Kim Jong-un and a congratulatory letter from former President Barack Obama.

On May 6, Gary Stern—the general counsel for the National Archives—emailed Trump's representatives, including Patrick F. Philbin, to inform them that such material was missing.

In the email, Stern named Pat Cipollone as a witness to the documents, identifying two dozen boxes that were in the White House but had not been transferred to the National Archives.

Scott Gast, a representative for Trump, responded to Stern by giving him a note informing him that Trump would return his correspondence letters with Jong-un, although Trump was unclear on how to proceed. An archive official recommended FedEx as a method of transferring the documents; Trump aides objected to this idea, and the letters were not returned. Trump would display these letters to people in his office, leading to Meadows contacting Philbin in an effort to figure out how to facilitate the return of these documents.

Trump's lawyers would inform the National Archives in December that they had found 12 boxes of documents at the Mar-a-Lago.

NARA retrieval of documents:

In January 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had begun a process to retrieve 15 boxes taken from the White House at the end of Trump's term to his private estate, the Mar-a-Lago, and successfully negotiated with Trump's lawyers in retrieving the documents.

Among what was contained in the documents was classified information.

Following the discovery, the National Archives flagged the incident to the Justice Department and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform began an investigation into the documents. The Justice Department would instruct the National Archives not to share any more details about the documents to the committee, implying that the FBI was beginning a separate investigation. 

In May 2022, the Justice Department subpoenaed the National Archives in an attempt to obtain the documents, and had interviewed several White House officials who were present in the days leading up to Trump's departure from the White House, seemingly confirming that the Justice Department was beginning a grand jury investigation into the documents.

Of the documents retrieved by NARA from Mar-a-Lago, archivists and federal agents determined that 184 unique documents had classification markings, of which 25 were marked "top secret", 92 "secret" and 67 "confidential". 

Some materials were governed by special access programs (SAP), a type of protocol reserved for extremely sensitive U.S. operations conducted abroad, intended to significantly limit access to the information.

Investigation:

Mar-a-Lago security footage subpoena:

On June 22, 2022, the Justice Department subpoenaed surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago of the basement where records had been stored. According to the New York Times, sources familiar with the tapes revealed that "the video showed boxes being moved out of the storage room sometime around the contact from the Justice Department. And it also showed boxes being slipped into different containers, which alarmed investigators."

FBI search of Mar-a-Lago:
Main article: FBI search of Mar-a-Lago

On August 8, 2022, the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, seizing many documents and beginning their investigation into them.

That day, FBI agents seized 26 boxes from Mar-a-Lago, including 11 sets of classified government materials, of which one set was top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI), four sets were classified as top secret, three sets were classified as secret, and three sets of papers were classified as confidential.

TS/SCI is the highest possible classification and is supposed to be read exclusively in secure government facilities. On August 26, 2022, the FBI released a partly redacted affidavit used to obtain the search warrant. The affidavit revealed that "a significant number of civilian witnesses" had provided information that led the FBI to suspect violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.

Response:

Trump has claimed that he made a "standing order" to declassify all material brought to Mar-a-lago, though there is no known documentation of the order and none of the laws cited in the investigation require the documents to contain classified information. 

Trump's legal team has also sued to request a "Special Master", which would ensure that the Justice department return any of his private belongings taken during the search. Trump has also suggested, without evidence, that the FBI planted classified documents taken during the search, and that the search itself was unnecessary, saying "the government could have had whatever they wanted, if we had it.".







​
google080f63eb62078b87.html