text: 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.


title: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: In June 2017, the Senate voted 98 to2 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 to3.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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."


text: 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."


text: 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.


text: 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.<ref name="Cohen_Sciutto_10/20/2017"></ref>


text: Paul Ryan also claimed it is "clear" that the Russian interference "didn't have a material effect on our elections."


text: 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".<ref name="Lewis_6/28/2019"></ref><ref name="C-SPAN_6/28/2019"></ref>


text: 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.


text: Political scientist Kathleen Hall Jamieson, in a concludes that Russian trolls and hackers persuaded enough Americans "to either vote a certain way or not vote at all", thus impacting election results.


text: 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).


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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."


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: Mueller assembled a legal team.<ref name="Karimi_Perez_6/16/2017"></ref> 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.<ref name="Jarrett_Perez_6/10/2017"></ref><ref name="Green_de_Vogue_6/16/2017"></ref> All but Sekulow have since resigned. In August 2017 Mueller was using a grand jury.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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."


text: 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.


text: 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."


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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 ..."


text: 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."


text: In November 2022, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin admitted to Russian interference in U.S. elections. CNN reported that "his statement appeared to be the first admission of a high-level Russian campaign to interfere in US elections from someone close to the Kremlin."


text: In 2018, Prigozhin had been indicted along with 12 other Russian nationals and 3 Russian firms, as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference. In 2020, the Justice department had dismissed the indictments against Prigozhin's catering firm Concord, because the inability to punish the indicted would possibly lead to the exposure of law enforcement techniques in the process of trial. In July 2022 the State Department offered a $10 million reward for information on Prigozhin and the Internet Research Agency among other Russian interference mechanisms. Prigozhin's admission of election interference in November followed his admission of funding the Kremlin-linked far-right mercenary Wagner Group in September 2022. He had also been placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list in 2021.


text: U.S. officials were left unsurprised by the Russian oligarch's confession, which was phrased as a vague threat. "Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere... Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once." Long sanctioned by the United States, the timing and vagueness of Prigozhin's admission could include elements of disinformation, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre describing it as one of many Russian narratives "aimed at undermining democracy". She stated the oligarch's comments "do not tell us anything new or surprising."


text: State Department spokesman Ned Price said that "His bold confession, if anything, appears to be just a manifestation of the impunity that crooks and cronies enjoy under President Putin and the Kremlin... As you know, we have sanctioned this individual, Yevgeny Prigozhin, since 2018 for his interference with our election processes and institutions.”


text: On November 17, 2022, Republican political operative Jesse Benton was convicted by a federal jury for a 2016 scheme to funnel Russian money to the Donald Trump campaign. According to court documents, Benton caused a Russian foreign national to wire $100,000 to his consulting firm, of which $25,000 of the money from the Russian national was contributed to the Trump campaign.


text: 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.


text: 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. , the FBI was investigating Russian involvement in the election, including alleged links between Trump's associates and the Russian government.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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. That day, New York state prosecutors also 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.


text: 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.<ref name="Savage_5/25/2017"></ref> 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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 lead to his sentencing being postponed several times.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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."


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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".


text: 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.<ref name="Parker_7/31/2017"></ref>


text: 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.


text: 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 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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.


text: 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, Steele did not know the identities of Fusion GPS's ultimate clients, which were no longer Republicans, but 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.


text: 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.<ref name="Borger_4/28/2017"></ref> 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 News on January 10.<ref name="Bensinger_1/10/2017"></ref>


text: 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.


text: John Brennan and James Clapper testified to Congress that Steele's dossier played no role in the intelligence community assessment<ref name="ODNI_1/6/2017"></ref> about Russian interference in the 2016 election,<ref name="Samuels_2/4/018"></ref><ref name="Benner_Barnes_12/19/2019"></ref> testimony which was reaffirmed by an April 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. The committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments".<ref name="Jalonick_Tucker_4/21/2020"></ref> In a December 2020 interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, Brennan said: "The Steele dossier was not used in any way to undergird the judgments that came out of the intelligence community assessment about the Russian actions in the 2016 election... There was so much other evidence and intelligence to support those judgments."<ref name="Blitzer_12/6/2020"></ref>


text: 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.


text: Polls conducted in early January 2017 showed that 55% of respondents believed Russia interfered in the election; 51% believed Russia intervened through hacking. public-opinion polls showed a partisan split on the importance of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election. At that time, however, the broader issue of the Trump administration's relationship with Russia didn't even register among the most important problems facing the U.S. An NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll found that 53 percent wanted a Congressional inquiry into communications in 2016 between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Quinnipiac University found that 47 percent thought it was very important. A March 2017 poll conducted by the Associated Press and NORC found about 62% of respondents say they are at least moderately concerned about the possibility that Trump or his campaign had inappropriate contacts with Russia during the 2016 campaign.


text: A January 2017 poll conducted by the Levada Center, Russia's largest independent polling organization, showed that only 12% of Russian respondents believed Russia "definitely" or "probably" interfered in the U.S. election. A December 2017 survey conducted by the Levada Center found that 31% of Russian respondents thought their government tried to influence U.S. domestic affairs in a significant way.


text: A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in late March and early April 2017 found that 68% of voters supported "an independent commission investigating the potential links between some of Donald Trump's campaign advisors and the Russian government". An April 2017 NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll found that respondents had little confidence in Congress's investigation into the Russian interference in the election. The poll found that approximately 73% supported a "nonpartisan, independent commission" to look into Russia's involvement in the election.<ref name="Zitner_4/24/2017"></ref> An ABC News/"Washington Post" poll conducted in April 2017 found that 56 percent of respondents thought Russia tried to influence the election.<ref name="Holyk_4/26/2017"></ref>


text: A May 2017 Monmouth University poll, conducted after the dismissal of James Comey, found that "nearly 6-in-10 Americans thought it was either very (40%) or somewhat (19%) likely that Comey was fired in order to slow down or stop the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links with the Trump campaign." Like other recent opinion polls, a majority, 73%, said that the FBI investigation should continue.


text: A June 2017 NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll found that respondents were more likely to believe James Comey over Trump when it came to their differing accounts behind the reasons for Comey's dismissal. The survey found that 45% of respondents were more likely to believe Comey than Trump. The poll also found that the number of respondents disapproving of Trump's decision to fire Comey- 46%- was higher than when the same question was asked in May of the same year. 53% of respondents said that they believed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, however the number changes by party affiliation. 78% of Democrats said that they believed there was interference, versus 26% of Republicans who agreed. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll conducted in late June 2017 found that 54% of respondents believed that Trump either did "something illegal" or "something unethical, but not illegal" in his dealings with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The poll found that 73% of Republicans said Trump himself has done "nothing wrong" while 41% of Democrats believed that Trump did something that was illegal. In addition, 47% said that they thought Russia was a major threat to future U.S. elections, while 13% of respondents said that Russia posed no threat at all.


text: A July 2017 ABC News/"Washington Post" poll found that 63% of respondents said that it "was inappropriate for Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign manager to have met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign." The poll also found that six in ten overall who think that Russia tried to influence the election, with 72% saying that they thought that Trump benefited and that "67 percent thought that members of his campaign intentionally helped those efforts."


text: Polls conducted in August 2017 found widespread disapproval and distrust of Trump's handling of the investigation. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in early August found that only 31% of respondents approved of Trump's handling of the matter. The poll also noted that 60% of adults "thought that it was a serious matter that should be fully investigated." On party lines, the poll found that 15% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans approved of Trump's handling of the matter. A Gallup poll from the same month found similar trends. The poll found that 25% of respondents said Trump acted illegally in dealings with the Russians. The poll found that 6% of Republicans and Republican-leaners thought Trump did something illegal in his dealings with the Russians. A poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 58% of respondents expressed a negative view of Russia, while 25% had a favorable view of the country. The poll also found that 48% believed "there is clear evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help the Trump campaign." The broader issue of the Trump administration's relationship with Russia, however, was not identified by more than one percent of respondents in Gallup tracking of 'Most Important Problem' at any point since February 2017. (As of July 2018, it was less than half a percent.)


text: A July 2018 an online Ipsos poll found that 60% of American believed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with 85% of democrats and 53% of Independents believing so compared to 46% of Republicans. 66% of democrats approved of the special counsel investigation compared to 32% of Republicans and 36% of Independents. In addition 75% of republicans believed the special counsel investigation was the result of anti-Trump bias. Compared to 32% of democrats and 36% of independents.


text: A July 2018 Ipsos/Reuters poll found that 56% of Americans believed that Russia did interfere in support of Trump.


text: A March 2019 poll released after reports of the findings of the Mueller report found that 48% of respondents said they believed "Trump or someone from his campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election"; 53% said "Trump tried to stop investigations into Russian influence on his administration"; and "Democrats [were] much more likely than Republicans to believe that Trump colluded with Russia and obstructed justice." In addition, 39% of respondents felt that Trump "should be impeached," while 49% said that he should not.


text: On December 15, 2016, Hillary Clinton said she partially attributed her loss in the 2016 election to Russian meddling organized by Putin. Clinton said Putin had a personal grudge against her, and linked his feelings to her criticism of the 2011 Russian legislative election, adding that he felt she was responsible for fomenting the 2011–13 Russian protests. She drew a specific connection from her 2011 assertions as U.S. Secretary of State that Putin rigged the elections that year, to his actions in the 2016 U.S. elections. During the third debate, Clinton stated that Putin favored Trump, "because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States".<ref name="Blake_10/19/2016"></ref> Clinton said that by personally attacking her through meddling in the election, Putin additionally took a strike at the American democratic system. She said the cyber attacks were a larger issue than the effect on her own candidacy and called them an attempt to attack the national security of the United States. Clinton noted she was unsuccessful in sufficiently publicizing to the media the cyber attacks against her campaign in the months leading up to the election. She voiced her support for a proposal put forth by Senators from both parties, to set up an investigative panel to look into the matter akin to the 9/11 Commission.


text: Chief of staff-designate for Trump and outgoing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in December 2016 that he still didn't know who hacked the DNC's computer servers.


text: The RNC said there was no intrusion into its servers, while acknowledging email accounts of individual Republicans (including Colin Powell) were breached. More than 200 emails from Colin Powell were posted on the website DC Leaks. Priebus appeared on "Meet the Press" on December 11, 2016, and discounted the CIA conclusions. Priebus said the FBI had investigated and found that RNC servers had not been hacked.


text: Prior to his presidential run, Donald Trump made statements to Fox News in 2014 in which he agreed with an assessment by then FBI director James Comey about hacking against the U.S. by Russia and China. Trump was played a clip of Comey from "60 Minutes" discussing the dangers of cyber attacks. Trump stated he agreed with the problem of cyber threats posed by China, and went on to emphasize there was a similar problem towards the U.S. posed by Russia.


text: In September 2016, during the first presidential debate, Trump said he doubted whether anyone knew who hacked the DNC, and disputed Russian interference. During the second debate, Trump said there might not have been hacking at all, and questioned why accountability was placed on Russia.


text: During the third debate, Trump rejected Clinton's claim that Putin favored Trump. Trump's words "our country has no idea" and "I doubt it" were deeply shocking to the British because "all NATO allies" and "all of America's intelligence agencies" were "sure Russia was behind the hacking", according to Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek. Trump denied these conclusions "based on absolutely nothing... That he would so aggressively fight to clear Putin and cast aspersions on all Western intelligence agencies, left the British officials slack-jawed."<ref name="Eichenwald_11/4/2016"></ref>


text: After the election, Trump rejected the CIA analysis and asserted that the reports were politically motivated to deflect from the Democrats' electoral defeat. Trump's transition team said in a brief statement: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." However, the intelligence analysts involved in monitoring Russian activities were different from those who assessed that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, while post-Iraq War reforms have made it less likely for similar errors to reach the highest levels of the U.S. intelligence community. Trump dismissed reports of Russia's interference, calling them "ridiculous"; he placed blame on Democrats upset over election results for publicizing these reports, and cited Julian Assange's statement that "a 14-year-old kid could have hacked Podesta". After Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and announced further sanctions on Russia, Trump commended Putin for refraining from retaliatory measures against the United States until the Trump administration would lay out its policy towards Russia.


text: On January 6, 2017, after meeting with members of U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump released a statement saying: cyberwarfare had no impact on the election and did not harm voting machines. In the same statement, he vowed to form a national cybersecurity task force to prepare an anti-hacking plan within 90 days of taking office. Referring to the Office of Personnel Management data breach in 2015, Trump said he was under a "political witch hunt" and wondered why there was no focus on China. Two days later, Reince Priebus said Trump had begun to acknowledge that "entities in Russia" were involved in the DNC leaks. On January 11, 2017, Trump conceded that Russia was probably the source of the leaks, although he also said it could have been another country.<ref name="Davis_Haberman_1/11/2017"></ref>


text: On November 11, 2017, after meeting Vladimir Putin at a summit in Vietnam, Trump said, "I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election... Every time he sees me he says: 'I didn't do that,' and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it." Trump went on to contrast Putin's "very strongly, vehemently" spoken denials with the word of American former intelligence officials who he termed as "political hacks": John Brennan, James Clapper, and the "liar" and "leaker" James Comey. But a day later, when asked to clarify his comments, Trump said, "As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our [intelligence] agencies, especially as currently constituted." Brennan and Clapper, appearing on CNN, expressed concern that Trump was "giving Putin a pass" and showing the Russian leader that "Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities."


text: In 2019, "The Washington Post" revealed that (according to former officials) in May 2017 Trump had privately told Russian officials Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak he wasn't concerned about Russia interfering in American elections. In early October 2022, "The New York Times" reported that Trump had retained secret government documents found by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago domicile earlier the same year with the intention of pressuring the agency into trading them for files allegedly substantiating his claims that any Russian interference during the election was a "hoax", as he had constantly maintained in public.<ref name="Haberman_Smith_10/8/2022"></ref>


text: The Steele dossier alleges that the Russians have kompromat on Trump which could be used to blackmail him, and that the Kremlin promised the kompromat will not be used as long as he continues his cooperation with them.<ref name="Withnall_Sengupta_1/12/2017"></ref><ref name="Bertrand_1/10/2017"></ref> Trump's actions at the Helsinki summit in 2018 "led many to conclude that Steele's report was more accurate than not... Trump sided with the Russians over the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Moscow had waged an all-out attack on the 2016 election... The joint news conference... cemented fears among some that Trump was in Putin's pocket and prompted bipartisan backlash."<ref name="Bertrand_9/30/2019"></ref>


text: At the joint news conference, when asked directly about the subject, Putin denied that he had any kompromat on Trump. Even though Trump was reportedly given a "gift from Putin" the weekend of the pageant, Putin argued "that he did not even know Trump was in Russia for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 when, according to the Steele dossier, video of Trump was secretly recorded to blackmail him."<ref name="Mackey_7/16/2018"></ref>


text: Several operatives and lawyers in the U.S. intelligence community reacted strongly to Trump's performance at the summit. They described it as "subservien[ce] to Putin" and a "fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine" which they saw as "harmful to U.S. interests". They also suggested that he was either a "Russian asset" or a "useful idiot" for Putin,<ref name="Sheth_8/30/2019"></ref> and that he looked like "Putin's puppet".<ref name="Sheth_8/27/2019"></ref> Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wondered "if Russians have something on Trump",<ref name="CNN_7/19/2018"></ref> and former CIA director John O. Brennan, who has accused Trump of "treason", tweeted: "He is wholly in the pocket of Putin."<ref name="Sevastopulo_Hille_7/20/2018"></ref>


text: Former acting CIA director Michael Morell has called Trump "an unwitting agent of the Russian federation", and former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said Trump was a "useful fool" who is "manipulated by Moscow".<ref name="Boot_1/13/2019"></ref> House Speaker Nancy Pelosi questioned Trump's loyalty when she asked him: "[Why do] all roads lead to Putin?"<ref name="DeBonis_Kim_10/17/2019"></ref>


text: Ynet, an Israeli online news site, reported on January 12, 2017, that U.S. intelligence had advised Israeli intelligence officers to be cautious about sharing information with the incoming Trump administration, until the possibility of Russian influence over Trump, suggested by Steele's report, has been fully investigated.<ref name="Bergman_1/12/2017"></ref>


text: Ex-spy Yuri Shvets, who was a partner of the assassinated Alexander Litvinenko, believes that the KGB cultivated Trump as an asset for over 40 years. Yuri Shvets, a source for journalist Craig Unger, compared the former president to the Cambridge Five who passed secrets to Moscow. Shvets believes that Semyon Kislin was a "spotter agent" who identified Trump as an asset in 1980. Among other things Shvets highlights Trump's visit to the Soviet Union in 1987. Yuri Shvets believes Trump was fed KGB talking points. For example, after Trump's return to New York, Trump took out full-page ads in major newspapers criticizing American allies and spending on NATO. Yuri Shvets claims that at the chief KGB directorate in Yasenevo, he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful "active measure". Shvets described the Mueller Report as a "big disappointment" because it focused only on "crime-related issues" rather than "counterintelligence aspects".


text: Journalist Luke Harding argued that Trump's visit to the Soviet Union in 1987 was arranged by the KGB as part of KGB overtures to recruit a wider variety of agents.


text: In an interview on February 14, 2018, Pence said, "Irrespective of efforts that were made in 2016 by foreign powers, it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any impact on the outcome of the 2016 election." (In fact, in January 2017 the intelligence community had published a statement saying, "We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.") Pence added, "It doesn't mean that there weren't efforts, and we do know there were—there were efforts by Russia and likely by other countries. We take that very seriously."


text: The CIA assessment, and Trump's dismissal of it, created an unprecedented rupture between the president-elect and the intelligence community. On December 11, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials responded to Trump's denunciation of their findings in a written statement, and expressed dismay that Trump disputed their conclusions as politically motivated or inaccurate. They wrote that intelligence officials were motivated to defend U.S. national security. Members of the intelligence community feared reprisals from Donald Trump once he took office.


text: Former CIA Director Michael Morell said foreign interference in U.S. elections was an existential threat. Former CIA spokesman George E. Little condemned Trump for dismissing the CIA assessment, saying the president-elect's atypical response was disgraceful and denigrated the courage of those who serve in the CIA at risk to their own lives.


text: Former NSA director and CIA director Michael V. Hayden posited that Trump's antagonizing the Intelligence Community signaled the administration would rely less on intelligence for policy-making. Independent presidential candidate and former CIA intelligence officer Evan McMullin criticized the Republican leadership for failing to respond adequately to Russia's meddling in the election process. McMullin said Republican politicians were aware that publicly revealed information about Russia's interference was likely the tip of the iceberg relative to the actual threat. Former NSA director Michael V. Hayden has stated that Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election is the "most successful covert influence operation in history".<ref name="Munslow_7/21/2017"></ref> Hayden went further saying that Trump was a "useful fool... manipulated by Moscow".<ref name="Hayden_11/3/2016"></ref>


text: A January 2017 report by the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence community did "not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election". Despite this, CIA Director Mike Pompeo claimed that "the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election" at an event hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on October 19, 2017. CIA agency spokesman Dean Boyd withdrew his remarks the next day saying they had been made in error.


text: On December 10, 2016, ten electors, headed by Christine Pelosi, daughter of former United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), wrote an open letter to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper demanding an intelligence briefing on investigations into foreign intervention in the presidential election. Fifty-eight additional electors subsequently added their names to the letter, bringing the total to 68 electors from 17 different states. The Clinton campaign supported the call for a classified briefing for electors. On December 16, 2016, the briefing request was denied.


text: The Russian government initially issued categorical denials of any involvement in the U.S. presidential election. By June 2016, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any connection of Russian government to the DNC hacks that had been blamed on Russia. At the Valdai Discussion Club forum in October 2016, Putin denounced American "hysteria" over alleged Russian interference.


text: When a new intelligence report surfaced in December 2016, Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia, rejected the accusations again. During a press conference, Putin deflected questions on the issue by accusing the U.S. Democratic Party of scapegoating Russia after losing the presidential election.


text: In June 2017, Putin said that "patriotically minded" Russian hackers could have been responsible for the cyberattacks against the U.S. during the 2016 campaign, while continuing to deny government involvement. Putin's comments echoed similar remarks that he had made earlier the same week to the French newspaper "Le Figaro". A few days later he said, "Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change. That's why, in the grand scheme of things, we don't care who's the head of the United States. We know more or less what is going to happen. And so in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn't make sense for us to interfere." Putin also invoked whataboutism and criticized U.S. foreign policy, saying, "Put your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are interfering in internal electoral processes."


text: In March 2018 Putin suggested that "Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship" might have been to blame for interfering with U.S. elections, and suggested that "maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work". Putin's statement was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee; both likened his comments to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", an antisemitic hoax first published in Russia in the early 20th century. Boruch Gorin, a prominent rabbi in Moscow, said that the translation of Putin's comment into English lacked critical nuance and that Russian Jews were largely indifferent to it.


title: Google Ads

text: Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the results of search engines like Google Search (the Google Search Network) and on non-search websites, mobile apps, and videos. Services are offered under a pay-per-click (PPC) pricing model.


title: Google Ads

text: Google launched AdWords in 2000. Initially, AdWords advertisers paid for the service monthly, and Google would set up and manage their campaigns. Google soon introduced the AdWords self-service portal to accommodate small businesses and those who wanted to manage their own campaigns. In 2005, Google started a campaign management service known as 'Jumpstart'.


title: Google Ads

text: The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use Oracle instead but was eventually reverted to MySQL after the system became much slower. Eventually, Google developed a custom distributed Relational database management system (RDBMS) known as Google F1 specifically for the needs of the Ad business. The interface offers Spreadsheet Editing, Search Query Reports, and conversion metrics.


title: Google Ads

text: In 2008, Google launched the Google Online Marketing Challenge, an in-class academic exercise for tertiary students. Over 8,000 students from 47 countries participated in the challenge in 2008, over 10,000 students from 58 countries took part in 2009, about 12,000 students in 2010, and almost 15,000 students from 70 countries in 2011. The challenge runs annually, roughly from January to June.


title: Google Ads

text: In April 2013, Google announced plans to add enhanced campaigns for AdWords to aid with campaign management catered to multiple-device users. The enhanced campaigns aimed to include advanced reports about users. This move was controversial among advertisers.


title: Google Ads

text: In July 2016, Google unveiled "Showcase Shopping" ads. With this format, retailers can choose to have a series of images that appear in search results related to various search queries and keywords.


title: Google Ads

text: In October 2017, Google revised AdWords' daily budget caps, which were previously set at a maximum of 120% of preset daily budgets, to a maximum of 200%. This change was rolled out on the same day it was announced, prompting criticism from paid search professionals. However, Google later clarified that this change would affect only short-term campaigns of less than 30 days and that for campaigns running more than 30 days, overage charges would be refunded.


title: Google Ads

text: In 2018, "Bloomberg News" reported that Google had paid millions of dollars to Mastercard for its users' credit card data for advertising purposes. The deal had not been publicly announced.


title: Google Ads

text: Google Ads' system is based partly on cookies and partly on keywords determined by advertisers. Google uses these characteristics to place advertising copy on pages that they think might be relevant. Advertisers pay when users divert their browsing to click on the advertising copy. Adverts can be implemented locally, nationally, or internationally.


title: Google Ads

text: Google's text advertisements mimic what the average search result looks like on Google. Image ads can be one of the several different standardized sizes as designated by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). In May 2016, Google announced Expanded Text Ads, allowing 23% more text.


title: Google Ads

text: Besides the Google search engine, advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner network, members of which receive a portion of generated income.


title: Google Ads

text: In addition to external search engine marketing agencies and consultants, Google has its own in-house team of account managers.


title: Google Ads

text: The "Family status" of an ad ("family safe", "non-family safe", or "adult") is set by a Google reviewer and indicates what “audiences the ad and website are appropriate for”. This affects when and where, including in which countries, an ad can appear.


title: Google Ads

text: As of December 2010, Google AdWords decreased restrictions on sales of hard alcohol. It now allows ads that promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor. This is an extension of a policy change that was made in December 2008, which permitted ads that promote the branding of hard alcohol and liquor.


title: Google Ads

text: Some keywords, such as those related to hacking, are not allowed at all. From June 2007, Google banned AdWords adverts for student essay-writing services, a move which received positive feedback from universities. Google has a variety of specific keywords and categories that it prohibits that vary by type and by country. For example, use of keywords for alcohol related products are prohibited in Thailand and Turkey; keywords for gambling and casinos are prohibited in Poland; keywords for abortion services are prohibited in Russia and Ukraine; and keywords for adult related services or products are prohibited worldwide as of June 2014. In Early 2022, Google has paused all ad sales in Russia in response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.


title: Google Ads

text: In March 2020, at the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis, Google blocked all face masks keywords from being eligible for ad targeting as part of a policy to prevent companies from attempting to capitalize on the pandemic.


title: Google Ads

text: Every time a user conducts a search on Google, Google Ads runs an auction in real time to determine which search ads are displayed on the search results page as well as the ad's position. The cost of a Google Ads campaign therefore depends on a variety of factors, including the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay-per-click the keywords being bid on, and the quality score of the ad (based on its relevance and click frequency and ad extensions).


title: Google Ads

text: Although an advanced bidding strategy can be used to automatically reach a predefined cost-per-acquisition (CPA), this should not be confused with a fixed CPA pricing model.


title: Google Ads

text: In addition to tracking clicks, Google Ads provides advertisers an ability to track and report other conversions that happen after the click such as purchases, sign ups or calls.


title: Google Ads

text: Conversion tracking is implemented by sending an identifier to the advertiser's website as a URL parameter, which is then used by advertiser to send conversions to Google Ads, allowing Google Ads to trace conversion back to the original click for reporting. Google also allows advertisers to install a pixel on their website that sends conversions to the Adwords account. This allows advertisers to target their ads to drive conversions more effectively. For most traffic, Google sends a unique identifier for each click (in a "gclid" parameter), allowing to determine source of conversion precisely. To comply with tracking restrictions on Apple devices, anonymized identifiers that aren't associated with specific person are used (called "wbraid" and "gbraid"). Google Ads provides ability to report many of such anonymous conversions by using "modeled conversions" that combine additional customer details to deduce, which user to attribute the conversion to.


title: Google Ads

text: Google Ads have been the subject of lawsuits relating to trademark law ("Google, Inc. v. Am. Blind & Wallpaper Factory" and "Rescuecom Corp. v. Google Inc."), fraud ("Goddard v. Google, Inc."), and click fraud.


title: Google Ads

text: Overture Services, Inc. sued Google for patent infringement in April 2002 in relation to the AdWords service. The suit was settled in 2004 after Yahoo! acquired Overture; Google agreed to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license under the patent.


title: Google Ads

text: In May 2011, Google cancelled the AdWords advertisement purchased by a Dublin sex worker rights group named "Turn Off the Blue Light" (TOBL), claiming that it represented an "egregious violation" of company ad policy by "selling adult sexual services". However, TOBL is a nonprofit campaign for sex worker rights and is not advertising or selling adult sexual services. After TOBL members held a protest outside Google's European headquarters in Dublin and sent in written complaints, Google reviewed the group's website. Google found the website content to be advocating a political position and restored the AdWords advertisement.


title: Google Ads

text: In June 2012, Google rejected the Australian Sex Party's ads for AdWords and sponsored search results for the July 12 by-election for the state seat of Melbourne, saying the Australian Sex Party breached its rules which prevent solicitation of donations by a website that did not display tax exempt status. Although the Australian Sex Party amended its website to display tax deductibility information, Google continued to ban the ads. The ads were reinstated on election eve after it was reported in the media that the Australian Sex Party was considering suing Google. On September 13, 2012, the Australian Sex Party lodged formal complaints against Google with the US Department of Justice and the Australian competition watchdog, accusing Google of "unlawful interference in the conduct of a state election in Victoria with corrupt intent" in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.


title: Google Ads

text: In December 2019, France fined Google €150 million for advertiser suspensions on Google Ads, arguing it had "abused its dominant position by adopting opaque and difficult to understand rules" which it was then free to "interpret and modify" at its own discretion.


title: Google Ads

text: Google has come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on a wide variety of search terms in the US and Canada, including trademarks of their competitors and in May 2008 expanded this policy to the UK and Ireland. Advertisers are restricted from using other companies' trademarks in their advertisement text if the trademark has been registered with Advertising Legal Support team.


title: Google Ads

text: In March 2010, Google was involved with a trademark infringement case involving three French companies that own Louis Vuitton trademarks. The lawsuit concerned if Google was responsible for advertisers purchasing keywords that violate trademark infringement. Ultimately, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google AdWords were “not a breach of EU trademark law, but that the content of some advertisements that are linked by Google keywords may well be in breach depending upon the particular facts of the case.” Additionally, in some American jurisdictions, the use of a person's name as a keyword for advertising or trade purposes without the person's consent has raised Right to Privacy concerns.


title: Google Ads

text: In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in 1"-800 Contacts, Inc. v. Lens.com, Inc." that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased AdWords and other search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword. In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging that its search advertising trademark enforcement practices have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act. 1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and is scheduled to appear before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.


title: Google Ads

text: In 2018, Google implemented a policy change which restricts the advertising of consumer technical support, including, "troubleshooting, security, virus removal, internet connectivity, online accounts (for example, password resets or login support), or software installation", Google's Director of Global Product Policy, David Graff stated that the policy was intended to "address abuse" and "fraudulent activity" from third-party technical support providers, and that a verification program for legitimate providers would be rolled out "in the coming months". This is yet to manifest, resulting in an effective ban on all IT support and repair related services on the Google Ads platform. Commentators have expressed concerns that this is an attempt by Google to stifle consumers' right to repair electronic devices.


title: Google Ads

text: Fossil fuel companies, funders and public relations agencies including ExxonMobil, Shell, Aramco, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs are among the largest customers of Google Ads. One in five Google Ads for climate-related terms (e.g. net zero, carbon storage, carbon capture and energy transition) were paid by fossil fuel companies. A study by "The Guardian" and InfluenceMap found that Shell's ads appeared on 86% of searches for "net zero". Over half of users in a 2020 survey could not tell the difference between a normal Google result and a Google Ad. One of the study's authors, InfluenceMap stated "Google is letting groups with a vested interest in the continued use of fossil fuels pay to influence the resources people receive when they are trying to educate themselves. The oil and gas sector has moved away from contesting the science of climate change and now instead seeks to influence public discussions about decarbonization in its favor."


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The Producers is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks in his directorial debut and starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film is about a theater producer and his accountant who, as part of a scam, decide to stage the worst stage musical they can create. They find a script centering on Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and bring it to the stage. Because of this theme, "The Producers" was controversial from the start and received mixed reviews. It became a cult film and found a more positive critical reception later.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: "The Producers" was Brooks's directorial debut. For the film, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry and placed eleventh on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list. It was later adapted by Brooks and Thomas Meehan as a stage musical, which itself was adapted into a film.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) is an aging, fraudulent, corruptible, and greedy Broadway producer past his prime who ekes out a hand-to-mouth existence romancing lascivious, wealthy elderly women in exchange for money for a "next play" that may never be produced. Accountant Leopold "Leo" Bloom (Gene Wilder), a nervous young man prone to hysterics, arrives at Max's office to audit his accounts and discovers a $2,000 discrepancy in the accounts of Max's last play. Max persuades Leo to hide the relatively minor fraud, and while shuffling numbers, Leo has a revelation—a producer can make a lot more money with a flop than a hit by overselling shares in the production, because no one will audit the books of a play presumed to have lost money. For this same reason, no duped investor will be aware of the many others, thus protecting the pair from charges of fraud. Max instantly puts this scheme into action. They will oversell shares on a massive scale and produce a play that will close on opening night, thus avoiding payouts and leaving the duo free to flee to Rio de Janeiro with the profits. Leo is afraid such a criminal venture will fail and they will go to prison, but Max eventually convinces him that his current drab existence is no better than prison.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The partners find the ideal play for their scheme: "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden." It is "a love letter to Hitler" written in total sincerity by deranged ex-Nazi Franz Liebkind (Kenneth Mars). Max and Leo persuade Liebkind to sign over the stage rights, telling him they want to show the world a positive representation of Hitler. To guarantee the show is a flop, they hire Roger De Bris (Christopher Hewett), a director whose plays "close on the first day of rehearsal." The part of Hitler goes to a charismatic but barely coherent flower power hippie named Lorenzo Saint DuBois, also known as L.S.D. (Dick Shawn), who had mistakenly wandered into the theater during the casting call. Max sells 25,000% of the play to his regular investors. At the theatre on opening night, Max tries to ensure a truly terrible review by attempting to bribe the critic who came to see the show. As expected, the man is outraged and hurls the money Max wrapped around the tickets he gave him at Max's feet. Max and Leo sneak off to a bar across the street to wait for the audience to storm out once they actually see the show.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The play opens with a lavish production of the title song, "Springtime for Hitler", which celebrates Nazi Germany crushing Europe ("Springtime for Hitler and Germany/Winter for Poland and France"). The audience is horrified and rises en masse after the number. At this point L.S.D. comes on stage as Hitler, and it is evident from his beatnik-like portrayal that De Bris has altered the script and directed the play as a satire. Meanwhile, L.S.D.'s portrayal of Hitler enrages and humiliates Franz, who—after dropping the curtain and rushing out on stage—confronts the audience and rants about the treatment of his beloved play. He is knocked out and removed from the stage, and the audience assumes that his rant was part of the act. To Max and Leo's shock and horror, "Springtime for Hitler" is declared a comic smash hit, which means that the investors will be expecting a larger financial return than can be paid out.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: A gun-wielding Franz confronts Max and Leo, accusing them of breaking the "Siegfried Oath". He tries first to shoot them, and then himself, but runs out of bullets. The three then decide to blow up the theater to end the production, but they are injured, arrested, tried, and found "incredibly guilty" by the jury. Before sentencing, Leo makes an impassioned statement praising Max for being his friend and changing his life. Max tells the judge that they have learned their lesson.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Max, Leo, and Franz are sent to the state penitentiary. There they produce a new musical called "Prisoners of Love", a show which looks even worse than "Springtime for Hitler", mostly because Leo and Max are striving to make a good play instead of a bad one. While Max and Franz earnestly supervise rehearsals, Leo continues their old scam—overselling shares of the play to their fellow prisoners, and even to the warden. The song "Prisoners of Love" plays while the credits roll.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: The title "Springtime for Hitler" was first coined by Brooks as a joke during the press conference for "All American" in 1962. Shortly afterwards, he also decided to relate this title to a character named Leo Bloom, an homage to Leopold Bloom, protagonist of James Joyce's "Ulysses." It was reused by him years later once he had an idea about "two schnooks on Broadway who set out to produce a flop and swindle the backers". The inspiration was some people Brooks met during his early show business days: Benjamin Kutcher, a New York producer who financed his plays by sleeping with elderly women, became the basis for Max Bialystock, and the scheme had origins in two theater producers who had a lavish lifestyle while making various unsuccessful plays. When imagining what play "would have people packing up and leaving the theatre even before the first act is over", Brooks decided to combine Adolf Hitler and a musical. Brooks, in a 2001 episode of "60 Minutes", stated that, while serving in the army, he would be called "Jew boy", and lightheartedly admitted that he made "The Producers" to "get even" with antisemites, particularly Hitler. In another interview, he further explained his reasoning, stating,


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Brooks first envisioned his story as a novel, and changed it to a play when he realized it had "too much dialogue, not enough story". He wrote the script in nine months, with the help of secretary Alfa-Betty Olsen. During the process, he mentioned in an October 1966 interview with "Playboy" that he was working on "Springtime for Hitler," "a play within a play, or a play within a film – I haven't decided yet". Then, it evolved into a screenplay to take advantage of various settings, as "it could go places, it wouldn’t have to stay in the office".


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: As Brooks sought backers for his 30-page film treatment, both major film studios and independent filmmakers rejected "Springtime for Hitler," finding the idea of using Hitler for comedy outrageous and tasteless (with some even stating that they would consider the script if Brooks changed it to "Springtime for Mussolini"). This changed as Brooks's agent arranged him to have a meeting with a friend of his, New York producer Sidney Glazier. Glazier laughed so much at Brooks' performance of the script, he accepted the project by saying, "We’re gonna make it! I don't know how, but we're gonna make this movie!"


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Glazier budgeted the film at $1 million, and sought financiers. Half the money came from philanthropist Louis Wolfson, who liked the idea of laughing at a dictator, and the remainder, along with the distribution, was arranged by Joseph E. Levine of Embassy Pictures. Levine's only condition was to change the title, as he felt many distributors would not carry a picture named "Springtime for Hitler." Brooks renamed it "The Producers," considering it ironic as "these guys are anything but producers". As Brooks "couldn't think of anybody to direct it", eventually he decided to take the task for himself, even though he himself had only directed one play before. While Levine was insecure in having an inexperienced director, Brooks convinced him by saying it would be cost-effective, and he knew how to do physical comedy after being a stage manager in "Your Show of Shows."


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Brooks wanted Samuel "Zero" Mostel as Max Bialystock, feeling he was an energetic actor who could convey such an egotistical character. Glazier sent the script to Mostel's lawyer, but the attorney hated it and never showed it to the actor. Eventually, Brooks had to send the script through Mostel's wife Kathryn Harkin. While Mostel did not like the prospect of playing "a Jewish producer going to bed with old women on the brink of the grave", his wife liked the script so much, she eventually convinced him to accept the role. Mostel allowed all his pent-up hostilities towards all the sources of his professional disappointments to spill over into his performance as Bialystock, making his a bitter, hate-filled, and often angry interpretation.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Gene Wilder met Brooks in 1963, as Wilder performed with Brooks' then-girlfriend Anne Bancroft in a stage adaptation of "Mother Courage." Wilder complained that the audience was laughing at his serious performance, and Brooks replied that Wilder was "a natural comic, you look like Harpo Marx", and said he would cast him as Leo Bloom once he finished the then-titled "Springtime for Hitler." When production arrived, Peter Sellers accepted an invitation to play Leo Bloom, but he never contacted again, so Brooks remembered Wilder, who was about to make his film debut in "Bonnie and Clyde." Wilder received the script to "The Producers" as Brooks visited him backstage during a performance of "Luv", and his co-star Renée Taylor was brought for a brief appearance as the actress playing Eva Braun.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Dustin Hoffman was originally cast as Liebkind. According to Brooks, late on the night before shooting began, Hoffman begged Brooks to let him out of his commitment to do the role so he could audition for the starring role in "The Graduate." Brooks was aware of the film, which co-starred Anne Bancroft (later Brooks' wife), and, skeptical that Hoffman would get the role, agreed to let him audition. When Hoffman did win the role of Ben Braddock, Brooks called in Kenneth Mars as Liebkind. Mars was originally invited because Brooks envisioned him as Roger De Bris, given he played a gay psychiatrist on Broadway. Instead, Mars was interested in Liebkind's role, which was his film debut and had him remain on the role while not filming as method acting. De Bris was instead portrayed by Christopher Hewett, the first actor who read for the role.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Once recent American Academy of Dramatic Arts graduate Lee Meredith was invited to audition, she was given the condition of knowing a Swedish accent. She borrowed a book from the AADA library to learn the accent, and won the role of Ulla with the screen test featuring the scene of her dancing. Bancroft suggested her friend Andréas Voutsinas for the role of Carmen Ghia, feeling his thick Greek accent would fit. Brooks thought of Dick Shawn to play Lorenzo "L.S.D." Saint DuBois, and the actor accepted for both liking the part and having no work. Writer-director Mel Brooks is heard briefly in the film, his voice dubbed over a dancer singing, "Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party", in the song "Springtime For Hitler". His version of the line is also dubbed into each performance of the musical, as well as the 2005 movie version.


title: The Producers (1967 film)

text: Principal photography for "The Producers" began on May 22, 1967. Filming had to be done in 40 days on a $941,000 budget, and Brooks managed to fit both requests. The primary location was the Chelsea Studios in New York City, where the musical version (2005) was also shot. The now-demolished Playhouse Theatre hosted the "Springtime for Hitler" play, and various actors who heard the film was seeking an actor for Hitler were cast in the musical number. The crew tried to film on location whenever possible, filming on such midtown Manhattan locales as Central Park, the Empire State Building, and Lincoln Center.