title: John Updike

text: After his early novels, Updike became most famous for his chronicling infidelity, adultery, and marital unrest, especially in suburban America; and for his controversial depiction of the confusion and freedom inherent in this breakdown of social mores.


title: John Updike

text: "The Coup" (1978), a lauded novel about an African dictatorship inspired by a visit he made to Africa, found Updike working in new territory.


title: John Updike

text: In 1980, he published another novel featuring Harry Angstrom, "Rabbit Is Rich", which won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—all three major American literary prizes. The novel found "Rabbit the fat and happy owner of a Toyota dealership". Updike found it difficult to end the book, because he was "having so much fun" in the imaginary county Rabbit and his family inhabited.


title: John Updike

text: After writing "Rabbit Is Rich", Updike published "The Witches of Eastwick" (1984), a playful novel about witches living in Rhode Island. He described it as an attempt to "make things right with my, what shall we call them, feminist detractors". One of Updike's most popular novels, it was adapted as a film and included on Harold Bloom's list of canonical 20th-century literature (in "The Western Canon"). In 2008 Updike published "The Widows of Eastwick", a return to the witches in their old age. It was his last published novel.


title: John Updike

text: In 1986, he published the unconventional novel "Roger's Version", the second volume of the so-called "Scarlet Letter" trilogy, about an attempt to prove God's existence using a computer program. Author and critic Martin Amis called it a "near-masterpiece". The novel "S." (1989), uncharacteristically featuring a female protagonist, concluded Updike's reworking of Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter".


title: John Updike

text: Updike enjoyed working in series; in addition to the Rabbit novels and the Maples stories, a recurrent Updike alter ego is the moderately well-known, unprolific Jewish novelist and eventual Nobel laureate Henry Bech, chronicled in three comic short-story cycles: "Bech, a Book" (1970), "Bech Is Back" (1981) and "Bech at Bay: A Quasi-Novel" (1998). These stories were compiled as "The Complete Henry Bech" (2001) by Everyman's Library. Bech is a comical and self-conscious antithesis of Updike's own literary persona: Jewish, a World War II veteran, reclusive, and unprolific to a fault.


title: John Updike

text: In 1990, he published the last Rabbit novel, "Rabbit at Rest", which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Over 500 pages long, the novel is among Updike's most celebrated. In 2000, Updike included the novella "Rabbit Remembered" in his collection "Licks of Love", drawing the Rabbit saga to a close. His Pulitzers for the last two Rabbit novels make Updike one of only four writers to have won two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, the others being William Faulkner, Booth Tarkington, and Colson Whitehead.


title: John Updike

text: In 1995, Everyman's Library collected and canonized the four novels as the omnibus "Rabbit Angstrom"; Updike wrote an introduction in which he described Rabbit as "a ticket to the America all around me. What I saw through Rabbit's eyes was more worth telling than what I saw through my own, though the difference was often slight." Updike later called Rabbit "a brother to me, and a good friend. He opened me up as a writer."


title: John Updike

text: After the publication of "Rabbit at Rest", Updike spent the rest of the 1990s and early 2000s publishing novels in a wide range of genres; the work of this period was frequently experimental in nature. These styles included the historical fiction of "Memories of the Ford Administration" (1992), the magical realism of "Brazil" (1994), the science fiction of "Toward the End of Time" (1997), the postmodernism of "Gertrude and Claudius" (2000), and the experimental fiction of "Seek My Face" (2002).


title: John Updike

text: In the midst of these, he wrote what was for him a more conventional novel, "In the Beauty of the Lilies" (1996), a historical saga spanning several generations and exploring themes of religion and cinema in America. It is considered the most successful novel of Updike's late career. Some critics have predicted that posterity may consider the novel a "late masterpiece overlooked or praised by rote in its day, only to be rediscovered by another generation", while others, though appreciating the English mastery in the book, thought it overly dense with minute detail and swamped by its scenic depictions and spiritual malaise. In "Villages" (2004), Updike returned to the familiar territory of infidelities in New England. His 22nd novel, "Terrorist" (2006), the story of a fervent young extremist Muslim in New Jersey, garnered media attention but little critical praise.


title: John Updike

text: In 2003, Updike published "", a large collection of his short fiction spanning the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. More than 800 pages long, with over one hundred stories, it has been called "a richly episodic and lyrical "Bildungsroman" ... in which Updike traces the trajectory from adolescence, college, married life, fatherhood, separation and divorce". It won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2004. This lengthy volume nevertheless excluded several stories found in his short-story collections of the same period.


title: John Updike

text: Updike worked in a wide array of genres, including fiction, poetry (most of it compiled in "Collected Poems: 1953–1993", 1993), essays (collected in nine separate volumes), a play ("Buchanan Dying", 1974), and a memoir ("Self-Consciousness", 1989).


title: John Updike

text: Updike's array of awards includes two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, two National Book Awards, three National Book Critics Circle awards, the 1989 National Medal of Arts, the 2003 National Humanities Medal, and the Rea Award for the Short Story for outstanding achievement. The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Updike to present the 2008 Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. government's highest humanities honor; Updike's lecture was titled "The Clarity of Things: What Is American about American Art".


title: John Updike

text: At the end of his life, Updike was working on a novel about St. Paul and early Christianity. Upon his death, "The New Yorker" published an appreciation by Adam Gopnik of Updike's lifetime association with the magazine, calling him "one of the greatest of all modern writers, the first American writer since Henry James to get himself fully expressed, the man who broke the curse of incompleteness that had haunted American writing".


title: John Updike

text: Updike married Mary Entwistle Pennington, an art student at Radcliffe College, in 1953, while he was still a student at Harvard. She accompanied him to Oxford, England, where she attended art school and where their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1955. The couple had three more children together: writer David (born 1957), artist Michael (born 1959) and artist Miranda (born 1960). They divorced in 1974. Updike had seven grandsons.


title: John Updike

text: In 1977 Updike married Martha Ruggles Bernhard, with whom he lived for more than thirty years in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. He died of lung cancer at a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts, on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.


title: John Updike

text: Updike published eight volumes of poetry over his career, including his first book "The Carpentered Hen" (1958), and one of his last, the posthumous "Endpoint" (2009). The "New Yorker" published excerpts of "Endpoint" in its March 16, 2009 issue. Much of Updike's poetical output was recollected in Knopf's "Collected Poems" (1993). He wrote that "I began as a writer of light verse, and have tried to carry over into my serious or lyric verse something of the strictness and liveliness of the lesser form." The poet Thomas M. Disch noted that because Updike was such a well-known novelist, his poetry "could be mistaken as a hobby or a foible"; Disch saw Updike's light verse instead as a poetry of "epigrammatical lucidity". His poetry has been praised for its engagement with "a variety of forms and topics", its "wit and precision", and for its depiction of topics familiar to American readers.


title: John Updike

text: British poet Gavin Ewart praised Updike for the metaphysical quality of his poetry and for his ability "to make the ordinary seem strange", and called him one of the few modern novelists capable of writing good poetry. Reading "Endpoint" aloud, the critic Charles McGrath claimed that he found "another, deeper music" in Updike's poetry, finding that Updike's wordplay "smooths and elides itself" and has many subtle "sound effects". John Keenan, who praised the collection "Endpoint" as "beautiful and poignant", noted that his poetry's engagement with "the everyday world in a technically accomplished manner seems to count against him".


title: John Updike

text: Updike was also a critic of literature and art, one frequently cited as one of the best American critics of his generation. In the introduction to "Picked-Up Pieces," his 1975 collection of prose, he listed his personal rules for literary criticism:


title: John Updike

text: 1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.


title: John Updike

text: 2. Give enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.


title: John Updike

text: 3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.


title: John Updike

text: 5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's œuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?


title: John Updike

text: To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never ... try to put the author "in his place," making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.


title: John Updike

text: He reviewed "nearly every major writer of the 20th century and some 19th-century authors", typically in "The New Yorker", always trying to make his reviews "animated". He also championed young writers, comparing them to his own literary heroes including Vladimir Nabokov and Marcel Proust. Good reviews from Updike were often seen as a significant achievement in terms of literary reputation and even sales; some of his positive reviews helped jump-start the careers of such younger writers as Erica Jong, Thomas Mallon and Jonathan Safran Foer.


title: John Updike

text: Bad reviews by Updike sometimes caused controversy, as when in late 2008 he gave a "damning" review of Toni Morrison's novel "A Mercy".


title: John Updike

text: Updike was praised for his literary criticism's conventional simplicity and profundity, for being an aestheticist critic who saw literature on its own terms, and for his longtime commitment to the practice of literary criticism.


title: John Updike

text: Much of Updike's art criticism appeared in "The New York Review of Books", where he often wrote about American art. His art criticism involved an aestheticism like that of his literary criticism.


title: John Updike

text: Updike's 2008 Jefferson Lecture, "The Clarity of Things: What's American About American Art?", dealt with the uniqueness of American art from the 18th century to the 20th. In the lecture he argued that American art, until the expressionist movement of the 20th century in which America declared its artistic "independence", is characterized by an insecurity not found in the artistic tradition of Europe.


title: John Updike

text: Two centuries after Jonathan Edwards sought a link with the divine in the beautiful clarity of things, William Carlos Williams wrote in introducing his long poem "Paterson" that "for the poet there are no ideas but in things." "No ideas but in things." The American artist, first born into a continent without museums and art schools, took Nature as his only instructor, and things as his principal study. A bias toward the empirical, toward the evidential object in the numinous fullness of its being, leads to a certain lininess, as the artist intently maps the visible in a New World that feels surrounded by chaos and emptiness.


title: John Updike

text: Updike is considered one of the greatest American fiction writers of his generation. He was widely praised as America's "last true man of letters", with an immense and far-reaching influence on many writers. The excellence of his prose style is acknowledged even by critics skeptical of other aspects of Updike's work.


title: John Updike

text: Several scholars have called attention to the importance of place, and especially of southeast Pennsylvania, in Updike's life and work. Bob Batchelor has described "Updike's Pennsylvania sensibility" as one with profound reaches that transcend time and place, such that in his writing, he used "Pennsylvania as a character" that went beyond geographic or political boundaries. SA Zylstra has compared Updike's Pennsylvania to Faulkner's Mississippi: "As with the Mississippi of Faulkner's novels, the world of Updike's novels is fictional (as are such towns as Olinger and Brewer), while at the same time it is recognizable as a particular American region." Sanford Pinsker observes that "Updike always felt a bit out of place" in places like "Ipswich, Massachusetts, where he lived for most of his life. In his heart—and, more important, in his imagination—Updike remained a staunchly Pennsylvania boy." Similarly, Sylvie Mathé maintains that "Updike's most memorable legacy appears to be his homage to Pennsylvania."


title: John Updike

text: Critics emphasize his "inimitable prose style" and "rich description and language", often favorably compared to Proust and Nabokov. Some critics consider the fluency of his prose to be a fault, questioning the intellectual depth and thematic seriousness of his work given the polish of his language and the perceived lightness of his themes, while others criticized Updike for misogynistic depictions of women and sexual relationships.


title: John Updike

text: Other critics argue that Updike's "dense vocabulary and syntax functions as a distancing technique to mediate the intellectual and emotional involvement of the reader". On the whole, however, Updike is extremely well regarded as a writer who mastered many genres, wrote with intellectual vigor and a powerful prose style, with "shrewd insight into the sorrows, frustrations, and banality of American life".


title: John Updike

text: Updike's character Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the protagonist of the series of novels widely considered his "magnum opus", has been said to have "entered the pantheon of signal American literary figures", along with Huckleberry Finn, Jay Gatsby, Holden Caulfield and others. A 2002 list by "Book" magazine of the 100 Best Fictional Characters Since 1900 listed Rabbit in the top five. The Rabbit novels, the Henry Bech stories, and the Maples stories have been canonized by Everyman's Library.


title: John Updike

text: After Updike's death, Harvard's Houghton Library acquired his papers, manuscripts, and letters, naming the collection the John Updike Archive. 2009 also saw the founding of the John Updike Society, a group of scholars dedicated to "awakening and sustaining reader interest in the literature and life of John Updike, promoting literature written by Updike, and fostering and encouraging critical responses to Updike's literary works". The Society will begin publishing "The John Updike Review", a journal of critical scholarship in the field of Updike studies. The John Updike Society First Biennial Conference took place in 2010 at Alvernia University.


title: John Updike

text: Eulogizing Updike in January 2009, the British novelist Ian McEwan wrote that Updike's "literary schemes and pretty conceits touched at points on the Shakespearean", and that Updike's death marked "the end of the golden age of the American novel in the 20th century's second half".


title: John Updike

text: McEwan said the Rabbit series is Updike's "masterpiece and will surely be his monument", and concluded:


title: John Updike

text: Jonathan Raban, highlighting many of the virtues that have been ascribed to Updike's prose, called "Rabbit at Rest" "one of the very few modern novels in English ... that one can set beside the work of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Joyce, and not feel the draft ... It is a book that works by a steady accumulation of a mass of brilliant details, of shades and nuances, of the byplay between one sentence and the next, and no short review can properly honor its intricacy and richness."


title: John Updike

text: The novelist Philip Roth, considered one of Updike's chief literary rivals, wrote, "John Updike is our time's greatest man of letters, as brilliant a literary critic and essayist as he was a novelist and short story writer. He is and always will be no less a national treasure than his 19th-century precursor, Nathaniel Hawthorne."


title: John Updike

text: The noted critic James Wood called Updike "a prose writer of great beauty, but that prose confronts one with the question of whether beauty is enough, and whether beauty always conveys all that a novelist must convey". In a review of "Licks of Love" (2001), Wood concluded that Updike's "prose trusses things in very pretty ribbons" but that there often exists in his work a "hard, coarse, primitive, misogynistic worldview". Wood both praised and criticized Updike's language for having "an essayistic saunter; the language lifts itself up on pretty hydraulics, and hovers slightly above its subjects, generally a little too accomplished and a little too abstract". According to Wood, Updike is capable of writing "the perfect sentence" and his style is characterized by a "delicate deferral" of the sentence. Of the beauty of Updike's language and his faith in the power of language that floats above reality, Wood wrote:


title: John Updike

text: For some time now Updike's language has seemed to encode an almost theological optimism about its capacity to refer. Updike is notably unmodern in his impermeability to silence and the interruptions of the abyss. For all his fabled Protestantism, both American Puritan and Lutheran-Barthian, with its cold glitter, its insistence on the aching gap between God and His creatures, Updike seems less like Hawthorne than Balzac, in his unstopping and limitless energy, and his cheerfully professional belief that stories can be continued; the very form of the Rabbit books—here extended a further instance—suggests continuance. Updike does not appear to believe that words ever fail us—'life's gallant, battered ongoingness ', indeed—and part of the difficulty he has run into, late in his career, is that he shows no willingness, verbally, to acknowledge silence, failure, interruption, loss of faith, despair and so on. Supremely, better than almost any other contemporary writer, he can always describe these feelings and states; but they are not inscribed in the language itself. Updike's language, for all that it gestures towards the usual range of human disappointment and collapse, testifies instead to its own uncanny success: to a belief that the world can always be brought out of its cloudiness and made clear in a fair season.


title: John Updike

text: In direct contrast to Wood's evaluation, the Oxford critic Thomas Karshan asserted that Updike is "intensely intellectual", with a style that constitutes his "manner of thought" not merely "a set of dainty curlicues". Karshan calls Updike an inheritor of the "traditional role of the epic writer". According to Karshan, "Updike's writing picks up one voice, joins its cadence, and moves on to another, like Rabbit himself, driving south through radio zones on his flight away from his wife and child."


title: John Updike

text: Disagreeing with Wood's critique of Updike's alleged over-stylization, Karshan evaluates Updike's language as convincingly naturalistic:


title: John Updike

text: Updike's sentences at their frequent best are not a complacent expression of faith. Rather, like Proust's sentences in Updike's description, they "seek an essence so fine the search itself is an act of faith." Updike aspires to "this sense of self-qualification, the kind of timid reverence towards what exists that Cézanne shows when he grapples for the shape and shade of a fruit through a mist of delicate stabs." Their hesitancy and self-qualification arise as they meet obstacles, readjust and pass on. If life is bountiful in New England, it is also evasive and easily missed. In the stories Updike tells, marriages and homes are made only to be broken. His descriptiveness embodies a promiscuous love for everything in the world. But love is precarious, Updike is always saying, since it thrives on obstructions and makes them if it cannot find them.


title: John Updike

text: Harold Bloom once called Updike "a minor novelist with a major style. A quite beautiful and very considerable stylist ... He specializes in the easier pleasures." Bloom also edited an important collection of critical essays on Updike in 1987, in which he concluded that Updike possessed a major style and was capable of writing beautiful sentences which are "beyond praise"; nevertheless, Bloom went on, "the American sublime will never touch his pages".


title: John Updike

text: On "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1981, the novelist and short-story writer John Cheever was asked why he did not write book reviews and what he would say if given the chance to review "Rabbit Is Rich". He replied:


title: John Updike

text: The reason I didn't review the book is that it perhaps would have taken me three weeks. My appreciation of it is that diverse and that complicated ... John is perhaps the only contemporary writer who I know now who gives me the sense of the fact that life is—the life that we perform is in an environment that enjoys a grandeur that escapes us. Rabbit is very much possessed of a paradise lost, of a paradise known fleetingly perhaps through erotic love and a paradise that he pursues through his children. It's the vastness of John's scope that I would have described if I could through a review.


title: John Updike

text: "The Fiction Circus", an online and multimedia literary magazine, called Updike one of the "four Great American Novelists" of his time along with Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Don DeLillo, each jokingly represented as a sign of the Zodiac. Furthermore, Updike was seen as the "best prose writer in the world", like Nabokov before him. But in contrast to many literati and establishment obituaries, the "Circus" asserted that nobody "thought of Updike as a "vital" writer".


title: John Updike

text: Adam Gopnik of "The New Yorker" evaluated Updike as "the first American writer since Henry James to get himself fully expressed, the man who broke the curse of incompleteness that had haunted American writing ... He sang like Henry James, but he saw like Sinclair Lewis. The two sides of American fiction—the precise, realist, encyclopedic appetite to get it all in, and the exquisite urge to make writing out of sensation rendered exactly—were both alive in him."


title: John Updike

text: The critic James Wolcott, in a review of Updike's last novel, "The Widows of Eastwick" (2008), noted that Updike's penchant for observing America's decline is coupled with an affirmation of America's ultimate merits: "Updike elegises entropy American-style with a resigned, paternal, disappointed affection that distinguishes his fiction from that of grimmer declinists: Don DeLillo, Gore Vidal, Philip Roth. America may have lost its looks and stature, but it was a beauty once, and worth every golden dab of sperm."


title: John Updike

text: Gore Vidal, in a controversial essay in the "Times Literary Supplement", professed to have "never taken Updike seriously as a writer". He criticizes his political and aesthetic worldview for its "blandness and acceptance of authority in any form". He concludes that Updike "describes to no purpose". In reference to Updike's wide establishment acclaim, Vidal mockingly called him "our good child" and excoriated his alleged political conservatism. Vidal ultimately concluded, "Updike's work is more and more representative of that polarizing within a state where Authority grows ever more brutal and malign while its hired hands in the media grow ever more excited as the holy war of the few against the many heats up."


title: John Updike

text: Robert B. Silvers, editor of "The New York Review of Books", called Updike "one of the most elegant and coolly observant writers of his generation".


title: John Updike

text: The short-story writer Lorrie Moore, who once described Updike as "American literature's greatest short story writer ... and arguably our greatest writer", reviewed Updike's body of short stories in "The New York Review", praising their intricate detail and rich imagery: "his eye and his prose never falter, even when the world fails to send its more socially complicated revelations directly his story's way".


title: John Updike

text: In November 2008, the editors of the UK's "Literary Review" magazine awarded Updike their Bad Sex in Fiction Lifetime Achievement Award, which celebrates "crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature".


title: John Updike

text: The principal themes in Updike's work are religion, sex, and America as well as death. Often he would combine them, frequently in his favored terrain of "the American small town, Protestant middle class", of which he once said, "I like middles. It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules."


title: John Updike

text: For example, the decline of religion in America is chronicled in "In the Beauty of the Lilies" (1996) alongside the history of cinema, and Rabbit Angstrom contemplates the merits of sex with the wife of his friend Reverend Jack Eccles while the latter is giving his sermon in "Rabbit, Run" (1960).


title: John Updike

text: Critics have often noted that Updike imbued language itself with a kind of faith in its efficacy, and that his tendency to construct narratives spanning many years and books—the Rabbit series, the Henry Bech series, Eastwick, the Maples stories—demonstrates a similar faith in the transcendent power of fiction and language. Updike's novels often act as dialectical theological debates between the book itself and the reader, the novel endowed with theological beliefs meant to challenge the reader as the plot runs its course. Rabbit Angstrom himself acts as a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith.


title: John Updike

text: Describing his purpose in writing prose, Updike himself, in the introduction to his "Early Stories: 1953–1975" (2004), wrote that his aim was always "to give the mundane its beautiful due". Elsewhere he famously said, "When I write, I aim my mind not towards New York City but towards a vague spot east of Kansas." Some have suggested that the "best statement of Updike's aesthetic comes in his early memoir 'The Dogwood Tree'" (1962): "Blankness is not emptiness; we may skate upon an intense radiance we do not see because we see nothing else. And in fact there is a color, a quiet but tireless goodness that things at rest, like a brick wall or a small stone, seem to affirm."


title: John Updike

text: The critic Edward Champion notes that Updike's prose heavily favors "external sexual imagery" rife with "explicit anatomical detail" rather than descriptions of "internal emotion" in descriptions of sex. In Champion's interview with Updike on "The Bat Segundo Show", Updike replied that he perhaps favored such imagery to concretize and make sex "real" in his prose. Another sexual theme commonly addressed in Updike is adultery, especially in a suburban, middle class setting, most famously in "Couples" (1968). The Updikean narrator is often "a man guilty of infidelity and abandonment of his family".


title: John Updike

text: Similarly, Updike wrote about America with a certain nostalgia, reverence, and recognition and celebration of America's broad diversity. ZZ Packer wrote that in Updike, "there seemed a strange ability to harken both America the Beautiful as well as America the Plain Jane, and the lovely Protestant backbone in his fiction and essays, when he decided to show it off, was as progressive and enlightened as it was unapologetic."


title: John Updike

text: The Rabbit novels in particular can be viewed, according to Julian Barnes, as "a distraction from, and a glittering confirmation of, the vast bustling ordinariness of American life". But as Updike celebrated ordinary America, he also alluded to its decline: at times, he was "so clearly disturbed by the downward spin of America". Adam Gopnik concludes that "Updike's great subject was the American attempt to fill the gap left by faith with the materials produced by mass culture. He documented how the death of a credible religious belief has been offset by sex and adultery and movies and sports and Toyotas and family love and family obligation. For Updike, this effort was blessed, and very nearly successful."


title: John Updike

text: Updike's novels about America almost always contain references to political events of the time. In this sense, they are artifacts of their historical eras, showing how national leaders shape and define their times. The lives of ordinary citizens take place against this wider background.


title: John Updike

text: Updike often wrote about death, his characters providing a "mosaic of reactions" to mortality, ranging from terror to attempts at insulation. In "The Poorhouse Fair" (1959), the elderly John Hook intones, "There is no goodness without belief ... And if you have not believed, at the end of your life you shall know you have buried your talent in the ground of this world and have nothing saved, to take into the next", demonstrating a religious, metaphysical faith present in much of Updike's work.


title: John Updike

text: For Rabbit Angstrom, with his constant musings on mortality, his near-witnessing of his daughter's death, and his often shaky faith, death is more frightening and less obvious in its ramifications. At the end of "Rabbit at Rest" (1990), though, Rabbit demonstrates a kind of certainty, telling his son Nelson on his deathbed, "... But enough. Maybe. Enough." In "The Centaur" (1963), George Caldwell has no religious faith and is afraid of his cancer. Death can also be a sort of unseen terror; it "occurs offstage but reverberates for survivors as an absent presence".


title: John Updike

text: many of his heroes shared the same sort of existential fears the author acknowledged he had suffered as a young man: Henry Bech's concern that he was 'a fleck of dust condemned to know it is a fleck of dust,' or Colonel Ellelloû's lament that 'we will be forgotten, all of us forgotten.' Their fear of death threatens to make everything they do feel meaningless, and it also sends them running after God—looking for some reassurance that there is something beyond the familiar, everyday world with 'its signals and buildings and cars and bricks.'


title: John Updike

text: Updike demonstrated his own fear in some of his more personal writings, including the poem "Perfection Wasted" (1990):


title: John Updike

text: See also #External links for links to archives of his essays and reviews in "The New Yorker" and "The New York Review of Books".


title: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections

text: The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta—was ordered directly by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.


text: The Internet Research Agency (IRA), based in Saint Petersburg, Russia and described as a troll farm, created thousands of social media accounts that purported to be Americans supporting radical political groups and planned or promoted events in support of Trump and against Clinton. They reached millions of social media users between 2013 and 2017. Fabricated articles and disinformation were spread from Russian government-controlled media, and promoted on social media. Additionally, computer hackers affiliated with the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) infiltrated information systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Clinton campaign officials, notably chairman John Podesta, and publicly released stolen files and emails through DCLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks during the election campaign. Several individuals connected to Russia contacted various Trump campaign associates, offering business opportunities to the Trump Organization and proffering damaging information on Clinton. Russian government officials have denied involvement in any of the hacks or leaks.


text: Russian interference activities triggered strong statements from United States intelligence agencies, a direct warning by then-U.S. president Barack Obama to Russian president Vladimir Putin, renewed economic sanctions against Russia, and closures of Russian diplomatic facilities and expulsion of their staff. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees conducted their own investigations into the matter. Trump denied the interference had occurred, contending that it was a "hoax" perpetrated by the Democratic Party to explain Clinton's loss.


text: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Russian interference in July 2016, including a special focus on links between Trump associates and Russian officials and suspected coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Russian attempts to interfere in the election were first disclosed publicly by members of the United States Congress in September 2016, confirmed by US intelligence agencies in October 2016, and further detailed by the Director of National Intelligence office in January 2017. The dismissal of James Comey, the FBI director, by President Trump in May 2017, was partly because of Comey's investigation of the Russian interference.


text: The FBI's work was taken over in May 2017 by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who led a Special Counsel investigation until March 2019. Mueller concluded that Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he indicted twenty-six Russian citizens and three Russian organizations. The investigation also led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans, on unrelated charges. The Special Counsel's report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.


text: The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019. The committee concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed". The first volume also concluded that the assessment was "proper", learning from analysts that there was "no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions". The final and fifth volume, which was the result of three years of investigations, was released in August 2020, ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries." The Committee report found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers.


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


text: The May 2014 Ukrainian presidential election was disrupted by cyberattacks over several days, including the release of hacked emails, attempted alteration of vote tallies, and distributed denial-of-service attacks to delay the final result. They were found to have been launched by pro-Russian hackers. Malware that would have displayed a graphic declaring far-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh the electoral winner was removed from Ukraine's Central Election Commission less than an hour before polls closed. Despite this, Channel One Russia falsely reported that Yarosh had won, broadcasting the same fake graphic that had been planted on the election commission's website. Political scientist Peter Ordeshook said in 2017, "These faked results were geared for a specific audience in order to feed the Russian narrative that has claimed from the start that ultra-nationalists and Nazis were behind the revolution in Ukraine." The same Sofacy malware used in the Central Election Commission hack was later found on the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Around the same time as Russia's attempt to hack the 2014 elections, the Obama administration received a report suggesting that the Kremlin was building a disinformation program which could be used to interfere in Western politics.


text: In December 2016, two unidentified senior intelligence officials told several U.S. news media outlets


text: that they were highly confident that the operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election was personally directed by Vladimir Putin.


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


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


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


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


text: Putin blamed Clinton for the 2011–2012 mass protests in Russia against his rule, according to the report (Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State at the time). FBI Director James Comey also has testified that Putin disliked Clinton and preferred her opponent, and Clinton herself has accused Putin of having a grudge against her. Michael McFaul, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia, said the operation could be a retaliation by Putin against Clinton. Russian security expert Andrei Soldatov has said, "[The Kremlin] believes that with Clinton in the White House it will be almost impossible to lift sanctions against Russia. So it is a very important question for Putin personally. This is a question of national security."


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


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


text: The United States Department of State planned to use a unit formed with the intention of combating disinformation from the Russian government, but it was disbanded in September 2015 after department heads missed the scope of propaganda before the 2016 U.S. election. The unit had been in development for eight months prior to being scrapped. Titled the Counter-Disinformation Team, it would have been a reboot of the Active Measures Working Group set up by the Reagan Administration. It was created under the Bureau of International Information Programs. Work began in 2014, with the intention of countering propaganda from Russian sources such as TV network RT (formerly called Russia Today). A beta website was ready, and staff were hired by the U.S. State Department for the unit prior to its cancellation. U.S. Intelligence officials explained to former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer John R. Schindler writing in "The New York Observer" (published at the time by Jared Kushner) that the Obama Administration decided to cancel the unit, as they were afraid of antagonizing Russia. A State Department representative told the "International Business Times" after being contacted regarding the closure of the unit, that the U.S. was disturbed by propaganda from Russia, and the strongest defense was sincere communication. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel was the point person for the unit before it was canceled. Stengel had written in 2014 that RT was engaged in a disinformation campaign about Ukraine.


text: In April 2017, Reuters cited several unnamed U.S. officials as having stated that the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) had developed a strategy to sway the U.S. election to Donald Trump and, failing that, to disillusion voters. The development of strategy was allegedly ordered by Putin and directed by former officers of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), retired SVR general Leonid Petrovich Reshetnikov being head of the RISS at the time. The Institute had been a part of the SVR until 2009, whereafter it has worked for the Russian Presidential Administration.


text: The U.S. officials said the propaganda efforts began in March 2016. The first set of recommendations, issued in June 2016, proposed that Russia support a candidate for U.S. president more favorable to Russia than Obama had been, via Russia-backed news outlets and a social media campaign. It supported Trump until October, when another conclusion was made that Hillary Clinton was likely to win, and the strategy should be modified to work to undermine U.S. voters′ faith in their electoral system and a Clinton presidency by alleging voter fraud in the election. RISS director Mikhail Fradkov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations.


text: According to a February 2018 criminal indictment, more than two years before the election, two Russian women obtained visas for what the indictment alleged was a three-week reconnaissance tour of the United States, including battleground states such as Colorado, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico, to gather intelligence on American politics. The 2018 indictment alleged that another Russian operative visited Atlanta in November 2014 on a similar mission. In order to establish American identities for individuals and groups within specific social media communities, hundreds of email, PayPal and bank accounts and fraudulent driver's licenses were created for fictitious Americans—and sometimes real Americans whose Social Security numbers had been stolen.


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


text: By February 2016, internal IRA documents showed an order to support the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, while IRA members were to "use any opportunity to criticize" Hillary Clinton and the rest of the candidates. From June 2016, the IRA organized election rallies in the U.S. "often promoting" Trump's campaign while "opposing" Clinton's campaign. The IRA posed as Americans, hiding their Russian background, while asking Trump campaign members for campaign buttons, flyers, and posters for the rallies.


text: Russian use of social media to disseminate propaganda content was very broad. Facebook and Twitter were used, but also Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Medium, YouTube, Vine, and Google+ (among other sites). Instagram was by far the most used platform, and one that largely remained out of the public eye until late 2018. The Mueller report lists IRA-created groups on Facebook including "purported conservative groups" (e.g. 'Tea Party News'), "purported Black social justice groups" (e.g. 'Blacktivist') "LGBTQ groups" ('LGBT United'), and "religious groups" ('United Muslims of America'). The IRA Twitter accounts included @TEN_GOP (claiming to be related to the Tennessee Republican Party), @jenn_abrams and @Pamela_Moore13; both claimed to be Trump supporters and both had 70,000 followers.


text: Several Trump campaign members (Donald J. Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale and Michael T. Flynn) linked or reposted material from the IRA's @TEN_GOP Twitter account listed above. Other people who responded to IRA social media accounts include Michael McFaul, Sean Hannity, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn Jr.


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


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


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


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


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


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


text: In September 2017, Facebook told congressional investigators it had discovered that hundreds of fake accounts linked to a Russian troll farm had bought $100,000 in advertisements targeting the 2016 U.S. election audience. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, primarily focused on divisive social issues; roughly 25% were geographically targeted. Facebook has also turned over information about the Russian-related ad buys to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Approximately 3,000 adverts were involved, and these were viewed by between four and five million Facebook users prior to the election. On November 1, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee released a sample of Facebook ads and pages that had been financially linked to the Internet Research Agency. A 2019 analysis by "The Washington Post"'s "Outlook" reviewed a number of troll accounts active in 2016 and 2018, and found that many resembled organic users. Rather than wholly negative and obvious, many confirmed troll accounts deployed humor and were "astute in exploiting questions of culture and identity and are frequently among the first to push new divisive conversations" even "picked up by mainstream print media."


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


text: Starting in March 2016, the Russian military intelligence agency GRU sent "spearphishing" emails targeted more than 300 individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party or the Clinton campaign, according to the Special Counsel's July 13, 2018 Indictment. Using malware to explore the computer networks of the DNC and DCCC, they harvested tens of thousands of emails and attachments and deleted computer logs and files to obscure evidence of their activities.


text: These were saved and released in stages to the public during the three months before the 2016 election. Some were released strategically to distract the public from media events that were either beneficial to the Clinton campaign or harmful to Trump's.


text: The first tranche of 19,000 emails and 8,000 attachments was released on July 22, 2016, three days before the Democratic convention. The resulting news coverage created the impression that the Democratic National Committee was biased against Clinton's Democratic primary challenger Bernie Sanders (who received 43% of votes cast in the Democratic presidential primaries) and forced DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign, disrupting the plans of the Clinton campaign.


text: A second tranche was released on October 7, a few hours after the Obama Administration released a statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the director of National Intelligence accusing the Russian government of interfering in the election through hacking, and just 29 minutes after "The Washington Post" reported on the Access Hollywood videotape where Trump boasted about grabbing women "by the pussy". The stolen documents effectively distracted media and voter attention from both stories.


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


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


text: John Podesta, later told "Meet the Press" that the FBI spoke to him only once regarding his hacked emails and that he had not been sure what had been taken until a month before the election on October7 "when [WikiLeaks' Julian] Assange... started dumping them out and said they would all dump out, that's when I knew that they had the contents of my email account."


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


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


text: Podesta's e-mails, once released by WikiLeaks, formed the basis for Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory that falsely posited that Podesta and other Democratic Party officials were involved in a child trafficking ring based out of pizzerias in Washington, D.C.


text: The United States Intelligence Community concluded by January 2017 that the GRU (using the names Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear) had gained access to the computer network of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—the formal governing body of the Democratic Party—in July 2015 and maintained it until at least June 2016,


text: when they began leaking the stolen information via the Guccifer 2.0 online persona, DCLeaks.com and Wikileaks. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chairwoman following the release of e-mails by WikiLeaks that showed DNC officials discussing Bernie Sanders and his presidential campaign in a derisive and derogatory manner. Emails leaked included personal information about Democratic Party donors, with credit card and Social Security numbers, emails by Wasserman Schultz calling a Sanders campaign official a "damn liar".


text: Following the July 22 publication of a large number of hacked emails by WikiLeaks, the FBI announced that it would investigate the theft of DNC emails.


text: In June and July 2016, cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis, FireEye,<ref name="Poulsen_1/6/2017"></ref> Mandiant, SecureWorks, Symantec and ThreatConnect, stated the DNC email leaks were part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC committed by two Russian intelligence groups, called Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, also known respectively as APT28 and APT29 / The Dukes. ThreatConnect also noted possible links between the DC Leaks project and Russian intelligence operations because of a similarity with Fancy Bear attack patterns. SecureWorks added that the actor group was operating from Russia on behalf of the Russian government. "de Volkskrant" later reported that Dutch intelligence agency AIVD had penetrated the Russian hacking group Cozy Bear in 2014, and observed them in 2015 hack the State Department in real time, while capturing pictures of the hackers via a security camera in their workspace. American, British, and Dutch intelligence services had also observed stolen DNC emails on Russian military intelligence networks.


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


text: In the July 2018 indictment by the Justice Department of twelve Russian GRU intelligence officials posing as "a Guccifer 2.0 persona" for conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections


text: was for hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, state election boards, and secretaries of several states. The indictment describes "a sprawling and sustained cyberattack on at least three hundred people connected to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign". The leaked stolen files were released "in stages," a tactic wreaking "havoc on the Democratic Party throughout much of the election season."


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


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


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


text: In a leaked private message on Twitter, Assange wrote that in the 2016 election "it would be much better for GOP to win," and that Hillary Clinton was a "sadistic sociopath".


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


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


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


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


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


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


text: Trump asserted in March 2019 that he had been joking when he made the remark. Katy Tur of NBC News had interviewed Trump immediately after the 2016 remark, noting she gave him an opportunity to characterize it as a joke, but he did not.


text: In her analysis of the Russian influence on the 2016 election, Kathleen Hall Jamieson argues that Russians aligned themselves with the "geographic and demographic objectives" of the Trump campaign, using trolls, social media, and hacked information to target certain important constituencies.


text: According to "Vox", the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) focused on the culture of Muslims, Christians, Texas, and LGBTQ people, to engage those communities as part of a broader strategy to deepen social and political divisions within the U.S., but no other group received as much attention as Black Americans, whose voter turnout has been historically crucial to the election of Democrats. Russia's influence campaign used an array of tactics aiming to reduce their vote for Hillary Clinton, according to a December 2018 report ("The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency")


text: A total 30 Facebook pages targeting Black Americans and 10 YouTube channels that posted 571 videos related to police violence against African-Americans.


text: The covertly Russian Instagram account @blackstagram had more than 300,000 followers. A variety of Facebook pages targeting African Americans and later determined to be Russian amassed a total of 1.2 million individual followers, the report found. The Facebook page for (the Russian) Blacktivist, garnered more hits than Black Lives Matter's (non-Russian) Facebook page.


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


text: At least 25 social media pages drawing 1.4 million followers were created by Russian agents to target the American political right and promote the Trump candidacy.


text: An example of the targeting was the adding of Blue Lives Matter material to social media platforms by Russian operatives after the Black Lives Matter movement moved to the center of public attention in America and sparked a pro-police reaction.


text: Jamieson noted there was reason to believe Donald Trump would under-perform among two normally dependable conservative Republican voting blocs—churchgoing Christians and military service members and their families. It was thought pious Christians were put off by Trump's lifestyle as a Manhattan socialite, known for his three marriages and many affairs but not for any religious beliefs, who had boasted of groping women. Military personnel might lack enthusiasm for a candidate who avoided service in Vietnam but who described himself as a "brave soldier" in having to face his "personal Vietnam" of the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, and who mocked Gold Star parents and former prisoner of war John McCain. To overcome Trump's possible poor reputation among evangelicals and veterans, Russian trolls created memes that exploited typical conservative social attitudes about people of color, Muslims, and immigrants. One such meme juxtaposed photographs of a homeless veteran and an undocumented immigrant, alluding to the belief that undocumented immigrants receive special treatment. CNN exit polls showed that Trump led Clinton among veterans by 26 percentage points and won a higher percentage of the evangelical vote than either of the two previous Republican presidential nominees, indicating that this tactic may have succeeded.


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


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


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


text: As early as June 2016, the FBI sent a warning to states about "bad actors" probing state-elections systems to seek vulnerabilities. In September 2016, FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI was investigating Russian hackers attempting to disrupt the 2016 election and that federal investigators had detected hacker-related activities in state voter-registration databases, which independent assessments determined were soft targets for hackers. Comey stated there were multiple attempts to hack voter database registrations. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper attributed Russian hacking attempts to Vladimir Putin.


text: In August 2016, the FBI issued a nationwide "flash alert" warning state election officials about hacking attempts. In September 2016, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials and the National Association of Secretaries of State announced that hackers had penetrated, or sought to penetrate, the voter-registration systems in more than 20 states over the previous few months. Federal investigators attributed these attempts to Russian government-sponsored hackers, and specifically to Russian intelligence agencies. Four of the intrusions into voter registration databases were successful, including intrusions into the Illinois and Arizona databases. Although the hackers did not appear to change or manipulate data, Illinois officials said information on up to 200,000 registered voters was stolen. The FBI and DHS increased their election-security coordination efforts with state officials as a result. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson reported that 18 states had requested voting-system security assistance from DHS. The department also offered risk assessments to the states, but just four states expressed interest, as the election was rapidly approaching. The reports of the database intrusions prompted alarm from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, who wrote to the FBI saying foreign attempts to cast doubt on free and fair elections was a danger to democracy not seen since the Cold War.


text: On September 22, 2017, federal authorities notified the election officials of 21 states that their election systems had been targeted.<ref name="NPR_10/22/17"></ref> "In most cases, states said they were told the systems were not breached."<ref name="Mulvihill_Pearson_9/22/2017"></ref> Over a year after the initial warnings, this was the first official confirmation many state governments received that their states specifically had been targeted. Moreover, top elections officials of the states of Wisconsin and California have denied the federal claim. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said, "California voters can further rest assured that the California Secretary of State elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors... Our notification from DHS last Friday was not only a year late, it also turned out to be bad information."


text: In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its interim report on election security. The committee concluded, on a bipartisan basis, that the response of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Russian government-sponsored efforts to undermine confidence in the U.S. voting process was "inadequate". The committee reported that the Russian government was able to penetrate election systems in at least 18, and possibly up to 21, states, and that in a smaller subset of states, infiltrators "could have altered or deleted voter registration data," although they lacked the ability to manipulate individual votes or vote tallies. The committee wrote that the infiltrators' failure to exploit vulnerabilities in election systems could have been because they "decided against taking action" or because "they were merely gathering information and testing capabilities for a future attack". To prevent future infiltrations, the committee made a number of recommendations, including that "at a minimum, any machine purchased going forward should have a voter-verified paper trail and no WiFi capability".


text: By January 2017, a multi-agency investigation, conducted by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Justice Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the DNI, was underway looking into how the Russian government may have secretly financed efforts to help Trump win the election had been conducted over several months by six federal agencies. Investigations into Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were underway on January 19, the eve of the presidential inauguration.


text: By January 2018, the FBI was investigating the possible funneling of illegal money by Aleksandr Torshin, a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, through the National Rifle Association, which was then used to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Torshin is known to have close connections both to Russia's president Vladimir Putin and to the NRA, and he has been charged with money laundering in other countries.


text: The NRA reported spending $30 million to support the 2016 Trump campaign, three times what it spent on Mitt Romney in 2012, and spent more than any other independent group including the leading Trump superPAC. Sources with connections to the NRA have stated that the actual amount spent was much higher than $30 million. The subunits within the organization which made the donations are not generally required to disclose their donors.


text: Spanish special prosecutor José Grinda Gonzalez has said that in early 2018 the Spanish police gave wiretapped audio to the FBI of telephone discussions between Torshin, and convicted money launderer and mafia boss Alexander Romanov. Torshin met with Donald Trump Jr. at an NRA event in May 2016 while attempting to broker a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.


text: Maria Butina, a Russian anti-gun control activist who has served as a special assistant to Torshin and came to the U.S. on a student visa to attend university classes in Washington, claimed both before and after the election that she was part of the Trump campaign's communications with Russia. Like Torshin, she cultivated a close relationship with the NRA. In February 2016, Butina started a consulting business called Bridges LLC with Republican political operative Paul Erickson. During Trump's presidential campaign Erickson contacted Rick Dearborn, one of Trump's advisors, writing in an email that he had close ties both to the NRA and to Russia, and asking how a back-channel meeting between Trump and Putin could be set up. The email was later turned over to federal investigators as part of the inquiry into Russia's meddling in the presidential election. On July 15, 2018, Butina was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered Russian agent who had attempted to create a backchannel of communications between American Republicans/conservatives and Russian officials by infiltrating the National Rifle Association, the National Prayer Breakfast, and conservative religious organizations.


text: As of April 2018, Mueller's investigators were examining whether Russian oligarchs directly or indirectly provided illegal cash donations to the Trump campaign and inauguration. Investigators were examining whether oligarchs invested in American companies or think tanks having political action committees connected to the campaign, as well as money funneled through American straw donors to the Trump campaign and inaugural fund. At least one oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, was detained and his electronic devices searched as he arrived at a New York area airport on his private jet in early 2018. Vekselberg was questioned about hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made to Michael Cohen after the election, through Columbus Nova, the American affiliate of Vekselberg's Renova Group. Another oligarch was also detained on a recent trip to the United States, but it is unclear if he was searched. Investigators have also asked a third oligarch who has not traveled to the United States to voluntarily provide documents and an interview.


text: In part because U.S. intelligence agencies cannot surveil U.S. citizens without a warrant, they were slow to recognize the pattern of Russia's efforts. From late 2015 until the summer of 2016, during routine surveillance of Russians, several countries discovered interactions between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The UK, Germany, Estonia, Poland, and Australia (and possibly the Netherlands and France) relayed their discoveries to the U.S.<ref name="Guardian_4/13/2017"></ref>


text: Because the materials were highly sensitive, GCHQ director Robert Hannigan contacted CIA director John O. Brennan directly to give him information. Concerned, Brennan gave classified briefings to U.S. Congress' "Gang of Eight" during late August and September 2016. Referring only to intelligence allies and not to specific sources, Brennan told the Gang of Eight he had received evidence that Russia might be trying to help Trump win the U.S. election. It was later revealed that the CIA had obtained intelligence from "sources inside the Russian government" that stated that Putin gave direct orders to disparage Clinton and help Trump.


text: On May 23, 2017, Brennan stated to the House Intelligence Committee that Russia "brazenly interfered" in the 2016 U.S. elections. He said he first picked up on Russia's active meddling "last summer", and that he had on August 4, 2016, warned his counterpart at Russia's FSB intelligence agency, Alexander Bortnikov, against further interference.


text: The first public U.S. government assertion of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election came in a joint statement on September 22, 2016, by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively.


text: At the Aspen security conference in summer 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Vladimir Putin wanted to retaliate against perceived U.S. intervention in Russian affairs with the 2011–13 Russian protests and the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych in the Revolution of Dignity. In July 2016, consensus grew within the CIA that Russia had hacked the DNC. In a joint statement on October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressed confidence that Russia had interfered in the presidential election by stealing emails from politicians and U.S. groups and publicizing the information. On December 2, intelligence sources told CNN they had gained confidence that Russia's efforts were aimed at helping Trump win the election.


text: On October 7, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of hacking the DNC's computer networks to interfere in the 2016 presidential election with the help of organizations like WikiLeaks. The Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security claimed in their joint statement, "The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts." This was corroborated by a report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in conjunction with the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA on January 6, 2017.


text: On December 9, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community had concluded, in a consensus view, that Russia conducted operations to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency, stating that "individuals with connections to the Russian government", previously known to the intelligence community, had given WikiLeaks hacked emails from the DNC and John Podesta. The agencies further stated that Russia had hacked the RNC as well, but did not leak information obtained from there. These assessments were based on evidence obtained before the election.


text: FBI has been investigating the Russian government's attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election—including whether campaign associates of Donald Trump's were involved in Russia's efforts—since July 31, 2016.


text: Following the July 22 publication of a large number of emails by WikiLeaks, the FBI announced that it would investigate the theft of DNC emails.


text: An earlier event investigated by the FBI was a May 2016 meeting between the Donald Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos, and Alexander Downer in a London wine bar, where Papadopoulos disclosed his inside knowledge of a large trove of Hillary Clinton emails that could potentially damage her campaign.


text: Papadopoulos had gained this knowledge on March 14, 2016, when he held a meeting with Joseph Mifsud, who told Papadopoulos the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of thousands of stolen emails. This occurred before the hacking of the DNC computers had become public knowledge,<ref name="Kelly_11/13/2017"></ref><ref name="LaFraniere_Mazzetti_Apuzzo_12/30/2017"></ref> and Papadopoulos later bragged "that the Trump campaign was aware the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton".<ref name="Sipher_1/11/2018"></ref> In February 2019, Michael Cohen implicated Trump before the U.S. Congress, writing that Trump had knowledge that Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about releasing emails stolen from the DNC in 2016.<ref name="Elfrink_Flynn_2/27/2019"></ref><ref name="Daub_2/27/2019"></ref>


text: John Podesta later testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that in April 2016, the DNC did not know their computers had been hacked, leading Adam Schiff to state: "So if the campaign wasn't aware in April that the hacking had even occurred, the first campaign to be notified the Russians were in possession of stolen emails would have been the Trump campaign through Mr. Papadopoulos."<ref name="Podesta_12/4/2017"></ref>


text: In June 2016, the FBI notified the Illinois Republican Party that some of its email accounts may have been hacked. In December 2016, an FBI official stated that Russian attempts to access the RNC server were unsuccessful. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, RNC chair Reince Priebus stated they communicated with the FBI when they learned about the DNC hacks, and a review determined their servers were secure. On January 10, 2017, FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia succeeded in "collecting some information from Republican-affiliated targets but did not leak it to the public".


text: On October 31, 2016, "The New York Times" said the FBI had been examining possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but did not find any clear links. At the time, FBI officials thought Russia was motivated to undermine confidence in the U.S. political process rather than specifically support Trump. During a House Intelligence Committee hearing in early December, the CIA said it was certain of Russia's intent to help Trump. On December 16, 2016, CIA Director John O. Brennan sent a message to his staff saying he had spoken with FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and that all agreed with the CIA's conclusion that Russia interfered in the presidential election with the motive of supporting Donald Trump's candidacy.


text: On December 29, 2016, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released an unclassified report that gave new technical details regarding methods used by Russian intelligence services for affecting the U.S. election, government, political organizations and private sector.


text: The report included malware samples and other technical details as evidence that the Russian government had hacked the Democratic National Committee. Alongside the report, DHS published Internet Protocol addresses, malware, and files used by Russian hackers. An article in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" discussed the difficulty of proof in matters of cybersecurity. One analyst told the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" that U.S. intelligence services could be keeping some information secret to protect their sources and analysis methods. Clapper later said the classified version contained "a lot of the substantiation that could not be put in the [public] report".


text: On March 20, 2017, during public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, FBI director James Comey confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into Russian interference and Russian links to the Trump campaign, including the question of whether there had been any coordination between the campaign and the Russians. He said the investigation began in July 2016. Comey made the unusual decision to reveal the ongoing investigation to Congress, citing benefit to the public good. On October 7, 2016, Secretary Johnson and Director Clapper issued a that the intelligence community is confident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, and that the disclosures of hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks are consistent with the Russian-directed efforts. The statement also noted that the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia to influence public opinion there. On December 29, 2016, DHS and FBI released a which further expands on that statement by providing details of the tools and infrastructure used by Russian intelligence services to compromise and exploit networks and infrastructure associated with the recent U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities.


text: On January 6, 2017, after briefing the president, the president-elect, and members of the Senate and House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a de-classified version of the report on Russian activities. The intelligence community assessment (ICA), produced by the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the ODNI, asserted that Russia had carried out a massive cyber operation ordered by Russian president Putin with the goal to sabotage the 2016 U.S. elections. The agencies concluded that Putin and the Russian government tried to help Trump win the election by discrediting Hillary Clinton and portraying her negatively relative to Trump, and that Russia had conducted a multipronged cyber campaign consisting of hacking and the extensive use of social media and trolls, as well as open propaganda on Russian-controlled news platforms. The ICA contained no information about how the data was collected and provided no evidence underlying its conclusions. Clapper said the classified version contained substantiation that could not be made public. A large part of the ICA was dedicated to criticizing Russian TV channel RT America, which it described as a "messaging tool" for a "Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the U.S. Government and fuel political protest."


text: On March 5, 2017, James Clapper said, in an interview with Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" that the January 2017 ICA did not have evidence of collusion, but that it might have become available after he left the government. He agreed with Todd that the "idea of collusion" was not proven at that time. On May 14, 2017, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Clapper explained more about the state of evidence for or against any collusion at the time of the January IC assessment, saying "there was no evidence of any collusion included in that report, that's not to say there wasn't evidence". He also stated he was also unaware of the existence of the formal investigation at that time.<ref name="ABCNews_5/14/2017"></ref> In November 2017, Clapper explained that at the time of the Stephanopoulos interview, he did not know about the efforts of George Papadopoulos to set up meetings between Trump associates and Kremlin officials, nor about the meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer.


text: In June 2017, E. W. Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, told the "PBS Newshour" program that Russian intelligence "used fake news and propaganda and they also used online amplifiers to spread the information to as many people as possible" during the election.


text: In testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, former FBI Director James Comey said he had "no doubt" Russia interfered in the 2016 election and that the interference was a hostile act.<ref name="Politico_Staff_6/8/2017"></ref> Concerning the motives of his dismissal, Comey said, "I take the president at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. Something about the way I was conducting it, the president felt, created pressure on him he wanted to relieve." He also said that, while he was director, Trump was not under investigation.


text: At least 17 distinct investigations were started to examine aspects of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.


text: Members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee traveled to Ukraine and Poland in 2016 and learned about Russian operations to influence their elections.


text: Senator McCain called for a special select committee of the U.S. Senate to investigate Russian meddling in the election, and called election meddling an "act of war".


text: The Senate Intelligence Committee began work on its bipartisan inquiry in January 2017. In May, the committee voted unanimously to give both chairmen solo subpoena power. Soon after, the committee issued a subpoena to the Trump campaign for all Russia-related documents, emails, and telephone records. In December, it was also looking at the presidential campaign of Green Party's Jill Stein for potential "collusion with the Russians".


text: In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the interim findings of their bipartisan investigation, finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump gain the presidency, stating: "Our staff concluded that the [intelligence community's] conclusions were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton."


text: On January 10, 2018, Senator Ben Cardin of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee released, "Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security." The report said the interference in the 2016 United States elections was a part of Putin's "asymmetric assault on democracy" worldwide, including targeting elections in a number of countries, such as Britain, France and Germany, by "Moscow-sponsored hacking, internet trolling and financing for extremist political groups".


text: The Senate Intelligence Committee commissioned two reports that extensively described the Russian campaign to influence social media during the 2016 election.


text: One report ("The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency") was produced by the New Knowledge cybersecurity company aided by researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. Another ("The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018") by the Computational Propaganda Project of Oxford University along with the social media analysis company Graphika.


text: The New Knowledge report highlighted "the energy and imagination" of the Russian effort to "sway American opinion and divide the country", and their focus on African-Americans.


text: The report identified more than 263 million "engagements" (likes, comments, shares, etc.) with Internet Research Agency content and faulted U.S. social media companies for allowing their platforms to be co-opted for foreign propaganda". Examples of efforts included "campaigning for African American voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016", "encouraging extreme right-wing voters to be more confrontational", and "spreading sensationalist, conspiratorial, and other forms of junk political news and misinformation to voters across the political spectrum."


text: On April 21, 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a unanimous, heavily redacted report reviewing the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian interference. The committee felt that the assessment brought a "coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election", specifically that the interference was unprecedented in its "manner and aggressiveness". The Senate committee heard "specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump", and that Putin "approved and directed" the interference.


text: The committee praised the assessment as an "impressive accomplishment", noting that the assessment "reflects proper analytic tradecraft" despite a limited timeframe. The committee also stated that "interviews with those who drafted and prepared the ICA affirmed that analysts were under no political pressure to reach specific conclusions." A disagreement between the CIA and the NSA of the agencies' confidence level of Russia's preference for Trump "was reasonable, transparent, and openly debated among the agencies and analysts." Additionally, the committee found that the Steele dossier was not used by the assessment to "support any of its analytic judgments".


text: On August 17, 2020, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee released the fifth and final volume of their 996-page report, ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries." The Committee report, which was based on three years of investigations, found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some members of Trump's own advisers. Volume 5 said the Trump administration had used "novel claims" of executive privilege to obstruct the inquiry. The report said that Trump's 2016 campaign staff were eager to accept Russia's help, however after the release of the report, acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Marco Rubio issued a statement stating the committee "found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."


text: the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence launched an investigation in January 2017 about Russian election meddling, including possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee launched its own parallel probe in January as well. Fifteen months later, in April 2018, the House Intelligence Committee's Republican majority released its final report, amid harsh criticism from Democratic members of the committee. The report found "no evidence" of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.


text: On February 24, 2017, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa called for a special prosecutor to investigate whether Russia meddled with the U.S. election and was in contact with Trump's team during the presidential campaign, saying it would be improper for Trump's appointee, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to lead the investigation. In March 2017, Democratic ranking committee member Adam Schiff said there was sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation, and claimed to have seen "more than circumstantial evidence" of collusion.


text: On April 6, 2017, Republican committee chairman Devin Nunes temporarily recused himself from the investigation after the House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate accusations that he had disclosed classified information without authorization. He was replaced by Representative Mike Conaway. Nunes was cleared of wrongdoing on December 8, 2017


text: The committee's probe was shut down on March 12, 2018, acknowledging that Russians interfered in the 2016 elections through an active measures campaign promoting propaganda and fake news, but rejecting the conclusion of intelligence agencies that Russia had favored Trump in the election (although some Republican committee members distanced themselves from this assertion). The committee's report did not find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government's efforts; Conaway said they had uncovered only "perhaps some bad judgment, inappropriate meetings".


text: Democrats on the committee objected to the Republicans' closure of the investigation and their refusal to press key witnesses for further testimony or documentation which might have further established complicity of the Trump campaign with Russia. Schiff issued a 21-page "status report" outlining plans to continue the investigation, including a list of additional witnesses to interview and documents to request.


text: U.S. president Obama and Vladimir Putin had a discussion about computer security issues in September 2016, which took place over the course of an hour and a half. During the discussion, which took place as a side segment during the then-ongoing G20 summit in China, Obama made his views known on cyber security matters between the U.S. and Russia. Obama said Russian hacking stopped after his warning to Putin. One month after that discussion the email leaks from the DNC cyber attack had not ceased, and President Obama decided to contact Putin via the Moscow–Washington hotline, commonly known as the red phone, on October 31, 2016. Obama emphasized the gravity of the situation by telling Putin: "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace."