Appendix A: Key Lines of Inquiry
The heads of our intelligence agencies have uniformly concluded that Russia will again seek to influence our elections. With the midterm elections now only months away, it is imperative that we develop a comprehensive understanding of Russia’s 2016 covert and overt attack to adequately inform the American people about what happened, and to detect, deter, and counter, to the greatest extent possible, further attempts to influence our political process.
Curtailing the investigation prematurely would leave key lines of inquiry unanswered:
- Hacking and dissemination of campaign emails. The Intelligence Community (IC) has made it clear that Russia relied on third-party entities, or “cutouts,” such as WikiLeaks, Guccifer 2.0, and DC Leaks to publicly disseminate with plausible deniability information stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Our investigation must explore precisely how the Russians executed this cyber operation, and how they communicated with and shared the stolen cache with these cutouts. Outstanding questions include: Did the Trump campaign receive advanced knowledge of or access to stolen information; did the stolen documents inform any of their campaign activity, including voter persuasion and targeting; and what was the chain of custody of the hacked and stolen emails that were then weaponized and strategically released?
Campaign knowledge of email hack. As the Special Counsel has revealed, weeks before the world learned that Russian actors hacked into the DNC and the Clinton campaign, the Russians, through intermediaries, informed one of candidate Trump’s five named foreign policy advisors, George Papadopoulos, in April 2016 that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” In evidenc evidence before the FISA Court, the DOJ also revealed that the Russians previewed the release of this information to Mr. Papadopoulos at that time. The early date of this contact is significant: even the Clinton campaign was not yet aware that Russia possessed their stolen emails.
Several weeks later, in a direct approach by Russia in early June 2016 to the highest levels of the Trump campaign, the Kremlin offered dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what was described as the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.” The campaign response to the offer was two-fold: that they would “love” the help, particularly as the general election neared, and that they were disappointed with what the Russians provided at the meeting. At this point, several weeks after Russian agents informed Mr. Papadopoulos of their valuable cache, the campaign was on notice that Russia had far more helpful dirt to offer in the form of stolen emails. Days after the Trump Tower meeting, WikiLeaks would announce it had received stolen emails, documents we now know they received from the Russians.
Several outstanding questions remain: What more did the Russians relay to Mr. Papadopoulos and possibly others; how did they relay it; and with whom on the campaign did Mr. Papadopoulos—who was in frequent contact with numerous high-level Trump
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