Politicians may be too timid to explore the subject, but a new book from, of all places, Oxford University Press promises to be incendiary. “We probably won’t, until some Russians involved in it are actually prosecuted-or some Republican, in a moment of conscience, talks.” Joel Benenson, the campaign’s pollster, told me that “a global power is fucking with our elections,” and that “every American should be outraged, whether it changed the outcome or not.” But did the meddling alter the outcome? “How will we ever know?” he said. Although the Senate hearings are still under way, the Intelligence Committee chairman, Richard Burr, a Republican, has already declared, “What we cannot do, however, is calculate the impact that foreign meddling and social media had on this election.”Įven the Clinton campaign has stopped short of attributing its loss to the Russians. Ordinarily, Congress would aggressively examine an electoral controversy of this magnitude, but the official investigations in the House and the Senate, led by Republicans, have been too stymied by partisanship to address the ultimate question of whether Trump’s victory was legitimate. Speaking for himself, however, he told me that “it stretches credulity to think the Russians didn’t turn the election.” It’s not in our charter.” He emphasized that, although he and other intelligence officials produced-and shared with Trump-a postelection report confirming an extensive cyberattack by Russia, the assessment did not attempt to gauge how this foreign meddling had affected American voters. James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence, told me, “We try not to spy on Americans. intelligence community, for its part, is prohibited from investigating domestic political affairs. Instead of investigating whether Russia tipped the electoral scales on its own, they’ve focussed on the possibility that Trump colluded with Russia, and that this, along with other crimes, might be exposed by the probe being conducted by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Many have also expressed frustration with Clinton’s weak performance as a candidate, and with her campaign’s tactical errors. director, for reversing Clinton’s thin lead in the final days of the campaign by reopening a criminal investigation into her mishandling of classified e-mails. They have more readily blamed James Comey, the former F.B.I. Democrats, for the most part, have avoided attributing Hillary Clinton’s defeat directly to Russian machinations. In public, Trump has characterized all efforts to investigate the foreign attacks on American democracy during the campaign as a “witch hunt” in March, he insisted that “the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever.”įew people, including Trump’s opponents, have publicly challenged the widespread belief that no obtainable evidence can prove that Russian interference changed any votes.

Trump dismisses the idea that Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a “made-up story,” “ridiculous,” and “a hoax.” He finds the subject so threatening to his legitimacy that-according to “ The Perfect Weapon,” a recent book on cyber sabotage by David Sanger, of the Times-aides say he refuses even to discuss it.

Donald Trump has adopted many contradictory positions since taking office, but he has been unwavering on one point: that Russia played no role in putting him in the Oval Office.

Nytimes elections 2018