The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials.
Dina Powell McCormick is an American financial executive, philanthropist and political advisor, best known for having been the United States Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy to President Donald Trump.
The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System is the United States Department of Defense's secure intranet system that houses top secret and sensitive compartmented information. JWICS superseded the earlier DSNET2 and DSNET3, the Top Secret and SCI levels of the Defense Data Network based on ARPANET technology.
John Henry Durham is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut (D.C.) from 2018 to 2021. By April 2019, he had been assigned to investigate the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, and in October 2020 he was appointed special counsel for the Department of Justice on that matter, a position he still holds.
The Democratic National Committee cyber attacks took place in 2015 and 2016, in which two groups of Russian computer hackers infiltrated the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network, leading to a data breach. Cybersecurity experts, as well as the U.S. government, determined that the cyberespionage was the work of Russian intelligence agencies.
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.
On March 4, 2017, Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that accused former President Barack Obama's administration of wiretapping his phones at his Trump Tower office late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations. His initial claims were based on an article on Breitbart News, which cited speculations made by conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch. By June 2020, no evidence had surfaced to support Trump's claim, which had been refuted by the Justice Department (DOJ).
Ezra Asa Cohen-Watnick is an American intelligence official who served as the acting under secretary of defense for intelligence during the Trump Administration. He previously served as the acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, national security adviser to the United States attorney general and as a former senior director for intelligence programs for the United States National Security Council (NSC).
On May 10, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump disclosed classified information to Russian government representatives, creating political and security concerns in the United States and its allies, especially Israel. Soon after the meeting, American intelligence extracted a high-level covert source from within the Russian government, on concerns the individual could be at risk due, in part, to Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandling classified intelligence.
Since Donald Trump was a 2016 candidate for the office of President of the United States, numerous links between Trump associates and people with ties to the Russian government have been identified by the FBI, Special counsel and several United States congressional committees, as part of their investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following intelligence reports about the Russian interference, Trump and some of his campaign members, business partners, administration nominees, and family members have been subjected to intense scrutiny to determine whether they have had improper dealings during their contacts with Russian officials. Several people connected to the Trump campaign made false statements about those links and obstructed investigations.
Unmasking by U.S. intelligence agencies typically occurs after the United States conducts eavesdropping or other intelligence gathering aimed at foreigners or foreign agents, and the name of a U.S. citizen or entity is incidentally collected. Intelligence reports are then disseminated within the U.S. government, with such names masked to protect those U.S. citizens from invasion of privacy. The names can subsequently be unmasked upon request by authorized U.S. government officials under certain circumstances. Unmaskings occur thousands of times each year, totaling 10,012 in 2019.
This is a timeline of major events in the first half of 2017 related to the investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8 and the post-election transition, this article begins with Donald Trump and Mike Pence being sworn into office on January 20, 2017, and is followed by the second half of 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, sorted by topics. It also includes events described in investigations into suspected inappropriate links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials. Those investigations continued in 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and 2019, largely as parts of the Crossfire Hurricane FBI investigation, the Special Counsel investigation, multiple ongoing criminal investigations by several State Attorneys General, and the investigation resulting in the Inspector General report on FBI and DOJ actions in the 2016 election.
Efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to coerce Ukraine and other countries into providing damaging narratives about 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden as well as misinformation relating to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections caused a political scandal in the United States. Trump enlisted surrogates within and outside his official administration, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, to pressure Ukraine and other foreign governments to cooperate in supporting conspiracy theories concerning American politics. Trump blocked payment of a congressionally mandated $400 million military aid package to allegedly obtain quid pro quo cooperation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump released the aid after becoming aware of a whistleblower complaint about his activities relating to Ukraine, before the complaint was known by Congress or the public. A number of contacts were established between the White House and the government of Ukraine, culminating in a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019.
John A. Eisenberg is an American lawyer who served as a deputy counsel to the President of the United States and legal advisor to the U.S. National Security Council during the presidency of Donald Trump. He was selected by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Earlier in his career, from 2006 to 2009, he served in the Department of Justice.
The Russia investigation origins counter-narrative, or Russia counter-narrative, identified as a conspiracy theory, concerns claims and attacks that seek to undermine the legitimacy and conclusions of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation, as well as the subsequent Special Counsel investigation into links between Russian officials and associates of Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Kashyap Pramod Patel is an American attorney and former government official. He served as chief of staff to the Acting United States Secretary of Defense under President Donald Trump. Patel has worked at the United States National Security Council and United States House of Representatives and was previously a federal public defender, a federal prosecutor working on national security cases, and a legal liaison to the United States Armed Forces. He is a Republican. Patel has widely been described as a "Trump loyalist". As aide to Devin Nunes, Patel played a key role in helping Republican attempts to discredit the investigations into Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Russian bounty program is an alleged project of Russian military intelligence to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American and other allied service members during the war in Afghanistan. The existence of the alleged program was reported in the media in 2020 and became an issue in the 2020 presidential election campaign. In June 2020, The Washington Post reported that intelligence suggesting the existence of a bounty operation dated to as early as 2018. The Washington Post and Associated Press both reported that Trump administration White House officials were informed of the intelligence reports in early 2019. In June 2020, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed, several months earlier, that Unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had secretly offered Taliban-associated militants bounties to kill U.S. troops and other coalition personnel in Afghanistan, including during peace talks with the Taliban. The New York Times reported that "Officials said there was disagreement among intelligence officials about the strength of the evidence about the suspected Russian plot." Defense Department officials then reported that U.S. military intelligence was unable to corroborate the reported program. In April 2021, the U.S. government reported that the U.S. intelligence community only had "low to moderate confidence" in the bounty program allegations.
The United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration acquired by a February 2018 subpoena the Apple iCloud metadata of two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, several others associated with the committee, and some of their family members. The subpoena covered 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses since the inception of the accounts. Seizing communications information of members of Congress is extraordinarily rare. The department also subpoenaed and obtained 2017 and 2018 phone log and email metadata from news reporters for CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Apple also received and complied with February 2018 subpoenas for the iCloud accounts of White House counsel Don McGahn and his wife. Microsoft received a subpoena relating to a personal email account of a congressional staff member in 2017.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2019 related to the investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, and the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and the first half of 2019, but precedes that of 2020 and 2021.
