Who Suspects What in U.S. Probe of Russia Hacking: QuickTake Q&A

When it came to disrupting the 2016 presidential election, this much is clear: U.S. investigators say a hacking campaign directed by the Russian government morphed from making mischief to hurting Hillary Clinton. The repercussions of that effort will be reverberating through U.S. as well as European politics in the year ahead.

A consensus has emerged among U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the CIA and FBI, that the Russian hacking began as a broad operation to collect information on Democratic and Republican groups with an aim to interfere in elections and undermine confidence in American democracy. Intelligence agencies became confident the Russian government directed the hacking and that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities," the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement one month before the Nov. 8 election.