Your Guide to Mueller’s Russia Investigation

By now, few American elected leaders dispute that elements of the Russian state interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election -- though President Donald Trump has continued to say it "could have been a lot of different groups." What remains unproven is whether anybody from Trump’s winning campaign assisted in that interference. As Trump dismisses talk of collusion as "a total hoax," a wide-ranging criminal investigation has produced indictments against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy; a guilty plea by a junior foreign policy adviser that hinted at the Trump campaign playing ball with the Russians; and, now, a guilty plea by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered a campaign to undermine "public faith in the U.S. democratic process" and the candidacy of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and that along the way, Putin and his government "developed a clear preference" for Trump. Russia’s efforts included hacking and leaking emails that undermined Clinton’s campaign, and using phony accounts and advertising on Facebook and Twitter to sway American public opinion.