Old Republican National Committee email domains and state-level organizations and campaigns were all penetrated by Russian hackers in the run up to the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey confirmed Tuesday.
In a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said for the first time Russian hackers accessed Republican groups as well as the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Comey said at the hearing the RNC had been penetrated, but a spokesman for the organization said the emails were accessed through a third-party vendor and the RNC itself was never hacked.
“There were successful penetrations of some groups and campaigns, particularly at the state level, on the Republican side of the aisle, and some limited penetration of old Republican National Committee domains,” the spokesman said.
Comey said the Russians appeared to have targeted state-level Republican organizations, campaigns at the state level and old email domains at the RNC that are no longer in use. Comey said it does not appear the Russians ever successfully hacked into President-elect Trump’s campaign or the current RNC email system.
The intelligence community confirmed last week in an unclassified report that it believes the Russian government was trying to help Trump get elected during the campaign.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper added Tuesday that the investigation determined the Russians unleashed an influence campaign on the 2016 election that initially sought to sow doubt in the minds of Americans about the viability of the political system.
Clapper said the Russians, as directed by the Kremlin, had three goals with their “influence campaign”: undermine public faith in American institutions, denigrate Hillary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency.
Over time, that goal shifted from simply harming Clinton to also preferring Trump as a candidate. Those tactics included deploying paid social media accounts to shill for him online and using state-run media to push Trump’s campaign message.
“Russia conspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances when possible,” Clapper said. “When it appeared to Moscow Secretary Clinton was likely to win, the Russian influence campaign became more focused on undermining her future presidency.”
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said if Putin was trying to sow discord among the American people through his influence campaign, he seemed to have succeeded.
“This sounds like a pretty effective and successful effort to sow chaos, to undermine the credibility of our leaders and our governmental institutions,” Rubio said.
Clapper said the Russians have often tried to meddle in Eastern European elections through various means. Now, after seeing their campaign play out on the front pages of newspapers and on cable TV news in America, there’s a good chance they would feel more emboldened in the future, Clapper said.
“With the controversy in our country, we’ll reinforce their desire to do that,” he said. “Russia will have no compunction about using any of the array of tools they have in their kit bag.”
