In the final months of President Obama’s second term, his administration quietly set the stage for one of the most divisive investigations in American history. While officials knew there was no evidence that Russia had altered vote counts in the 2016 election, they still chose to push a story that implied Donald Trump had won because of Russian interference.
That decision cost taxpayers millions and damaged the credibility of the nation’s democratic process.
In August 2016, the Department of Homeland Security told the National Security Council that there was “no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means.”
But despite that conclusion, just weeks later, American intelligence agencies publicly claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a cyber influence campaign to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. This narrative contradicted what cybersecurity officials had already determined.