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US and European intelligence agencies identified “Guccifer 2.0” as a Russian deception operation before Americans went to vote. Guccifer 2.0’s role was “falsely to undermine the allegations of Russian responsibility for the intrusion”, according to the indictment. While this happened, GRU officers were spotted doing online searches to check English phrases while penning the first blog post for their Romanian fake, according to the DoJ indictment. Within 24 hours, after the Post had asked Russia for comment, the hackers fabricated evidence and planted a false trail that the hacking was the work of an imaginary, lone Romanian called Guccifer 2.0. The GRU’s hackers were caught red-handed in June 2016, when the Washington Post exposed evidence of their role. Three days earlier, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had charged 12 Russian Federation Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) intelligence officers with conspiracy against the US, releasing unprecedented amounts of previously top secret information about the agents, offices and tools used in multiple cyber attacks on the Clinton presidential campaign.Īfter returning to the US, facing outrage over his conduct, Trump claimed he mis-spoke and meant to say the opposite of what he said. “ I don’t see any reason … why it would be ,” said Trump. In doing so, he rejected multiple highly classified US intelligence agency reports given to him over the past 18 months, including by former president, Barack Obama. Trump went further at his July 2018 summit with President Putin in Helsinki, saying he believed Putin’s claim that Russia had not interfered. This was the opposite of the CIA’s official intelligence findings. The claims led to Trump asking then CIA director Mike Pompeo to investigate allegations circulated from Britain that the Russian government was not responsible for the cyber attacks, and that they could be proved to be an “inside job”, in the form of leaks by a party employee.
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The hacking attacks had damaged Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Starting after the 2016 presidential election, Leonard worked with a group of mainly American right-wing activists to spread claims on social media that Democratic “insiders” and non-Russian agents were responsible for hacking the Democratic Party. The campaign is being run from the UK by 39-year-old programmer Tim Leonard, who lives in Darlington, using the false name “Adam Carter”.