the following is a cnn special report. >> the nation's bitter adversary. >> they're coming after america. >> dangerous and deceptive. >> a reasonably realistic e-mail. >> he meant to say illegitimate. he said it was legitimate. the rest is history. >> their weapons, insidious and unsuspecting. >> they're looking to weaponize information. >> threatening american votes and striking at the heart of democracy. >> do you think they see their interference in this election as a success? >> i do. >> a spy story in cyber space. >> we don't believe that domain is owned by act blue, so we investigate it. >> that would lead right to putin's doorstep. >> if mr. trump gets his way, it will be like christmas in the kremlin. >> when words of warning were not nearly enough. >> i saw president putin tell him to cut it out. >> tonight, a cnn special

report. "the russian connection: inside the attack on democracy." it was an unprecedented attack on the very heart of american democracy. >> russia is directly behind a series of cyber attacks. t the upcoming presidential election. >> that in one remarkable year catapulted russia, the old cold war adversary, once again to the center of american politics and the american psyche on an almost daily basis. >> i think every american should be concerned about what the russians did. >> this is a centipede, a shoe will drop every few days. >> the presidency. >> i owe nothing in russia. i have no loans in russia. i don't have any deals in

russia. >> and undermining and even ending the careers of top presidential advisers. >> the president was very concerned that general flynn had misled the vice president and others. >> the president's first national security adviser michael flynn fired for lying about conversations with russia. >> to state the obvious, you don't want your national security adviser compromised with the russians. >> his attorney general, jeff sessions -- >> i have recused myself in the matters. >> -- forced to recuse himself from all russia investigations. >> do you swear. >> for not disclosing his own contacts with russian officials. >> the truth -- >> i don't think anybody knows it was russia. >> trump, himself, repeatedly questioning the intelligence community's high confidence, judgment, that russia interfered with the election that brought him into the oval office. >> could also be china. could also be lots of other people. it also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs

400 pounds. okay? >> and dramatically, mr. trump firing his fbi director. >> i was going to fire comey. my decision. >> over a russia investigation the president simply does not trust. >> it's my judgment that i was fired because of the russia investigation. >> now, a special counsel. the fbi and four congressional committees are pursuing investigations. how did we get here? and how did russian influence potentially reach the highest levels of the u.s. government? >> can you say when you were first made aware that russia or some country was attempting to infiltrate u.s. political organization? >> sometime over the summer of 2015. >> james clapper was then the director of national intelligence. the nation's senior-most intelligence official. at that first warning, was it

clear to you how serious it would become? >> no, i don't think it was because obviously the russians have us as a primary, maybe the primary, intelligence target, anyway. >> the first quiet warning came september 2015 when a mid-level fbi agent notified the democratic national committee that russian hackers had compromised at least one dnc computer. >> they left a phone message at the help desk of the dnc. they didn't treat it with the kind of seriousness i think that it deserved. >> that was the fbi's first direct contact with the dnc. a message left for a low-level computer technician who did not return the fbi's call. >> the bureau, it's a busy place, they got lots of stuff to do, but i suspect if they had it to do over again, they probably would try to do it differently in retrospect. >> the dnc technician, an

outsourced employee, did scan the system networks but found nothing. and the i.t. department apparently did not share the fbi's concerns with more senior dnc staff. the breach would prove to be enormous. hackers gaining access to countless e-mails, communications and documents. >> i can imagine them sitting down a couple weeks later and saying, well, that went pretty well, look, we're in. >> and as the campaign for president was already well under way. for weeks, the fbi kept calling the same computer help desk number at the dnc. never reaching out to dnc leaders and never making the short trip in person to dnc headquarters. >> what we can probably say, be more aggressive, but again, it's hard to predict where these things are going to end up and this one ended up in a pretty interesting mace. >> the fbi told cnn it tried to

alert dnc staff, including sharing information on how to identify breaches in their systems. by november 2015, polls show hillary clinton leading the pack of democratic contenders. >> join my campaign, join this effort. let's go win for america. thank you, all. >> it was now one year to election day. and the fbi agent called again with even more alarming news. a dnc computer was now transmitting information back to russia. still, dnc executives claim they were not made aware of the threat, leaving the russians to roam free inside the democrats' computers for months. in the end, giving them further and further ammunition to disrupt the u.s. election. >> a hostile foreign power is trying to actively engage in our electoral process. you would have thought that that would have are risen up to the

attention of the other intelligence agencies of the white house, itself. >> it goes to the fundamental core of our democracy. >> tom donalin, president obama's national security adviser, came face-to-face more than once with the russian leader behind the attacks. >> it was alarming because it was consistent with putin's intent to undermine the institutions of the west. >> russian president vladimir putin, a former kgb spy, famous for his boldness, even ruthlessness. at home, some of his opponents end up dead. abroad, his prime target is the u.s. >> there's no doubt in my mind that vladimir putin was involved from the very beginning, knew all the details of this and, indeed, might have been the intellectual author of quite a bit of it and was probably very eager to see, geez, are we really going to be able to pull this off?

next, a nation brought to its knees by a massive russian cyber attack. >> people started asking, what's going on, who's in charge? radio: scorching heat today, stay cool out there!

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april 2007.

the eastern european estonia, nato ally and neighbor of russia, is rocked by violent protests. after the relocation of this soviet war memorial. yanus lillenberg was working for an estonian paper at the time. >> they broke windows, attacked cars which were parked at the roadside, threw stones, bottles, everything like that. >> riot police struggled to restore order. but the chaos continued. estonia's foreign minister recalls a growing sense of fear among his countrymen. >> the scale, a dozen or so cars being turned upsidedown.

people, well, get nervous when thingsestonia, a tiny nation of just over 1 million people perched on the border with russia had not seen anything like this since it regained independence from the soviet union in 1991. witnesses quickly noticed that rioters had one name, one country, on their lips. [ chanting "russia" ] >> crowd was shouting, russia, russia, which means russia. >> estonians did not for a moment believe that was. then defense minister yak had only been on the job three weeks. you believe those protests were orchestrated. >> yes, to a certain extent. >> that kind of violent protest, this just doesn't happen in estonia. >> absolutely. it's like, no, it just doesn't

happen. >> so the belief was these protests were orchestrated, manufactured? >> yes. i guess that's pretty much the describing term, orchestrated. >> the violence on the streets wasn't the worst of it. silently, in cyber space, an invii invisible army was mounting an attack, an attack that would foreshadow the turmoil that would soon come to western europe and then america. how did you know that you were under attack? what gave you your first chance? >> i looked at different news portals and they were down. i asked what's going on? the same thing. reported the banks were down, governor websites. >> you suspected a cyber assault. >> yep. yep. it was clear it's not bad weather, it's bad people out

there. >> while the u.s. election was a new target, russia has been waging cyber warfare across europe for years. and one of its most frequent targets is its neighbor, the former soviet republic, now nato ally, estonia. the 2007 attack left estonians with no news websites, no government websites. very little information. >> and people started asking what's going on? who's in charge? >> electronic banking at atms and online, which at the time accounted for the vast majority of all transactions in estonia, was completely down. >> people were scared and we were by then rather by ma intimate-based society already. >> tiny estonia, cobblestones, is actually a technology powerhouse. it was the first country to allow online voting and it's known for being the birthplace

of skype. but now one of the most wired countries in the world, the most crippling cyber attacks the world had ever seen. the attackers created so-called botnets taking over hundreds of thousands of computers to launch the attack. >> they flooded, they flooded the inputs of servers. >> tens and hundreds of times more than the servers could handle. >> and the assault went on for weeks. eventually, estonia had to block all international web traffic to stop the onslaught. disconnecting one of the most connected countries from the rest of the world. >> no one would get any information from estonia. i think that was also the aaim of the attack, actually. >> to cut you off. >> absolutely. >> so who was behind it? estonia's foreign minister at

the time blamed russia. though moscow has repeatedly denied involvement. >> translator: we consider the european union under attack by russia because russia is attacking estonia. the attacks are psychological, virtual, and real. >> today, perhaps fearing the consequences of publicly assigning blame to russia, estonian officials are more careful. >> found out that these attacks were not that spontaneous as they pretended to be. considerable resources involved to make these attacks possible. >> and did that lead you to a suspect? >> back in 2007 and now 10 years later, we don't have the smoking gun. we don't have the fingerprints or footprints. but when we say that most probably one of our neighbors was concerned, so we also know this was not latvia or finland. >> and that leaves russia. >> yes, i mean, the evidence,

indirect evidence, clearly shows in that direction. >> would it be reasonable to think it was anybody else but russia? would it make sense? >> that wouldn't make sense. >> after carrying out increasingly bold cyber attacks across europe, including here in estonia, russia's president vladimir putin turns his country's attention to its biggest target yet. the u.s. and the 2016 presidential election. coming up, how the hackers tricked the democratic party. >> it was a reasonably realistic e-mail. it looked fairly legitimate. >> and the trail of evidence leading right back to russia. now you drive 300to be fmiles to watch this. yes, nice pop toss! flag dancing? we've been there. and with free hot breakfast and a warm welcome, we'll be there for you. hampton by hilton.

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march 2016. eight months to election day. >> hello, ohio. >> the republican and democratic primaries were full of sound and fury. >> we love trump! >> who wants hillary? who wants trump? >> more and more of it about russia. >> if mr. trump gets his way, it will be like christmas in the

kremlin. >> by now, russian hackers had penetrated the democratic national committee for months and were setting their sights on new targets. using the crudest of cyber weapons, so-called sphere phishing e-mails. >> in addition to the organizations that were targeted, multiple individuals were targeted with sphere phishing e-mails that resembled google warnings. >> john holtquest is director at the cyber security firm, fire eye. >> they clicked on those thinking they were security warnings and this basically transported them to a place where the adversary could collect their credentials and reuse them to gain access to their accounts. it was a reasonably realistic e-mail. it looked fairly legitimate. >> a prime target was the chairman of hillary clinton's campaign, john podesta. >> there was a google alert that there was some compromise in the

system and that change the password. >> this seemingly benign message was actually a sphere phishing e-mail. it warned someone just used your password and prompted podesta to change his password immediately by clicking on a link. it was signed, innocuously, best, g-mail team. >> it actually got managed by my assistant who checked with our cyber security guy and through a comedy of errors i guess, he instructed her to go ahead and click on it and she did. >> the fatal error, podesta's i.t. person wrote back calling the e-mail legitimate, when, in fact -- he meant to say the opposite, right? >> he meant to say it was illegitimate. he said it was legitimate. the rest is history. >> one typo, one click, and russian hackers had gained free rein throughout the e-mail of the man running clinton's presidential campaign. >> the initial weapon as it

were, cyber weapon, pretty schism. it's not high-level stuff. >> that is one of the frustrations i think for all cyber security experts. >> russia had now successfully breached two democratic party computer systems. out of the clinton campaign and the democratic national committee. >> we were kind of blown away by the brashness that they were operating with. almost like they didn't anticipate any consequences for their action. >> back on the campaign trail, it was looking more and more likely to be hillary clinton. >> love trump's hate. >> versus donald trump. >> and we're going to beat crooked hillary so bad hi that your heads will spin. >> april 2016. seven months to election day. nine months since the first intrusion inside the democratic national committee. the dnc's computer technician

finally discovers the breach. though much of the damage had already been done, dnc notified the fbi and hired the cyber security firm, crowdstrike. crowdstrike's forensic work quickly identified two culprits. both linked to russia. one dubbed fancy bear, the other cozy bear. familiar foes for cyber security experts. >> long before any of this transpired around the election, we've known these actors for many years. there's a lot of evidence that this actor is russian or russian speaker. >> what kind of evidence? some of it surprisingly simple. such as time stamps showing the hackers were starting and finishing their work days on moscow time. >> the mistake they made is leaving these time stamps. if you look at enough of them over time, you get a picture of what actual hours this operator is working and what they come down to is work schedule fits

right in with western russia's time zone. besides that, there's a lot of russian language artifacts. >> that means computer code written in the serilic or russian alphabet. he and his team did not let down their guard for new intrusions and by the summer of 2016, they detected fancy bear sniffing out more prey. >> it's really exciting to catch these guys in the act. >> the russian hackers had infiltrated act blue, democratic fund-raising website. >> they were diverting people who went to the act blue system, the donations system, to a server that they owned. >> his team showed us exactly what they found. >> this is the website of the dccc, the democratic congressional campaign committee. on july 19th, 2016. if you right click and go to view page source, it will bring you the html source. so the code that's behind what you see. in this case, what was interesting was that normally here, this is the hyperlink, normally this would go to

secure.actblue.com, but in this case, it goes to secure.actblues.com, with an "s." >> act blues with an "s" had nothing to do with the democrats and appeared to be a russian cover. >> the second i saw we were sending -- there were e-mails flying everywhere including to the targeted organization, obviously wanted to give them a heads-up. >> it was one more brazen intrusion inside the american political process. >> we have high confidence that this is a russian intelligence organization because we've been tracking this actor for so long, we've seen so many artifacts, forensic and otherwise, that suggest that this actor is carrying out russian intelligence missions. next, what would russia do with the tens of thousands of e-mails they had found inside democratic party organizations? >> they're looking to weaponize information. >> as hillary clinton's opponent, donald trump, gleefully egged them on.

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and do your thing. hackers allegedly connected to the russian government break into the servers of the democratic national committee. >> june 2016. >> donald trump is not qualified to be president and commander in

chief. >> five months to election day. >> russian hackers managed to infiltrate -- >> and the world is getting the first hints of the deluge of the stolen e-mails and documents to come. >> it's a deep breach, no question about it. >> a mysterious blogger or bloggers nicknamed guccifer 20,0 in fact, a cover for a sophisticated russian hacking operation, began posting the first set of stolen documents. >> they love putting on these false personas and carrying out operations through them. >> so what was russia going to do with all the stolen information? >> they're looking to weaponize information. >> steven hall is the cia's former moscow nation chief. >> it's oftentimes interesting to put myself given my background into the position of the russian intelligence officer. so i can imagine these guys saying, would it be too crazy to think we could perhaps actually pull together an influence operation? and, you know, it probably got run up the chain, somebody said,

why not? let's give it a shot. >> guccifer 2.0 took its first shot within days of the story breaking that the dnc had been hacked. releasing batches of materials not just from the democratic national committee, but also from the hillary clinton campaign and the democratic congressional campaign committee. all had been infiltrated by russian hackers. >> it's the russian services taking that gold that they had collected, making something out of it that in turn can be used against their adversaries, in this case the united states. we continue to be their primary enemy. >> guccifer 2.0 would soon be joined by other rogue publishers such as wikileaks. site founded by julian assange. >> you want what we call in the business a cutout, you want a third party. somebody like, oh, i don't know, wikileaks. >> and on july 22nd, wikileaks posted this stunning announcement. it would release more than

19,000 e-mails from the democratic national committee. >> so in effect, you have electronic evidence ofso in eff electronic evidence of a middle man as it were between russia and wikileaks. >> we were pretty high in our confidence that's what happened. i'll put it that way. >> reporter: wikileaks, however, continues to deny receiving the hacked documents from russia. just three days before the start of the democratic convention, the stolen e-mails would suggest that top leaders of the d democratic national committee were biased in favor of hillary clinton and against bernie sanders for the party's nomination. [ chanting "bernie beats trump" ] >> all right, everybody, settle down. the chair of the dnc, debbie wasserman-schultz, was forced to resign. the first scout of russia's influence operation. and the press quickly shifted focus toward the controversy.

russia's influence campaign appeared to be having an effect. >> coming from the protesters there about this shakeup in the dnc? >> a delighted donald trump tweeted, "the new joke in town is that russia leaked the disastrous dnc e-mails which should never have been written, stupid, because putin likes me." in a now infamous speech, he took the alarming step of egging the russian on to hack hillary clinton's private server. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. >> trump was not alone in his circle celebrating the russian hacks. >> wikileaks, i love wikileaks. >> one supporter in particular, the longtime conspiracy theorist, roger stone, hinted that he had advanced knowledge of the releases, raising questions for the first time of

possible cooperation between trump associates and russia. >> i actually have communicated with assange. i believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the clinton foundation, but there's no telling what the october surprise may be. >> in october, roger stone once again seemed to signal advanced knowledge of wikileaks' plans tweeting, "wednesday, hillary clinton is done. #wikileaks." >> there seems to be some indication there's some contact between forces closely associated with the trump campaign and wikileaks. it certainly seemed like an interesting coincidence, let's put it that way. >> later, stone denied speaking with assange directly or colluding with the russians. as for the russian president, himself, vladimir putin laughed at the idea of russian involvement in an interfere with "bloomberg news." >> translator: no, i don't know anything about that.

>> i did have a very visceral feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was a areally serious thing, assault on the very heart of our democracy. that's one of the reasons i felt so strongly about putting out the statement that we did in october. >> on october 7th, one month and one day before the election, u.s. intelligence agencies publicly named and shamed russia. their statement read, "the u.s. intelligence community is confident that the russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from u.s. persons and institutions." >> 17 distinct agencies together and say, yeah, we essentially all concur on this, that's a significant thing. coming up, the releases of stolen e-mails accelerate. >> steady drip of stolen e-mail. >> e-mail. >> e-mails. >> e-mails.

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can we at least analyze customer can we push the offer online? legacy technology can handcuff any company. but "yes" is here. you're saying the new app will go live monday? yeah. with help from hpe, we can finally work the way we want to. with the right mix of hybrid it, everything computes. john podesta, chair of the hillary clinton campaign, will

never forget october 7th, 2016. >> early in the morning, the director of homeland security and the director of national intelligence released a statement that the russians were actively interfering in the election. later in the day, the "access hollywood" tape came out. >> i did [ bleep ], she was married. >> and, of course, everyone's attention turned to what donald trump had been saying to billy bush on that bus. >> you know, i'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- i just start kissing them. it's like a magnet. >> a break for the clinton campaign. that is, until just moments later. >> within minutes, i think 23 minutes later, the first of the e-mails was posted to wikileaks with a statement from julian assange that said that, you know, we have the contents of his e-mail system and we're going to release them all. of course, the campaign. >> that is, the entire contents

of john podesta's private account, totaling more than 50,000 e-mails. once again, the source of the e-mail trove was wikileaks and democrats and later the u.s. intelligence community suspected the release had been timed for maximum impact. have any doubt that those two events that day, the "access hollywood" tape then the release soon after of your e-mails -- >> let's put it, it's a pretty massive quens dencoincidence th choose to pull a trigger on a friday evening when they've been sitting on it for a while. >> no, i have nothing to say about wikileaks other than i think we should all be concerned about what the russians are trying to do to our election. >> that friday night e-mail dump was just the first of many. >> russia behind these hacks. >> a brand new batch of hacked e-mails posted by wikileaks. >> steady drip of stolen e-mails. >> e-mails.

>> those releases quickly became a dominant story line of the campaign. >> e-mails. >> e-mails. >> e-mails. >> russians are pretty intense observers of what goes on in this country, and try to both collect information on it and as we saw, where they can, exploit it. >> russia's exploitation would expand to new targets. neera tanden, longtime hillary clinton confidant, was on her transition team. >> i think i saw my name on, like, one of the tvs and i was, like, what hatppened? >> tanden's sometimes critical comments on the campaign reve revealed to the world. one, tanden says, "hillary, god, her insticncts are suboptimal. on" on the campaign trail,

donald trump eagerly attempted to take advantage of the stolen e-mails. >> did you see what came out over quiwikileaks? >> quoting them or appearing to in the third presidential debate. >> john podesta said you have terrible instincts. bernie sanders said you have bad -- i agree with both. >> he misjudged it in saying it was johnpodesta. it was mine. i remember watching the tvs as it happened and wanting to put my head under the pillow. >> the releases of the stolen clinton campaign e-mails and memos continued right up to and even beyond helection day. >> all these e-mails were just getting dumped day in and day out. every morning i basically woke up a dread for what was going to come next and i was like, is this going to sicnk the campaig or not? >> inside the white house, a sometimes bitter debate was unfolding. some senior advisers including secretary of state john kerry

pushed for a more robust response including stiffer economic sanctions. but abroad, the president feared escalation with russia and at home, charges of influencing the election. >> at a time when anything that was said by me or anybody in the white house would immediately be seen through a partisan lens, i wanted to make sure that everybody understood we were playing this thing straight. >> as electiondy approached, the obama administration's greatest fear was russia was disrupt actual voting systems. the fear so great that president obama warned putin face-to-face at a g-20 meeting in china. >> i felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly. and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be some serious consequences if he didn't. >> later, obama made rare use of a secured direct messaging

system to the kremlin, shimilar to e-mail. originally intended to overt nuclear war. this time, to warn putin again. >> cnn now projects that donald trump will carry the state of north carolina. cnn projects donald trump will carry the state of florida. cnn projects donald trump wins the presidency. >> how damaging was this to the clinton campaign? >> look, it was our job to win and we didn't do it. what went into that, you know, a lot of things and, you know, we bear our own sense of responsibility for that. but i think it was an important element of electing donald trump and i think russians got -- >> after election day with growing urgency, the obama administration finally retaliated. closing russian compounds in the

u.s. believed to be used for spying, expelling some 35 russian diplomats and imposing more sanctions on russia. in secret, mr. obama considered taking more aggressive steps, including initiating a plan to place cyber weapons inside critical russian systems. as first reported by the "washington post." for potential activation if russia were to attack again. next, was president trump also in russia's cross hairs? the emergence of a mysterious dossier. >> we thought that it was important that he know about it. what do you have there? p3 it's meat, cheese and nuts. i keep my protein interesting. oh yea, me too. i have cheese and uh these herbs. p3 snacks. the more interesting way to get your protein.

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i will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. so help me god. >> by the time donald trump took the oath of office, the u.s. intelligence community had assessed, with confidence, that russian president vladimir had influenced a campaign aimed at undermining the u.s. presidential election. >> why the level of confidence there? >> i'll just say with multiple sources and that all of us, the

three agency heads and myself are very high in our confidence that orc stragz came from the highest levels of the russian government. >> what's your intelligence agency's degree inside russia? >> it's not perfect but it's pretty good. >> so good in fact as first reported by the washington post that the u.s. had sourcing deep inside the russian government. detailing putin's direct involvement. >> you would have had russian intelligence officers and policy makers saying this is a chance to strike at one of the founding notions, one of the underpinnings of liberal democracy is our number one enemy in the world. >> and multiple sources say u.s. spy agencies with further, determininging with confidence the kremlin had a more ambitious

aim, discrediting hillary clinton and helping donald tr p trump. >> i think it's pretty clear if there was a prospect that he might win and wanted to influence the election in favor of him because they thought they could make deals with him. >> one compelling reason for that judgment is that russia had also hacked into the emails and files of republican party organizations and individuals, including members of congress but crucially did not release the bulk of that information. >> do you think they see their interference in this election as a success? >> i do. there's no way to engage what effect it had. but regardless i feel sure they consider it a success. >> russian officials vehemently denied any interference in the election until earlier this month. seven months after

election day. president putin for the first time opened the door to russian involvement. >> hackers are free spirited people. if they are patriotically minded, they start to make their own contribution to what they believe is the good fight against those who speak badly against russia. is that possible? theoretically it is. >> it was a startling and frank revelation. still more alarming questions remain unanswered today. most prominent among them, did russia have help from anyone inside the trump campaign? the possibility of collusion remains a subject of congressional and now special counsel investigation. >> do you stand by your testimony that there is an active investigation, counterintelligence investigation regarding trump campaign individuals in the

russian government as to whether or not they collaborate? >> to see if there was any coordination between the russian effort and -- >> right. is that still going on? so nothing's changed. you stand by those two statements? >> correct. >> another continuing question for investigators, does russia hold information that could be damaging to donald trump if made public. the collection of such compromising material is standard operating procedure for russian spy services. >> it's almost impossible to think they wouldn't have collected against donald trump. he would have been a really rich guy who might come in handy at some point if you need him down the road and the easiest way to make him more malleable is if you have dirt on him. >> cnn breaking news. >> russian opaeratives have

information about mr. trump. >> this was part of last week's classified intelligence briefing. >> the senior most intelligence officials took the possibility of compromising information seriously enough to prep then president elect trump and president obama. and funded by trump's political opponents. news first reported by cnn. in conversations described in the dossier, russian officials and others claimed to have personally and financially compromising information on trump. >> can you tell us your think nothing to why you included a summary on the now famous dossier and the briefings to the president elect and the president. >> well, we thought it was important that he know about it. that was the main point. not to comment on the verasty. >> so what happens the next time

americans vote? law makers of both parties and the senior most intelligence officials are unanimous in their answer. russia will strike american democracy again. >> it's not about republicans and democrats. they're coming after america. they want to undermine our credibility in the face of the world and they will be back because we remain that shining city on the hill and they don't like it. >> is there any reason to believe russia is not right now today continuing to attempt to or infiltrate u.s. political organization s organizations? >> i'm quite sure they are. i think it's in their dna. during the soviet era or now. >> a return to the cold war. this time in cyber space. with a direct and on going threat to american democracy, even the soviets never matched.

>> this is cnn tonight. lots to talk bouts on two big stories. on the russia investigation and health care. prognosis for repeal and replace getting worse. the senate gop bill in danger with mitch mcconnell painted in a corner and forced to delay a vote until after the fourth of july recess which trump really did not want to do. and meanwhile president trump meeting with senators at the white house in an effort to salvage one of his biggest campaign promises. let's get to jim chuto with the latest on the russia investigation. great reporting this evening. what is the white house doing to make sure that the russians don't hack and medal with our democracy again? >> well, the simplest answer is we don't know exactly. the question has been asked, not answered in full. one thing i will tell you. i asked the same question on