and his relationship with guccifer 2.0. guccifer 2.0 is an online persona that the i.c. concluded was used by russian military intelligence to leak documents and e-mails stolen from the democratic national committee to wikileaks. the u.s. intelligence community including the fbi has since concluded that the russian government directed the breach and that russian military intelligence used guccifer 2.0 to insure that the documents obtained were publicly released. so while guccifer has insists that he or she is not russian, the intelligence community has concluded that the hacker has strong ties to moscow and was used by russian military intelligence to leak information about the clinton campaign and the democrats that was stolen by russia. is that, director comey, a fair characterization. >> yes, the ic's judgment was guccifer 2.0 was an strupt of the russian intelligence. >> thank you. a few months back, it was revealed that in august of last year, that's a couple months before the 2016 election, roger stone, one of the president trump's long-standing political mentors a

in one message, guccifer writes to mr. stone, "i am pleased to say that you are a great man, please tell me if i can help you anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me." director comey, to me this sounds like a clear offer from a russian intelligence operative to collaborate with a senior official on the trump campaign. is that a throwaway line or an offer to help stone in some respect, do we know whether any further communication between stone and guccifer took place? if you cannot say here or cannot say, but could say in another classified environment, can you make that distinction? >> i definitely cannot say here. i do not think i would in a classified environment because it calls for questions about what we are looking at and how. i definitely cannot say here. >> okay, well at the very least, stones conversation with guccifer demonstrated, once again, that the trump campaign officials were communicating with russian operatives. what is less clear, however, is whether the trump campaign ever provided direction to russi

guccifer 2.0 is on online persona that the i.c. concluded was used by russian military intelligence to leak documents and e-mails stolen from the democratic national committee to wikileaks. the u.s. intelligence community, including the fbi, has since concluded that the russian government directed the breach and that russian military intelligence used guccifer 2.0 to ensure that the documents obtained were publicly released. so while guccifer has insisted that he or she is not russian, the intelligence community has concluded that the hacker has strong ties to moscow and was used by russian military intelligence to leak information about the clinton campaign and the democrats that was stolen by russia. is that, director comey, a fair characteristize is yes. the guccifer 2.0 was an instrument of the russian intelligence. >> thank you. well, a few months back it was revealed that in august of last year, that is a couple of months before the 2016 election, roger stone, one of president trump's long-standing political mentors and at on

that roger stone was having with guccifer 2.0. so, you know, these are not just mere coincidences. this is a convergence. and then there is a whole classified side of information that i hope the world sees very soon. i hope the fbi -- and i have every reason to believe -- we'll continue to develop this. but this is not donald trump being the unluckiest man in the world to have all of these coincidences converge at the same time that russia's interference was taking place. >> and just so we know, again, there is the public information that we've discussed. you assert that it points to collusion. we were questioning if, in fact, it does. have you seen things on the classified side that you cannot tell us about, though, that is even stronger evidence than what is out there publicly? >> yes. >> okay. so, there are things that you cannot tell us that you think are more, you know, perhaps more convincing than the public information? >> there's a pattern here, john, on the classified and unclassified side of deep personal, political and

field office in san francisco was tasked with trying to identify the people who called themselves gucciferd posted e-mail stolen from john podesta's e-mail account. and fbi counter-intelligence agents based in washington, d.c. were pursuing leads in performance and foreign communication intercepts. if you think of the fbi investigation, it's not like a thing that happens on a list serve or all in fbi hq, you have people in at least three different places working on three different parts of it. there after the financial times added this. the fbi creating a special unit in washington, not at the washington field office, washington fbi headquarters to oversee this investigation overall. instead of it all being spread out among pittsburgh office, san francisco office, other field offices, they would centralize the main part of this investigation in d.c. 20 dedicated agents all centralized at fbi headquarters. that does not happen with every investigation and does not happen with any major investigation. that's a change they made about this investigation that was due to take effect this month.

networks of the dnc, dccc, and were responsible through a cutout, releasing it through places like guccifer 2.0, wikileaks and others. and so, they were taking advantage of information that they had collected that they determined if it was publicly released was going to advance their objectives that hi enumerated before. in addition, they had fake news stories to denigrate secretary clinton, so it was a mixture of propaganda, it was cyber collection, and it was the release of information that was again seen as damaging to one of the candidates that they were trying to harm. >> so, you said a moment ago that you don't believe they'll be deterred from engaging in activity like this in the future. do you think they would attempt to influence the 2018 midterm elections? >> i have, unfortunately, grudging respect for russian intelligence capabilities and their aggressiveness, their pervasi pervasiveness, and their determination to do what they can to undermine this country's democracy and democratic institutions as well as those certainly in europe and other areas. so, i believe that they will t

and who is guccifer 2.2? the individual responsible for hacking the d.n.c. and releasing its e-mails during the campaign. another person whose connections to both the trump campaign and russia will be looked at is our former colleague, now our attorney general. during the course of his confirmation hearings, mr. sessions misled fellow senators about his interactions with russian officials. when asked what he would do as attorney general if he learned that anyone connected to the trump campaign had communicated with the russian government, he said, i'm not aware of any of those activities. i have been called a surrogate at a time two in that campaign, and i did not have communication withs with the russian. but he did. meeting with russian ambassador kislyak on two separate occasions last year. then we have michael flynn, a very major part of the convections between the trump campaign connections between the trump campaign and russia. retired attorney genera -- he wy involved in the series of events that lead us to yesterday with the appointment of special pr

guccifer 2.0 16 released 200 pages of the d.n.c.'s research, hundreds of pages what i would call dirt and happened two days after the "wall street journal" published a plan to revolt toll prevent mr. trump from securing the nomination. why wasn't the release of harmful information addressed in the report and was this even evaluated during the review? mr. clapper: i would have to consult with the analysts that re involved in the report to definitively answer that. i don't know if they considered that. senator grassley: can you submit that as anance in writing. mr. clapper: i'm a private citizen now, sir. i don't know what the rules are. potentially classified information. i will look into it. senator grassley: mr. clapper, you testified the intelligence community conducted an haustive review of russian analysts and had access to raw intelligence data. do you have any reason to believe that any agency withheld any relevant information? mr. clapper: i don't believe so with one potential calf yet which is the possibility of acknowledging

russian intelligence fronts, t cutouts and simpympathetic organizations like goose guccif, manipulate public opinion and influbs ti influence the outcome of an election. roger stone foresaw stolen data on twitter in 2016. timing can matter. on october 7th just hours after the damaging "access hollywood" tapes of donald trump were made public, publishing e-mails stolen from clinton campaign manager john podesta. assassination and political violence. last act, russian military intelligence reportedly conspired to assassinate the then-prime minister of montenegro as part of a coup attem attempt. russian opposition figures are routinely the targets of state-delegated viviolence. boris nemsof was brazenly murdered near the kremlin in 2015. thankfully we have no evidence of that happening here. investment control and key economic sectors. we learned from heather conley's testimony in our last hearing the kremlin playbook is is to manipulate other countries through economic penetration, sectors of the target country's economy to create political leverage. putin's pet ro politics uses russia'

very sophisticated, in bed with wikileaks, in bed with guccifer, and they were dropping this stuff on me and they haven't done anything since early january. so their job was done. they got their job done. so we're going to i hope be able to connect up a lot of the dots and it is really important because, you know, when comey did testify before being fired this last couple of weeks he was asked are the russians still involved? he goes yes, they are. why wouldn't they be? it worked for them. it is important that americans and particularly people in tech and business understand, you know, putin wants to bring us down. he is an old kgb agent. i had obviously run-ins with him because that in large measure prompted his animous toward me and his willingness to help trump. back to the platforms. i'm not sure what conclusions we should draw, but here is what i believe. i believe what was happening to me was unprecedented and we were scrambling. we went and told everybody we could find in the milling of the summthe -- in the middle of the summer the russians were messing with the election and w