President Donald Trump and Devin Nunes have been muddying the waters of the Russia investigation, so let’s try to clarify those waters so that they’re as clear as vodka.
Here are several things we know:
1. Russia interfered in the U.S. election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that President Vladimir Putin had “a clear preference” for Trump and “ordered an influence campaign” to hurt Hillary Clinton. The Department of Homeland Security notified 21 states that Russian hackers (mostly unsuccessfully) had targeted their election systems before the 2016 election.
Russia oversaw an online campaign using fake American accounts to spread anti-Clinton messages. Twitter found that 50,000 Russian accounts fired off 2.1 million election-related tweets in the fall of 2016, and in the final weeks around the election accounted for 4.25 percent of retweets of Trump’s own account.
2. Trump has long-standing business interests in Russia. The Times has explored these, beginning with a trip to Moscow in 1987 to try to build a hotel there. Trump has attracted murky investments from Russia, raising speculation that Russia might have gained some leverage over him. A Russian oligarch paid Trump an eyebrow-raising $95 million for one Florida property. A Reuters investigation found that people with Russian addresses or passports had invested nearly $100 million in seven Trump properties in southern Florida.