6 Agencies Were Investigating Trump's Russia Connections Before the Dossier

The informal, inter-agency working group began to explore possible Russian interference last spring, long before the FBI received information from a former British spy hired to develop politically damaging and unverified research about Trump, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry…A key mission of the six-agency group has been to examine who financed the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The London-based transparency group WikiLeaks released the emails last summer and in October. The working group is scrutinizing the activities of a few Americans who were affiliated with Trump's campaign or his business empire and of multiple individuals from Russia and other former Soviet nations who had similar connections, the sources said. U.S. intelligence agencies not only have been unanimous in blaming Russia for the hacking of Democrats' computers but also have concluded that the leaking and dissemination of thousands of emails of top Democrats, some of which caused headaches for the Clinton campaign, were done to help Trump win.

For months, Trump has voiced positive sentiments toward Putin. In early January, he tweeted that "only 'stupid' people, or fools" would think it's bad to have good relations with Russia. "When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!" he tweeted last week. During the campaign in July, he displayed ignorance that Russian-backed separatists had invaded Crimea in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and he called on Russia to hack away to uncover thousands of emails that Clinton had never made public after using a private server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last July, Trump's campaign associates successfully changed the Republican Party's platform to weaken a provision advocating more military support for the Ukrainian government in its fight to defend itself against the Russian-backed incursionin Crimea.