House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., right, sitting next to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, listens during a hearing on "Cyber-securing the... (Associated Press) 
 
 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., right, sitting next to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, listens during a hearing on "Cyber-securing the Vote: Ensuring the Integrity of the U.S. Election System," on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Donald Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections. 
 
 Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in U.S. elections — at times even calling it a "hoax" — acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. 
 
 "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. But he added "they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don't want Trump!" 
 
 That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. U.S. intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. 
 
 At Tuesday's hearing, Christopher Krebs of the Homeland Security Department said the intelligence community has observed "continued malign influence operations" into 2018, though they do not appear to be "an effort at the same scope or scale" as in 2016. 
 
 As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers — even some of Trump's closest GOP allies — strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. 
 
 House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." 
 
 Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina criticized Trump directly. 
 
 "Unfortunately, the president's recent comments at the U.S.-Russia summit in Helsinki failed to hold Putin accountable for his attacks on our country's interests and deter him from future indiscretions," she said. 
 
 Other Republicans were careful to draw a line and not directly disagree with the president. 
 
 "I don't think anyone here denies the fact that Russia attempted to meddle in the elections," said Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. "The issue of meddling is one thing, the issue of the president colluding is another and that is indeed a witch hunt." 
 
 Democrats said Republicans haven't done enough to keep the vote secure this fall. They asked for more questioning, more documents and more money for states to secure their election infrastructure. 
 
 "We need all of our Republican colleagues to conduct oversight — not just use strong words," said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight panel. 
 
 Earlier this year, Congress allocated $380 million to assist states with election security upgrades, and most of that money has been disbursed. Democrats want to continue the money through 2019, but Republicans have said new spending isn't needed. 
 
 The very makeup of the election infrastructure — decentralized and different in every state — provides some protection against hacking efforts. But state and local election officials have been working with the Department of Homeland Security to shore up their efforts after at least 21 state systems were scanned for vulnerabilities by Russian hackers and at least one state saw its voter registration system breached. 
 
 In addition to helping state election officials obtain security clearances so they can be briefed on the latest threats to elections, Homeland Security officials also offer remote scanning of their networks to identify any vulnerabilities as well as intensive cybersecurity reviews that involve onsite exams. 
 
 "DHS has made tremendous strides and is committed to working collaboratively with those on the front lines of administering our elections to secure election infrastructure from risks," Krebs said. 
 
 Even if state elections systems are better protected, other threats remain. Last week, Microsoft officials said they had seen evidence that suggested phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for election in the midterm elections. The company would not disclose the candidates, citing privacy issues. 
 
 Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the U.S. "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro, Tami Abdollah and Deb Riechmann in Washington and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report. ||||| CIA briefers told the senators in a closed-door briefing it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to officials. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) 
 
 CIA briefers told the senators in a closed-door briefing it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to officials. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) 
 
 The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. 
 
 Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances. 
 
 “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.” 
 
 The Post's Ellen Nakashima goes over the events and discusses the hacker groups responsible. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post) 
 
 The Obama administration has been debating for months how to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions, with White House officials concerned about escalating tensions with Moscow and being accused of trying to boost Clinton’s campaign. 
 
 [U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections] 
 
 In September, during a secret briefing for congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to officials present. 
 
 The Trump transition team dismissed the findings in a short statement issued Friday evening. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again,’ ” the statement read. 
 
 Trump has consistently dismissed the intelligence community’s findings about Russian hacking. 
 
 “I don’t believe they interfered” in the election, he told Time magazine this week. The hacking, he said, “could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.” 
 
 The CIA shared its latest assessment with key senators in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill last week, in which agency officials cited a growing body of intelligence from multiple sources. Agency briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. 
 
 Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) says he wants to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. election, among claims that Donald Trump's rhetoric on Russia and Vladimir Putin is too soft. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered. 
 
 For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability. 
 
 Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said in a television interview that the “Russian government is not the source.” 
 
 The White House and CIA officials declined to comment. 
 
 On Friday, the White House said President Obama had ordered a “full review” of Russian hacking during the election campaign, as pressure from Congress has grown for greater public understanding of exactly what Moscow did to influence the electoral process. 
 
 “We may have crossed into a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what has happened and to impart some lessons learned,” Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. 
 
 Obama wants the report before he leaves office Jan. 20, Monaco said. The review will be led by James Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials said. 
 
 During her remarks, Monaco didn’t address the latest CIA assessment, which hasn’t been previously disclosed. 
 
 Seven Democratic senators last week asked Obama to declassify details about the intrusions and why officials believe that the Kremlin was behind the operation. Officials said Friday that the senators specifically were asking the White House to release portions of the CIA’s presentation. 
 
 This week, top Democratic lawmakers in the House also sent a letter to Obama, asking for briefings on Russian interference in the election. 
 
 U.S. intelligence agencies have been cautious for months in characterizing Russia’s motivations, reflecting the United States’ long-standing struggle to collect reliable intelligence on President Vladi­mir Putin and those closest to him. 
 
 In previous assessments, the CIA and other intelligence agencies told the White House and congressional leaders that they believed Moscow’s aim was to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system. The assessments stopped short of saying the goal was to help elect Trump. 
 
 On Oct. 7, the intelligence community officially accused Moscow of seeking to interfere in the election through the hacking of “political organizations.” Though the statement never specified which party, it was clear that officials were referring to cyber-intrusions into the computers of the DNC and other Democratic groups and individuals. 
 
 Some key Republican lawmakers have continued to question the quality of evidence supporting Russian involvement. 
 
 “I’ll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there’s clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence — even now,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. “There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.” 
 
 [U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt elections] 
 
 Though Russia has long conducted cyberspying on U.S. agencies, companies and organizations, this presidential campaign marks the first time Moscow has attempted through cyber-means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election, the officials said. 
 
 The reluctance of the Obama White House to respond to the alleged Russian intrusions before Election Day upset Democrats on the Hill as well as members of the Clinton campaign. 
 
 Within the administration, top officials from different agencies sparred over whether and how to respond. White House officials were concerned that covert retaliatory measures might risk an escalation in which Russia, with sophisticated cyber-capabilities, might have less to lose than the United States, with its vast and vulnerable digital infrastructure. 
 
 The White House’s reluctance to take that risk left Washington weighing more-limited measures, including the “naming and shaming” approach of publicly blaming Moscow. 
 
 By mid-September, White House officials had decided it was time to take that step, but they worried that doing so unilaterally and without bipartisan congressional backing just weeks before the election would make Obama vulnerable to charges that he was using intelligence for political purposes. 
 
 Instead, officials devised a plan to seek bipartisan support from top lawmakers and set up a secret meeting with the Gang of 12 — a group that includes House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of both chambers’ committees on intelligence and homeland security. 
 
 Obama dispatched Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to make the pitch for a “show of solidarity and bipartisan unity” against Russian interference in the election, according to a senior administration official. 
 
 Specifically, the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions. 
 
 Though U.S. intelligence agencies were skeptical that hackers would be able to manipulate the election results in a systematic way, the White House feared that Russia would attempt to do so, sowing doubt about the fundamental mechanisms of democracy and potentially forcing a more dangerous confrontation between Washington and Moscow. 
 
 [Putin denies that Russia hacked the DNC but says it was for the public good] 
 
 In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals. 
 
 And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.” 
 
 The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests. 
 
 According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics. 
 
 Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands. 
 
 McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary. 
 
 Some Clinton supporters saw the White House’s reluctance to act without bipartisan support as further evidence of an excessive caution in facing adversaries. 
 
 “The lack of an administration response on the Russian hacking cannot be attributed to Congress,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who was at the September meeting. “The administration has all the tools it needs to respond. They have the ability to impose sanctions. They have the ability to take clandestine means. The administration has decided not to utilize them in a way that would deter the Russians, and I think that’s a problem.” 
 
 Philip Rucker contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Putin wants revenge and respect, and hacking the U.S. is his way of getting it 
 
 Trump and Putin are using the same tactic to deflect questions about the DNC hack 
 
 Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s ||||| The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference. 
 
 McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri. 
 
 There’s no evidence to suggest that this attempt to lure McCaskill staffers was successful. The precise purpose of the approach was also unclear. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it. 
 
 “I’m not going to speak of it right now,” she said. “I think we’ll have something on it next week. I’m not going to speak about it right now. I can’t confirm or do anything about it right now.” 
 
 The senator later released a statement asserting that the cyberattack was unsuccessful. 
 
 “Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable,” McCaskill said. “While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.” 
 
 In August 2017, around the time of the hack attempt, Trump traveled to Missouri and chided McCaskill, telling the crowd to “vote her out of office.” Just this last week, however, Trump said, on Twitter, that he feared Russians would intervene in the 2018 midterm elections on behalf of Democrats. 
 
 “ In August 2017, around the time of the hack attempt, Trump traveled to Missouri and chided McCaskill, telling the crowd to ‘vote her out of office.’ ” 
 
 The revelations of the attempted hack of McCaskill staffers comes just weeks after Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers, accusing them of orchestrating cyberattacks that targeted the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Clinton’s campaign in 2016. 
 
 On Friday, Trump is scheduled to chair a meeting of the National Security Council on election vulnerabilities facing the midterm elections—amid persistent criticism, particularly after his Helsinki meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that he isn’t taking Russian interference seriously. 
 
 The attempt against McCaskill’s office was a variant of the password-stealing technique used by Russia’s so-called “Fancy Bear” hackers against Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, in 2016. 
 
 The hackers sent forged notification emails to Senate targets claiming the target’s Microsoft Exchange password had expired, and instructing them to change it. If the target clicked on the link, he or she was taken to a convincing replica of the U.S. Senate’s Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) login page, a single sign-on point for e-mail and other services. 
 
 As with the Podesta phishing, each Senate phishing email had a different link coded with the recipient's email address. That allowed the fake password-change webpage to display the user’s email address when they arrived, making the site more convincing. 
 
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 In October, Microsoft wrested control of one of the spoofed website addresses—adfs.senate.qov.info. Seizing the Russians’ malicious domain names has been easy for Microsoft since August 2017, when a federal judge in Virginia issued a permanent injunction against the GRU hackers, after Microsoft successfully sued them as unnamed “John Doe” defendants. The court established a process that lets Microsoft take over any web addresses the hackers use that includes a Microsoft trademark. 
 
 Microsoft redirected the traffic from the fake Senate site to its own sinkhole server, putting it in a prime position to view targets trying to click through to change their passwords. 
 
 The Daily Beast identified McCaskill as a target while investigating statements made by Microsoft VP Tom Burt last week in an appearance at the Aspen Security Forum. Burton discussed the Virginia injunction, and told the audience that it allowed Microsoft to thwart a phishing campaign against three midterm election candidates, who he declined to name. 
 
 “We did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks, and we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for elections in the midterm elections,” said Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust. “We took down that domain and working with the government actually were able to avoid anybody being infected by that particular attack.” 
 
 The most recent domain seizures recorded in the Virginia case took place between August and December of last year, when Microsoft grabbed seven malicious web addresses, including the “qov.info” address. A report from the security company Trend Micro released in January listed that address and the role it played in a Senate phishing campaign against unnamed targets. 
 
 A snapshot of a deep link on the phishing site taken September 26th by a website security scanner showed the fake password-change page with the Senate email address of a McCaskill policy aide on display. 
 
 “ McCaskill has spoken out forcefully against Moscow, likening Russian election-meddling to ‘a form of warfare’ and calling Putin a ‘thug and a bully.’ ” 
 
 There is a notable divide between Congress and the Trump administration over the vulnerability of the 2018 election to Russian election interference. 
 
 In March, the Senate Intelligence Committee warned state election officials to make cybersecurity a “high priority” for their election systems, particularly over voter databases, and urged the states to bolster their coordination with the Department of Homeland Security. But the secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, appeared earlier this month to downplay the threat. While “adversaries and nonstate actors” consider U.S. elections a persistent target, Nielsen said there are “no indications that Russia is targeting the 2018 U.S. midterms at a scale or scope to match their activities in 2016.” 
 
 By contrast, Dan Coats, the embattled director of national intelligence, testified in February that Russia considered its 2016 election hacking a success. Putin “views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Coats told the Senate intelligence panel. Last week, after being rebuked by Trump beside Putin in Helsinki, Coats reiterated his concern about Russia’s “ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.” 
 
 Earlier this year, Congress appropriated $380 million, as part of a broader spending package, to individual states for election security. The Senate is currently weighing whether to authorize an additional $250 million in similar grants. 
 
 A spokesperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the panel. 
 
 McCaskill is one of 10 Senate Democrats facing re-election this year in states that Trump won in 2016. Her likely Republican challenger is Josh Hawley, who currently serves as the state’s attorney general. Outside groups and campaign committees have spent more than $15.5 million against McCaskill so far. 
 
 McCaskill has spoken out forcefully against Moscow, likening Russian election-meddling to “a form of warfare” and calling Putin a “thug and a bully.” She was also caught up in the Podesta hack, which was revealed when WikiLeaks released the Clinton campaign chair’s private email communications. The document dump showed that McCaskill called Podesta to inform him that she had “info” about an individual working in the State Department’s inspector general’s office, which at the time was investigating Clinton’s private email server. The “info” was that a top aide at the inspector general’s office once worked for a Republican senator, Chuck Grassley of Iowa. 
 
 McCaskill’s criticisms of WikiLeaks stretch back nearly a decade. In 2010, she and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for prosecutions of individuals who send classified information to WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, Mueller’s GRU indictment included Russian intelligence officers who, through the Guccifer2.0 persona, are accused of funnelling the hacked 2016 data to WikiLeaks. 
 
 “I hope we can find out where this is coming from and go after them with the force of law,” she said at the time. 
 
 —with additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman
– Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections, the AP reports. Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in US elections—at times even calling it a "hoax"—acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. "Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!" That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. US intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers—even some of Trump's closest GOP allies—strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the US "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation."