Donald Trump reportedly has known since Jan. 6, 2017 - when former CIA Director John Brennan shared classified information - that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed cyberattacks meant to disrupt and influence the 2016 presidential election.
Brennan revealed emails and texts passed among Russian military officers, according to a report from the New York Times, which also said the then-president elect “sounded grudgingly convinced.”
The meeting at Trump Tower was attended by NSA Director and Cyber Command Commander Michael Rogers, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey, who later pulled Trump aside and privately briefed him on the Steele dossier.
Trump has publicly voiced skepticism of the U.S. intelligence community's findings that Russia, through a series of cyberattacks and an influence campaign, interfered with the election, frequently calling Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russian probe a witch hunt. Mueller last week indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers for interfering in the election. Days later, after a private meeting with Putin in Helsinki, the president seemed to believe the Russian president's denials before clarifying the next day that he stood behind U.S. intelligence community findings that fingered Russia in the attacks.