![President Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to produce a full report on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 ...](/content/dam/images/g/s/r/2/q/e/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gt89uh.png/1481334933551.jpg)
President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to produce a full report on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, a move some of his aides said is aimed at presenting President-elect Donald Trump with definitive proof of their involvement.
Trump has suggested U.S. intelligence reports attributing the hacking attacks to Russia were driven by politics, not facts. "I don't believe it," he said in an interview with Time published this week. "I don't believe they interfered."
The director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr. and the secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, issued a joint statement in October saying Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. It concluded the activity had to have been approved at the highest levels of the Russian government.
But Trump has questioned whether any coordinated effort to influence the campaign happened, and if it did whether Russia was responsible. Before the election he suggested the effort to blame Russia was an effort to discredit him and his call for closer relations with Moscow.
![US President-elect Donald Trump urged Russia to hack his opponent Hillary Clinton.](/content/dam/images/g/t/5/g/z/2/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1481352139245.jpg)
Until now, intelligence findings have been scattered in fragmentary reports, some delivered in closed testimony to Congress, others in the Presidential Daily Brief, and in documents prepared for the most senior government officials.
In announcing the study, Lisa Monaco, one of Obama's closest aides who once led the national security division of the Justice Department, said the entry of a foreign power into a national election was a threat to the electoral system that would have to be addressed by future administrations.
She said Obama "expects to receive this report before he leaves office."
Russia has denied any involvement in the attacks, which appeared to involve hacking groups linked to at least two, sometimes competing, Russian intelligence agencies. One, the FSB, was the first to break into the Democratic National Committee, but went undetected for a lengthy period of time. The other, the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, was caught.
Whether the contents of the report will be made public is unclear.
The New York Times