An assault on democracy
Intelligence report says Putin ordered a campaign to help Trump
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20170109172814im_/http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/blogs-teaser/images/2017/01/blogs/democracy-america/20170107_blp907.jpg)
AMERICAN democracy has suffered a grave assault—yet political leaders from its two main parties cannot agree on how or even whether to investigate. In a move that is both astonishing and without precedent the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on January 6th issued a declassified version of a secret assessment earlier given to Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It found that the intelligence services of a foreign country hacked into the e-mail accounts and computers of senior officials involved in the 2016 presidential campaign, notably at the Democratic National Committee, and released much of that stolen data to the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website.