Russia Didn't need help hacking Election 2016

U.S. investigators are probing whether Russia relied on clandestine American help to identify political soft spots and pressure points in its campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. But experts tell Axios Future editor Steve LeVine that, even without local assistance, Russia's own history of exploiting animosities and jealousies across its empire gave it unusual know-how to stir up existing American tensions:

• What happened: Russia targeted America's soft underbelly. Data collated by Columbia University's Jonathan Albright shows a Russian social media campaign apparently designed to inflame some of America's greatest national sensitivities.
• The hot buttons: Facebook pages that turned into hundreds of millions of interactions combined the subjects of nationalism, Trump, illegal immigration, and law.
• See what Russia experts told Steve.

P.S. The Trump campaign "spent more than $1.1 million on legal fees over the last three months — a sharp increase that coincided with the escalation of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election." (N.Y. Times)

Source Axios

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