On March 2, 2015, the New York Times broke the story that Hillary Clinton has used a private server to send e-mails while serving as Secretary of State. This was doubly improper, both in that it was vulnerable to hacking by enemies such as Russia, and that it evaded public records requirements. Hillary did not help herself by deleting about half of the total, saying that they were personal. Although no evidence has emerged to date either that Russia hacked Hillary's server, or that there was anything incriminating on the missing e-mails, both beliefs became something close to articles of faith among her opponents, especially in the Trump campaign. The convictions that the Russians had hacked her e-mails, that they had the missing ones, and that the missing e-mails contained something terribly incriminating informed the actions of the Trump campaign.
Investigation of Hillary's e-mails continued throughout the summer of 2015. In June, 2015, Donald Trump announced his run for President. Also in the summer of 2015, Russian Civilian Intelligence hacked into the DNC server, all under the watchful eyes of the Dutch. However, Russian Civilian Intelligence did not publicly release any of what they found, and it is not clear whether they were attempting to sway the election, or merely gathering intelligence.
In September, 2015, the FBI warned the DNC that its system had been breached. The FBI called on the phone, not wanting to risk sending an e-mail that would be detected. But the tech support person who answered suspected a prank call, looked through the system, did not find the hack, and dismissed the warning. The FBI made repeated phone calls, but never sent anyone to the DNC in person, nor the the person who received the call pass the warning up the chain of command.
Russian Military Intelligence, the agency that actually leaked the e-mails, did not break into the DNC or target its personnel until spring of 2016. But they were apparently making plans, setting up the cyber and financial infrastructure for their future attack. The Mueller indictment (paragraph 37) tantalizingly refers to some spearphishing attacks on Republicans in 2015, presumably to advance Trump during the primaries, but we know nothing further about it.
And the Troll Farm was setting up sites and stirring up trouble.
But it was in March and April 2016 that things started picking up. The Russian Military Intelligence hacked into the DNC server, the Democratic Congressional Committee (DCC) server, and the e-mails of important campaign officials, including campaign chairman John Podesta. Around April 29, 2016, the DNC finally recognized that it had been hacked and hired the cyber security firm CrowdStrike to figure out the culprits. CrowdStrike quickly recognized that two Russian intelligence agencies had broken into the DNC, apparently without any coordination and without knowing of each other's presence (as evidenced by duplicated efforts). The DNC undertook a thorough effort to clean out their system, with uncertain results. But it must be emphasized that until June 14, 2016, the hack was not public knowledge, and there was no reason even for people who knew to believe this was anything more than than an intelligence gathering operation.
In the meantime, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was traveling around Europe, meeting with Russians and Russian-connected individuals (and presumably others as well). On April 26, 2016 Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with strong Russian ties, told Papadapoulos that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of e-mails."* It is not clear whether Papadopoulos passed this information up the chain of command. Two things are clear. First, Papadopoulos then made numerous, futile attempts to arrange a meeting between the campaign and the Russians. Second, in May Papadopoulos drunkenly passed this information on to the Australian ambassador in London. After the DNC hack became public knowledge, the Australians passed this information on the the FBI, which opened and investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia.
See here for a detailed timeline.
Next up: Keeping our e-mails straight.
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*Mifsud has since disappeared; whether dead or in hiding is unknown.
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