etuckerAP

Hi, and thanks for asking the question that is obviously on everyone's mind right now. I unfortunately cannot begin to predict where this goes or how and when it might end. I would say that I have been surprised by certain developments; in the media, for instance, journalists were caught off guard by the unsealing of an guilty plea against an ex-Trump campaign adviser, so i would hesitate to even hazard a guess about the outcome.

Hello there, and thank you for the question. It is accepted within the U.S. intelligence community that Russia attempted to meddle in the 2016 presidential election through the DNC and Podesta email hack as well as a vast social media effort to sow discord in the American political process. While the evidence suggests Russia at minimum tried to meddle in the election, and appears to have succeeded given the millions of Americans exposed to Russian-purchased Facebook ads, government officials have also said that no vote tallies were altered on Election Day.

Hi, thanks for the question. I look for people who are not aligned with particular partisan causes and who are not overt cheerleaders for any one particular outcome or another.

Hello, good morning. Thank you for your good question. That remains unclear at this point and is the subject of the special counsel's investigation. We do have evidence at this point that Trump campaign associates were in communication with Russian government intermediaries during the campaign. That includes a Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 that involved the president's oldest son, his son-in-law and his campaign chairman. But it remains unclear the scope of people who might come under investigation or who might be implicated. Within the White House, investigators are trying to determine whether the firing of FBI Director James Comey amounted to obstruction of justice, and that decision was ultimately made by the president.

Good morning, and thank you for the question. You are certainly right that many of the ads that appeared on Facebook were indeed anti-Trump ads, and I, too, find that interesting. I cannot through my reporting discount the possibility that they were money-making attempts, but I also do understand these ads _ as does Facebook _ as efforts to cause confusion, anger, distrust and discord in the American political process, writ large. I think that helps explain why some of the ads and messages were anti-Trump ones. It seems clear that this reflected a desire to influence public opinion and cause a degree of chaos.