US Intelligence: Vladimir Putin Personally Involved In US Election

The United States intelligence officials believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the covert campaign to interfere in the U.S. Presidential Elections.

The theory, which was put forward by senior intelligence officials with direct information shared with NBC News, is that they believed with a "high level of confidence" that Vladimir Putin himself personally directed how the hacked material from the Democrats were leaked and used.

The objectives were said to be multifaceted: The whole thing began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton but has since become an effort to show corruption in American politics. It also created an image that other countries cannot depend on the U.S. as a credible global leader. For that, the Russian government wanted to elect Donald Trump.

This view is highly contested: the FBI and other agencies do not fully endorse it, but there are few officials who would dispute that the Russians did intend to harm Hillary Clinton's candidacy by leaking her embarrassing e-mails.

Today, the U.S. intelligence has solid information that tied Vladimir Putin to the election operation. Michael McFaul, and ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, shared that these actions have been consistent with the Vladimir Putin that he knew. "He has had a vendetta against Hillary Clinton, that has been known for a long time because of what she said about his elections back in the parliamentary elections of 2011," McFaul shared. "He wants to discredit American democracy and make us weaker in terms of leading the liberal democratic order. And most certainly he likes President-elect Trump's views on Russia."

Interfering with the U.S. Elections is already a crime in itself, but as The Washington Post put it, the Russian leader is already winning this post-Cold War order, and the Kremlin's fingerprints are making their mark over the chaos that people see today.