WASHINGTON: Russia used nearly every social media platform in the United States to drum up support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, a new Oxford University report has said, confirming the widespread assessment, including by America’s own intelligence community, that his journey to the White House was sullied.The report by Oxford University's computational propaganda project and network analysis company Graphika, which will be presented to the senate intelligence committee, analyzed more than 10 million tweets, 116,000 Instagram posts, 61,000 Facebook posts and 1,000 videos posted by the Russian government-linked internet research agency (IRA), in arriving at its conclusions.The report said Facebook Inc.’s Instagram played a much bigger role in Russia’s manipulation of US voters than the company has previously discussed, and will continue to be a key Russian tool in the 2020 elections.The Russian internet research agency (IRA), the troll farm that has sought to divide Americans with misinformation and meme content around the 2016 election, received more engagement on Instagram than it did on any other social media platform, including Facebook, according to a joint report by three groups of researchers.IRA was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year. But Trump and his supporters have dismissed Russian hand in his victory, saying it is not possible to estimate if the Russian effort, if any, swayed the voters.However, a draft of the report, first accessed by Washington Post, says "What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party - and specifically Donald Trump." Trump, it says, is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign.In contrast, the main groups that could challenge Trump were provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.Trump actually lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election by a huge margin (nearly 3 million votes), but he won the electoral college (which determines the presidency) after narrowly winning key states by less than 100,000 votes.In the months since, arguments about Russian subversion of US election has divided the nation, with the debate centering on whether Trump and his campaign actively collaborated with Russians or whether the Russians reached out to promote him when they say him emerge as a serious candidate. Some analysts have wondered if the Russian role is payback for the US breaking up Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.Given the overwhelming evidence of Russian subversion,Trump acolytes have now narrowed down their defense of the President from ''there was collusion with Russia'' to ''collusion is not a crime.'' The defense has become important as more recent disclosures, confirmed by Trump aide Rudy Giuliani, indicate that Trump was involved in pursuing the Trump Tower Moscow project right up to this election victory in November.Over the weekend, Trump and Giuliani used Twitter and television interviews to attack special counsel Robert Mueller and the south district of New York (SDNY) prosecutors who are investigating Trump and almost every aspect of the President’s life – from his presidency to his campaign to his inauguration to his transition team to his personal finances. Mueller is still seeking a face-to-face interview with Trump, but his advisers are fending it off, offering only written answers to his questions."Over my dead body, but, you know, I could be dead," Giuliani told Fox News on Sunday in a rambling defense called the administration’s own Justice Department a "joke" and railed that the only thing left for them is to ask the president was about "several unpaid parking tickets that night, back in 1986, '87 that haven't been explained."Trump himself returned to rage mode on Twitter on Sunday, calling his former personal attorney Michael Cohen a ''rat'' for talking to prosecutors, invoking an expression many legal experts and language mavens said was redolent of mafia lingo."Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?" Trump tweeted.Several commentators pointed out that the FBI did not break into his office but executed a search based on a court obtained search warrant, and the process was approved by the Justice Department. ''His use of the term ‘rat’ for Michael Cohen and mischaracterizing this as a break-in into his attorney’s office frankly makes him sound more like a mob boss than the president of the United States,'' one Democratic lawmaker said, even as language mavens delved into origins of the epithet going back to when it was used in Al Capone’s time.