"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016," the report says. | Getty Administration report blames Putin for attack on U.S. election, says Russia preferred Trump

The Obama administration on Friday officially blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for directing a massive cyber assault against the U.S. election in an attempt to "undermine" the democratic process and "harm" Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.

And as the campaign progressed, the administration said, Putin's hackers launched digital efforts to "help" President-elect Donald Trump win the White House.


"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," said the report, which is a declassified version of a longer, classified document the CIA, FBI and NSA prepared at President Barack Obama's request.

"Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency," it continued.

The report also said the Russian government developed "a clear preference" for President-elect Donald Trump as the campaign went on, and eventually "aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him."

The alarming accusations are likely to ripple across Capitol Hill in the coming weeks and hang over Trump's inauguration, as lawmakers have vowed to investigate.

The intelligence community ended its report with a warning: Russia isn't stopping anytime soon.

"Moscow will apply lessons learned ... to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes," it said.

Cyber experts agree, arguing the political system remains at risk unless policymakers plug major digital holes and commit millions of dollars in the coming years.

The findings are part of a much-anticipated executive branch review of Russia’s efforts to undermine the 2016 election. Trump has repeatedly dismissed and disparaged the government’s investigation of the election-season hacking, heightening interest in the intelligence community’s final examination of the matter.

After meeting with top intelligence leaders on Friday to discuss the report, Trump said the hacks had "absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election" and declined to say whether he agreed with the intelligence community's findings.

Trump did note "there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," a fact the Obama administration has said repeatedly. It was also included in Friday's report.

The president-elect also touted the election-season "attempts to hack the Republican National Committee," which he said "were unsuccessful."

While the intelligence assessment didn't address any digital intrusion at the RNC, it did say Russian hackers "collected on some Republican-affiliated targets but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign."

The report lays out the government’s most extensive argument to date that the senior Moscow officials directed a series of disruptive election-season hacks that hit the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign operatives.

The Obama administration first accused Russia in October of orchestrating the cyberattacks. The digital thefts led to a WikiLeaks dump of embarrassing internal emails that ousted top Democratic National Committee leaders and destabilized Clinton’s campaign in the final months.

In making its October accusation the administration merely said it believed Russia wanted to “interfere” with the American election. Since then, intelligence officials have reportedly come to believe that Moscow was actively trying to install Trump in the White House, instead of merely attempting to sow discontent and doubt in the electoral process.

The report published Friday shed some light on the evidence that led to these conclusions.

"Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates," the report stated. "When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency."

The report pointed out that Putin wanted to discredit Clinton "because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012."

It contrasted that stance with the Kremlin's kind feelings toward "what they saw as [Trump's] Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine."

"Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)," the report added.

Trump has snapped back at these allegations, accusing intelligence officials of peddling politically-motivated narratives in an attempt to undermine his incoming administration.

"This is a political witch hunt," Trump told The New York Times in a Friday morning interview, just hours before he received his own briefing on the intelligence community's report. Obama got his rundown on Thursday.

Trump has also attacked the intelligence community’s findings for failing to show any direct link between WikiLeaks and the hackers who infiltrated the DNC and the personal Gmail account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The incoming commander in chief even trumpeted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s denial that his activist, pro-transparency outfit had received the materials from the Russian government.

Friday’s report for the first time directly accused Russia of handing over material from the DNC servers and Podesta’s account to WikiLeaks.

The three intelligence agencies said they had "high confidence" that the Russian military intelligence agency, known as GRU, "relayed material to WikiLeaks."

Although the DNC and Clinton campaign consistently refused to confirm or deny the legitimacy of any of the documents and emails leaked through WikiLeaks, the intelligence report claimed the disclosures "did not contain any evident forgeries."

Democrats regularly warned that any leaks from the suspected Russian cyber thefts might contain false or manipulated information.

But the Russian digital influence campaign spread beyond just the DNC, Clinton campaign and WikiLeaks dumps.

Friday's report confirmed for the first time that Russian intelligence hackers infiltrated "multiple state or local electoral boards," added that Moscow's operatives have been researching America's "electoral processes and related technology and equipment" since early 2014.

Those digital probings sparked fears that state voting equipment was under digital siege, although there is no evidence ballot casting machines were targeted or tampered with.

Obama ordered the review in December as part of an 11th-hour push to build a case that Russia was behind the election-year cyber meddling. Many expected the report to serve as the Obama administration's closing argument on Russia’s election hacking.

The decision came amid increasing pressure from both Democrats and many Republicans on Capitol Hill to strike back at the Kremlin for its digital behavior.

The Obama administration eventually slapped Russia with sanctions and ejected 35 alleged Russian spies from the U.S. in retaliation for the election-season hacks.

But many in Congress will press Trump to go further, or at least stop him from rolling back Obama’s outgoing move. Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, is hoping to introduce a measure next week that would give Trump a “menu of options” to punish Russia, according to a Senate aide.

Cardin will have support from several GOP Russia hardliners, including Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and numerous Democrats.

"Now is the time to throw rocks, not pebbles," Graham said on Thursday.

Eric Geller, Martin Matishak and Tim Starks contributed to this report.