2016 Democratic National Committee email leak

The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails stolen by one or more hackers operating under the pseudonym "Guccifer 2.0" who are alleged to be Russian intelligence agency hackers, according to indictments carried out by the Mueller investigation.^[1] These emails were subsequently leaked by DCLeaks in June and July 2016^[2] and by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, just before the 2016 Democratic National Convention. This collection included 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC, the governing body of the United States Democratic Party.^[3] The leak includes emails from seven key DNC staff members dating from January 2015 to May 2016.^[4] On November 6, 2016, WikiLeaks released a second batch of DNC emails, adding 8,263 emails to its collection.^[5] The emails and documents showed that the Democratic Party's national committee favored Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries.^[6] These releases caused significant harm to the Clinton campaign, and have been cited as a potential contributing factor to her loss in the general election against Donald Trump.^[7]

The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership's publicly stated neutrality,^[8] as several DNC operatives openly derided Sanders's campaign and discussed ways to advance Hillary Clinton's nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions.^[9] The revelations prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the 2016 Democratic National Convention.^[10] The DNC issued a formal apology to Bernie Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email" that did not reflect the DNC's "steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process."^[11] After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.^[12]

On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to prevent Hillary Clinton^[13] from winning the presidency.^[14] Multiple U.S intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.^[14] WikiLeaks did not reveal its source. Later Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, claimed that the source of the emails was not Russia or any other state.^[15][16][17]

On July 13, 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents of a group known as Fancy Bear alleged to be responsible for the attack,^[1] who were behind the Guccifer 2.0 pseudonym which claimed responsibility.^[18][19]