Russia went to a lot of trouble to find dirt on Donald Trump. According to the Washington Post, the Russians hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network. One group, hacked the DNC network last summer and was monitoring the DNC’s email and chat communications. A second group hacked in during April and targeted the DNC’s opposition research file on Trump — they had access to the computers of the entire research staff — an average of about several dozen on any given day:

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.

The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. . . . The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies.

The Post concludes the hackers were more interested in Trump than Hillary because the Russians probably have long been spying on Hillary, but Trump is new to politics so the Russians are playing catch up. I would also note that the Russians probably also got a ton of data on Hillary from her private email server.

Some may be concerned that the Russians might be able to use the information stolen from the DNC’s network against President Trump or businessman Trump in some future negotiation. There is also the possibility, considering Trump advisor Paul Manafort’s connection to Putin, Trump may now have Democrats’ opposition research on him. On the other hand, as suggested in the article, the dirt dug up by the Russians in their hack of the DNC’s network is likely to be made public anyway.