Following the indictments of 13 Russians, national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Saturday said that the there was no question that the Kremlin interfered in the United States presidential election in 2016 — something that Moscow has continued to deny and that President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned.

“With the FBI indictment, the evidence is now incontrovertible,” McMaster said in response to a question from a Russian delegate at the Munich Security Conference Saturday.

Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein on Friday announced that 13 Russian nationals and three Russian agencies had been charged with “conspiracy to defraud the United States” for meddling in the 2016 election.

While Rosenstein emphasized that these charges didn’t conclude that the Russian meddling had impacted the outcome of the election, the 37-page indictment handed down by special counsel Robert Mueller said that the Kremlin “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (”Trump Campaign”) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

Trump — who has dismissed the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt” and suggested that Rosenstein’s job security might be in question — immediately took to Twitter to falsely claim that the announcement proved there was “no collusion!”

“The Trump campaign did nothing wrong,” the president tweeted Friday.

Of course, Mueller is continuing to investigate whether that’s true or not. He’s also continuing to probe the possibility that Trump sought to obstruct justice.

Mikhail Burchik, one of the indicted Russians, blasted the U.S. justice system as “one-sided” following Rosenstein’s announcement.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister who was also at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, denied the charges as “blabber.”

Trump has showed a willingness to accept such dismissals in the past.

In November, after a meeting with Vladimir Putin, Trump suggested he trusts his Russian counterpart over the “hacks” at his own intelligence agencies.

“He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One at the time. “Every time he sees me, he says, ’I didn’t do that. And I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it.”

Trump has also said that the notion of Russian interference is a hoax put forth by Democrats to explain their unexpected loss in 2016.

Just this week, sources told CNN that the president still has doubts about Russian meddling.

But members of his own administration, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, have publicly agreed with the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence leaders, who have warned that the Russians will likely attempt to meddle in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections this year.

“I haven’t seen a significant decrease in their activity,” CIA director Mike Pompeo told the BBC in January. “I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that.”</s>WASHINGTON — Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies were charged Friday with an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through social media propaganda aimed at helping Republican Donald Trump and harming the prospects of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, prosecutors announced Friday.

The indictment, brought by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, represents the most direct allegation to date of illegal Russian meddling during the election. It says Russians created bogus Internet postings, posed online as American political activists and fraudulently purchased advertisements — all with the goal of swaying political opinion during the bitterly contested race.

The intent of the meddling, the indictment says, was to “sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election.”
• Steve Bannon declines to answer questions again in closed-door interview on Russia probe
• Trump says no to declassifying Democrats’ Russia probe memo
• GOP lawmaker says ‘level of trust’ of U.S. House intelligence committee is gone in fight over Russia investigation

The indictment arises from Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether there was improper co-ordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The charges are similar to the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, which months after the election described a Russian government effort to meddle in the election on Trump’s behalf.

The Russians’ “strategic goal” was to sow discord, the indictment says. By early-to-mid 2016, their efforts “included” supporting Trump’s campaign and disparaging Democrat Clinton. The charges say that Russians also communicated with “unwitting individuals” associated with the Trump campaign and other political activists to co-ordinate activities.

Trump himself has been reluctant to acknowledge the meddling. His spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Friday that Trump had been briefed on the indictment but there was no other immediate comment.

The charges are the latest allegations arising from Mueller’s probe and represent the first criminal case against Russians. Before Friday, four people, including Trump’s former national security adviser and former campaign chairman, had been charged.

According to the indictment, the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm, started interfering as early as 2014 in U.S. politics, extending to the 2016 presidential election. The defendants, “posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas,” operated social media groups designed to attract U.S. audiences by stealing U.S. identities and falsely claiming to be U.S. activists.

“Over time, these social media accounts became defendants’ means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system,” the indictment reads.

The defendants are charged with conspiring “to obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit,” including by making expenditures in connection with the 2016 election, failing to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities and obtaining visas through false and fraudulent statements.

Some of the Russians travelled to the United States “under false pretenses” to collect intelligence, and they also used computer infrastructure based partly in the United States to hide the Russian origins of their work.

The indictment says the Internet Research Agency was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg businessman dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his restaurants and catering businesses once hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries. It was also funded by companies he controlled, according to the indictment.</s>Image copyright EPA Image caption Mr Bannon photographed during his arrival at the House intelligence committee earlier today

President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has been interviewed as part of an investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

He met with special counsel Robert Mueller, who leads the inquiry, over two days this week.

Mr Bannon was chairman of Mr Trump's presidential campaign before becoming a top White House official.

But he left his post in August amid reports of tension with other aides.

Mr Mueller is leading an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the US election. Both Moscow and Mr Trump deny this.

Investigators believe Mr Bannon may hold crucial information on the Trump administration, including details on why former FBI Director James Comey was fired by the president.

Mr Comey has previously said he has "no doubt" that he was fired by Mr Trump to "change" the Russia investigation, a charge the White House denies.

It is not clear what Mr Bannon was questioned about, but he is reported to have spent around 20 hours speaking with Mr Mueller's team.

A source close to the process though told the Associated Press that Mr Bannon answered every question put to him.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Robert Mueller is investigating possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign

This inquiry is running alongside four similar ones being conducted by politicians in Congress, and Mr Bannon spoke to one of them on Thursday.

He appeared in front of the House intelligence committee as part of their own, separate, investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

But he frustrated the committee when he refused to answer their questions, opting instead to answer 25 pre-written questions that had been approved by the White House.

It led top Democrats to call for contempt proceedings against Mr Bannon.

"There was a refusal to answer any questions that would have brought out the full facts. That is not how privilege works. That's how stonewalling works," the panel's Democratic leader Adam Schiff said.

In a tweet, Democratic member Joaquin Castro also accused Mr Bannon of stonewalling.

Republican Representative Mike Conaway said members of the panel were unhappy with Mr Bannon's responses.

"He did not answer all the questions we'd like answered, so there was frustration among committee members with respect to that," he said.

It is not the first time Mr Bannon has been criticised by the panel.

He voluntarily met with the same committee in January and refused to answer their questions over a 10-hour period.

The committee then issued a subpoena compelling him to return for a second time.

But Mr Bannon was reportedly advised by President Trump to invoke executive privilege, a prerogative allowing him to withhold information.</s>One of my least favorite questions is: “Did Russian interference cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election?” The question is newly relevant because of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians on Friday on charges that they used a variety of shady techniques to discourage people from voting for Clinton and encourage them to vote for Donald Trump. That doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to answer, however. But here are my high-level thoughts in light of the indictment. (For more detail on these, listen to our emergency politics podcast.)

1. Russian interference is hard to measure because it wasn’t a discrete event.

You know what probably did cost Clinton the election? The letter that former FBI Director James Comey sent to Congress on Oct. 28, 2016, and the subsequent media firestorm over it. The impact is relatively easy to measure because it was the biggest news event in the final two weeks of the campaign, and we can compare polls conducted just before the Comey letter to the ones conducted just after it.

Russian interference isn’t like that. By contrast, the indictment (and previous reporting on the subject) suggests that the interference campaign had been underway for years (since at least 2014) and gradually evolved from a more general-purpose trolling operation into something that sought to undermine Clinton while promoting Trump (and to a lesser degree, Bernie Sanders). To the extent it mattered, it would have blended into the background and had a cumulative effect over the entirety of the campaign.

2. The magnitude of the interference revealed so far is not trivial but is still fairly modest as compared with the operations of the Clinton and Trump campaigns.

The indictment alleges that an organization called the Internet Research Agency had a monthly budget of approximately $1.25 million toward interference efforts by September 2016 and that it employed “hundreds of individuals for its online operation.” This is a fairly significant magnitude — much larger than the paltry sums that Russian operatives had previously been revealed to spend on Facebook advertising.

Nonetheless, it’s small as compared with the campaigns. The Clinton campaign and Clinton-backing super PACs spent a combined $1.2 billion over the course of the campaign. The Trump campaign and pro-Trump super PACs spent $617 million overall.

In terms of headcounts rather than budgets, the gap isn’t quite so dramatic. The “hundreds” of people working for the Internet Research Agency compare with 4,200 paid Clinton staffers and 880 paid Trump staffers. Russian per-capita GDP is estimated at around $10,000 U.S. dollars — about one-sixth of what it is in the U.S. — so a $1.25 million monthly budget potentially goes a lot farther there than it does here. The Russian efforts were on the small side as compared with the massive magnitudes of the campaigns, but not so small that you’d consider them a rounding error.

3. Thematically, the Russian interference tactics were consistent with the reasons Clinton lost.

How did Trump win? Or more to the point, how did Trump win given that he only had a 38 percent favorability rating among people who voted on Election Day? The answer is partly the Electoral College, of course. But it’s also that Clinton was really, really unpopular herself — almost as unpopular as Trump — with a favorability rating of just 43 percent among Election Day voters. Also, the substantial number of voters who disliked both Clinton and Trump went to Trump by a 17-point margin. Voters really weren’t willing to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt.

That’s largely because Clinton was viewed as dishonest and untrustworthy, exactly the sort of message that the Russian campaign (which used hashtags such as #Hillary4Prison) was trying to cultivate. Trump, of course, was trying to cultivate this message too. Media coverage often struck the same themes. And voters sometimes heard variations on this theme from Sanders and his supporters in the more contentious moments of the Democratic primaries. Was some of this Clinton’s fault? Yep, of course. Would Clinton still have been “Crooked Hillary” even without the Russians? Almost certainly. But the Russians were at least adding fuel to the right fire — the one that wound up consuming Clinton’s campaign.

The indictment also alleges that the Russian conspirators sought to suppress African-American turnout. A decline in black turnout was an important — perhaps even decisive — factor in Clinton’s defeat, although it may have been inevitable given that Barack Obama, the first African-American president, had been on the ballot in 2012.

Overall, then, my view on the effects of Russian interference is fairly agnostic. I tend to focus more on factors — such as Clinton’s email scandal or the Comey letter (and the media’s handling of those stories) — that had easier-to-prove effects. The hacked emails from the Clinton campaign and the DNC (which may or may not have had anything to do with the Russians) potentially also were more influential than the Russian efforts detailed in Friday’s indictments. Clinton’s Electoral College strategy didn’t have as much of an effect as some people assume — but it was pretty stupid all the same and is certainly worth mentioning.

But if it’s hard to prove anything about Russian interference, it’s equally hard to disprove anything: The interference campaign could easily have had chronic, insidious effects that could be mistaken for background noise but which in the aggregate were enough to swing the election by 0.8 percentage points toward Trump — not a high hurdle to clear because 0.8 points isn’t much at all.

Perhaps there are more clever methodologies that one could undertake. For instance, if we knew which states the efforts were concentrated in, we might be able to make a few additional inferences. Maybe some of that information will come to light as the result of Mueller’s probe and further investigative reporting. For the time being, however, we’re still somewhat in the dark.</s>President Donald Trump says his election campaign "did nothing wrong" as the FBI brought charges against 13 Russians for alleged election meddling.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller also named three companies in the indictment - seen as a major development his continuing probe into the 2016 poll.

Three of the people named have also been accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and five have been accused of aggravated identity theft.

Russia denies trying to sway the poll.

In a tweet on Friday evening, Mr Trump repeated that there had been "no collusion" between his campaign and Russia.

However, he did appear to concede that Russia had sought to influence the election. The president has previously disputed US intelligence agency assessments suggesting this.
• Seven key takeaways from the indictments

What does the indictment say?

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said there was no allegation that any American was "a knowing participant in this illegal activity" nor was it alleged that the meddling altered the election outcome.

The 37-page indictment says a group of Russians:
• Posed as Americans, and opened financial accounts in their name
• Purchased US server space in an effort to hide their Russian affiliation
• Organised and promoted political rallies within the United States
• Posted political messages on social media accounts that impersonated real US citizens
• Received money from clients to post on US social media sites
• Created themed groups on social media on hot-button issues, particularly on Facebook and Instagram
• Operated with a monthly budget of as much as $1.25m (£890,000)
• Financed the building of a cage large enough to hold an actress portraying Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform

The indictment says those involved systematically monitored the success of their internet posts.
• The tactics of the Russian 'troll farm'

It also says those named in the indictment had visited the US posing as American citizens and had begun discussing how to affect the election as early as 2014.

"By 2016, defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online persons to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election," the indictment continues.

"They engaged in operations primarily to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

One of the companies targeted is the Internet Research Agency, based in St Petersburg, which the indictment said "had a strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system, including the 2016 US presidential election".

"Thirteen people interfered with the US elections?" said Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman. "Thirteen against the billion-dollar budgets of the security services? Against espionage and counter-espionage, against new developments and technologies? Absurd? Yes."

One of the men named in the indictment - Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is known as "Putin's chef", denied election tampering.

"The Americans are very impressionable people, they see what they want to see," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Ria Novosti on Friday. "I have great respect for them. I'm not at all upset that I'm on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

Mr Prigozhin has been a friend of Mr Putin since the 1990s. He has built up a business empire and has been accused of using companies to diffuse pro-Kremlin opinions via fake internet identities.

On Friday, Robert Mueller's team released a slate of indictments that lays bare what it asserts is the full shape of the Russian meddling apparatus.

And what an apparatus it was. In the run-up to the US presidential election "Project Lakhta", as it was called, had an operating budget of more than $1m a month.

Russians associated with the organisation travelled to the US, posed as Americans and gathered information on where best to target its attempts to "sow discord" in the US political process. Swing states were identified and efforts, according to the indictment, were made to boost the prospects of Republican Donald Trump and undermine Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Although the indictment does not suggest collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, it says the meddling effort may have been aided by "unwitting individuals" associated with the Republican nominee.

The White House may breathe a sigh of relief with that particular revelation. But the heat is increasing, and the investigation isn't over yet. At the very least, if Mr Mueller's allegations hold up in court, it will become increasingly difficult for the president to argue that Russian meddling on his behalf is an unsubstantiated hoax.

What do the social media companies say?

Politicians from both major parties have responded with calls for social media companies to do more to prevent political interference via their platforms.

Facebook said in a statement that it had worked "proactively" with Mr Mueller's investigation, but admitted that it had "more to do to prevent further attacks".

Twitter said the activities were "intolerable" and that it was working with investigators, but that "tech companies cannot defeat this novel, shared threat alone".

What is the investigation about?

US intelligence agencies believe Russia tried to sway the 2016 presidential election in favour of Mr Trump.

In May last year, Mr Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate whether anyone from his campaign colluded in the effort.

As part of the inquiry, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has been charged with conspiring to defraud the US in his dealings with Ukraine, and conspiracy to launder money.

And another charge disclosed on Friday accuses him of submitting false information to obtain a mortgage on a Washington property.

A business associate of Mr Manafort's, Rick Gates, was also charged with conspiracy to launder money. A third adviser to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

In December, Mr Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to making false statements about a meeting he had with the Russian ambassador in 2016.

This week President Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was interviewed by Mr Mueller.

Mr Trump has been accused by opponents of trying to interfere with the investigation, which he denies.</s>Steve Bannon, the former right-hand man to US president Donald Trump, is set to visit Zurich in March at the invitation of conservative Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche, the publication’s editor revealed on Wednesday.

The nationalist American media executive will speak on March 6th about his time in Trump’s White House, Weltwoche editor-in-chief and member of Switzerland’s right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) Roger Köppel announced on Facebook.

The location of the event – Bannon’s first such public appearance in Europe – has not yet been revealed. Anyone hoping to attend will have to register in advance with registrations opening on February 20th.

Bannon co-founded the far-right US news site Breitbart but in August 2016 he gave up his position as executive chairman of the company to run Trump’s presidential campaign during its final stages.

He was then appointed White House Chief Strategist – a move criticised by both the political left and elements within the Republican establishment concerned about his background with the ultra-conservative Breitbart News.

But Bannon lasted only seven months in the newly-created position and was sacked after allegedly falling out with both the US president, members of the Trump family and other key figures in the West Wing.

He then returned to Breitbart only to be pushed out in January in the wake of allegations in his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House that Donald Trump Jr had participated in a “treasonous” meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer.</s>US President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has been questioned by investigators examining alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 US elections.

Bannon, who left his position last August, was interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller behind closed doors on Thursday for at least the second time this week, according to local media reports.

Mueller’s team is probing whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia in its bid to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

“Bannon was questioned for a long period of time by members of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team on at least two occasions,” Al Jazeera’s Mike Hana said.

“The questioning lasted some 20 hours, but the nature of the questions are not yet known,” he added.

Bannon also appeared for the second time before a congressional panel probing the same issue earlier on Thursday.

Like his first appearance in January, Bannon was reported to have cited “White House privilege”, while refusing to answer a large number of questions by the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

Frustrated Democrats slammed Bannon, saying that his refusal to answer questions should be considered contempt.

“There was a refusal to answer any questions that would have brought out the full facts,” said Adam Schiff, the Democratic leader of the panel said. “That is not how privledge works. That’s how stonewalling works,” he added.

Al Jazeera’s Hana said that “unlike Bannon’s appearance before the Intelligence Committee, we do understand that he did give answers to all the questions that were put to him by Mueller’s team”.

The probe began in May 2017 to investigate any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

In December, Michael Flynn, the former US national security adviser, became the fourth known person connected to the Trump campaign to be charged in connection to the investigation on possible Russian meddling.

He pleaded guilty to making false statements in relation to his conversatin with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office.</s>WASHINGTON — Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, whose involvement in President Donald Trump’s White House and the president’s election campaign makes him knowledgeable about matters related to Russian meddling and potential obstruction of an ongoing federal inquiry, was interrogated over two days this week by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a person familiar with the process.

The person, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, said Bannon answered every question that was put to him.

Bannon’s interview by Mueller’s team came just before he visited Capitol Hill on Thursday to answer questions as part of the House intelligence committee’s own Russia probe. Like his first visit in January, Bannon declined to answer some questions in the closed-door interview — forcing Republican lawmakers to weigh whether to hold him in contempt of Congress.

He would only answer 25 questions that had been pre-approved by the White House in reference to any events after President Trump’s election. His answer to each question was “no” and he told the committee he was not authorized to elaborate, according to lawmakers of both parties.

Bannon was already under subpoena as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been critical of the White House’s sweeping interpretation of executive privilege and its contention that pretty much everything is off limits until the president says it’s not.

The escalating fight between Congress and the White House over the privilege issue has centered around Bannon, an outsized figure in President Trump’s campaign and White House and an inspiration to some conservatives as he has publicly battled the Republican establishment. He was fired from the White House last summer, and more recently had a falling out with President Trump after the January publication of a book in which he sharply criticized President Trump family members.

Despite his fractured relationship with President Trump, Bannon has followed White House direction as the House lawmakers have sought to talk to him in its probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether President Trump’s campaign was involved. Because he was one of President Trump’s top advisers, lawmakers were expected to question him about key events during his time in the White House, including President Trump’s firings of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey.

At issue is whether Bannon can talk about the presidential transition, his time at the White House and communications with President Trump and others since he left last summer. Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the panel’s Russia probe, said Bannon would only answer the pre-approved questions about any time period past the day President Trump was elected in November 2016.

Conaway wouldn’t say whether Republicans would hold Bannon in contempt. He said he’d discuss the issue with House lawyers and with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is likely to have the final say in whether the House votes on contempt.

“That’s an ongoing conversation we’ll have among an awful lot of lawyers,” Conaway said after Bannon’s interview.

At least one Republican on the intelligence panel said before the interview that a contempt vote would be necessary if Bannon were uncooperative. Florida Rep. Tom Rooney said Tuesday that if Bannon didn’t cooperate with the panel and they didn’t hold him in contempt, that would set a bad precedent.

“For not just our committee but every committee, that (subpoenas) don’t mean anything, that it’s just a hollow threat,” Rooney said. “You can’t do that.”

Democrats are pushing for a contempt vote, with the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, saying he believed Bannon’s non-answers were all an attempt to draw out and block the Russia probe.

“That’s not how privilege works, that’s how stonewalling works,” Schiff said. “And we cannot take that kind of stonewalling for an answer.”

This was the second time Bannon appeared before the committee. Republicans and Democrats subpoenaed him after he similarly refused to answer some questions in a January interview. Negotiations between the House and White House have been ongoing since then, and interviews have been scheduled and postponed in recent weeks. Lawmakers headed into the meeting ahead of Bannon’s entrance appeared unsure if he would arrive.

Bannon is one of the committee’s few remaining witnesses in its Russia probe, which Republicans on the panel have said they want to wrap up early this year.

The Senate intelligence committee is running a separate investigation into the Russian meddling. The Senate panel hasn’t yet spoken to Bannon, according to a source familiar with the probe. The person declined to be named because the interview schedule isn’t public.</s>(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, takes a stairwell at the Capitol as he arrives for questioning by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its ongoing investigation into meddling in the...

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, arrives for questioning by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its ongoing investigation into meddling in the U.S. elections by Russia, at the Capit...

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, arrives for questioning by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its ongoing investigation into meddling in the U.S. elections by Russia, at the Capit...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Steve Bannon, the combative former chief strategist for President Donald Trump, was interrogated for 20 hours over two days this week as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, according to a person familiar with the process.

The person, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, said Bannon answered every question that was put to him by Mueller's team. That's in contrast to a Thursday interview with the House intelligence committee, where Bannon declined to answer some of lawmakers' questions, despite a subpoena.

While the exact questions for Bannon are unknown, Mueller is investigating whether there was any coordination between Trump's campaign and Russians who meddled in the 2016 election, and also whether there have been any efforts to obstruct the ongoing FBI probe into those contacts. The House panel is investigating the meddling and whether Trump's campaign was involved.

Because Bannon was one of Trump's top advisers, both Mueller and the lawmakers were expected to question him about key events during his time in the White House, including Trump's firings of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey.

After Bannon's roughly three-hour interview on Capitol Hill, Republicans on the House intelligence panel were weighing whether to hold him in contempt. Like his first visit to the House intelligence committee in January, Bannon declined to answer questions in the closed-door session.

According to lawmakers of both parties, Bannon would only answer 25 questions that had been pre-approved by the White House when asked about any events in the time period after President Donald Trump's election. His answer to each question was "no" and he told the committee he was not authorized to elaborate.

Bannon was already under subpoena as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been critical of the White House's sweeping interpretation of executive privilege and its contention that pretty much everything is off limits until the president says it's not.

The escalating fight between Congress and the White House over the privilege issue has centered around Bannon, an outsized figure in President Donald Trump's campaign and White House and an inspiration to some conservatives as he has publicly battled the Republican establishment. He was fired from the White House last summer, and more recently had a falling out with Trump after the January publication of a book in which he sharply criticized Trump family members.

Despite his fractured relationship with Trump, Bannon has followed White House direction as the House lawmakers have sought to talk to him. At issue is whether Bannon can talk about the presidential transition, his time at the White House and communications with Trump and others since he left last summer.

Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the panel's Russia probe, said Bannon would only answer the pre-approved questions about any time period past the day Trump was elected in November 2016. He said committee Republicans would discuss whether to hold Bannon in contempt with House lawyers and with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is likely to have the final say.

"That's an ongoing conversation we'll have among an awful lot of lawyers," Conaway said after Bannon's interview.

At least one Republican on the intelligence panel said before the interview that a contempt vote would be necessary if Bannon were uncooperative. Florida Rep. Tom Rooney said Tuesday that if Bannon didn't cooperate with the panel and they didn't hold him in contempt, that would set a bad precedent.

"For not just our committee but every committee, that (subpoenas) don't mean anything, that it's just a hollow threat," Rooney said. "You can't do that."

Democrats are pushing for a contempt vote, with the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, saying he believed Bannon's non-answers were all an attempt to draw out and block the Russia probe.

"That's not how privilege works, that's how stonewalling works," Schiff said. "And we cannot take that kind of stonewalling for an answer."

Negotiations between the House and White House have been ongoing since Bannon's first interview, and several interviews have been scheduled and postponed in recent weeks. Lawmakers headed into the meeting ahead of Bannon's entrance appeared unsure if he would arrive.

Bannon is one of the committee's few remaining witnesses in its Russia probe, which Republicans on the panel have said they want to wrap up early this year.

The Senate intelligence committee is running a separate investigation into the Russian meddling. The Senate panel hasn't yet spoken to Bannon, according to a source familiar with the probe. The person declined to be named because the interview schedule isn't public.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>Bannon interrogated for 20 hours over two days

WASHINGTON (AP) — Steve Bannon, the combative former chief strategist for President Donald Trump, was interrogated for 20 hours over two days this week as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, according to a person familiar with the process.

The person, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, said Bannon answered every question that was put to him by Mueller’s team. That’s in contrast to a Thursday interview with the House intelligence committee, where Bannon declined to answer some of lawmakers’ questions, despite a subpoena.

While the exact questions for Bannon are unknown, Mueller is investigating whether there was any coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russians who meddled in the 2016 election, and also whether there have been any efforts to obstruct the ongoing FBI probe into those contacts. The House panel is investigating the meddling and whether Trump’s campaign was involved.

Because Bannon was one of Trump’s top advisers, both Mueller and the lawmakers were expected to question him about key events during his time in the White House, including Trump’s firings of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI Director James Comey.
U.S. President Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon is interviewed over two days this week as part of the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.