It was widely reported since July that Russia was meddling in the election (see, e.g., here, here, here, etc.). People here are now getting the timeline twisted because the claim eventually evolved into two separate misleading claims: (1) that Russia "hacked the election", which implies Russia either directly changed the election result or otherwise directly affected the election outcome, and (2) that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to effect the foregoing item no. 1.

The first claim is what Trump is responding to in the tweet. That's the claim that became the go-to criticism of the election result for his detractors. While there is no doubt that the Russians did meddle in the election (as Trump himself has told us), there is a disconnect between that conclusion and the claim that Russia hacked the election. To wit, as Comey testified on Monday, there is no evidence that the Russians directly altered any votes and there is no evidence that Russian meddling even influenced the outcome. (See transcript excerpt no. 1 below.) In fact, on the former, the FBI and NSA specifically told congress that they have not undertaken any analysis of the political effect of the meddling as it is beyond the scope of their ability and role. (See transcript excerpt no. 2 below.)

The second claim is something people are also getting twisted. The new development from Monday's hearing was that the FBI publicly acknowledged for the first time that its investigation of Russian meddling "includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts." (See transcript excerpt no. 3 below.) Comey never said that any specific individual or individuals were under investigation. For all we know, that investigation could simply focus on Russian outreach and the communications of Russian operatives without ever actually rising to the level of putting anyone associated with the Trump campaign under investigation. There is a difference between a person an alleged link between that person and a second person. You can investigate the latter without necessarily having the former under investigation so long as you have substantial knowledge about the second person.

The reason Comey testified about the existence of the offshoot investigation into coordination now is simply because now there is a congressional investigation into the same subject matter. (See transcript excerpt no. 3 below.) This is the same reason why Comey was able to acknowledge the Clinton investigation pre-election--there was a congressional investigation into the same subject at that time.

Here are some relevant excerpts from Monday's hearing that support the above:

1. Re no evidence of vote tampering:

HECK: Admiral Rogers, before I get into my main body in my remarks, I want to go back to your earlier comment about that there is no evidence to indicate that there was a successful Russian hacking of voter results or tabulations. What I did not hear you say is whether or not there had been any attempts to hack into election systems of any kind.

ROGERS: Yes.

COMEY: I can answer that because the FBI's responsibility's in the United States. We saw no indication of that. We saw efforts to penetrate voter registration databases, state Boards of Elections, at that level. We saw no efforts aimed at the vote itself.

HECK: But you did see efforts to penetrate registration roles?

COMEY: Correct.

HECK: Did you see efforts to penetrate any other portions of election systems, other than registrations? In this country it's a highly-decentralized system and, as a consequence, you will recall, then-Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, indicated that election systems should become a part of our critical infrastructure for cybersecurity purposes.

COMEY: Their efforts were aimed at the voter registration systems in various states, and it takes different forms in various states. Sometimes there's a private vendor, sometimes it's state. But it -- that's where it was focused, and not on the -- the vote itself, vote machines, vote tabulation, vote transmission, that we've seen.

2. Re no assessment of the impact of the meddling on the election:

STEWART: But that one judgment, that one is in a very important part of this report. And if I could make just this last point and this is an important point, I think. And that is the difficulty of determining motive. I mean, we can go back, we can look at facts. We can look at what happened. We can often determine who did it, who they did it with, when they did it. But to determine motive, you've got to crawl inside someone's head. And that's much, much more difficult. And in fact, quoting from the preamble in this report, talking about a leader's intentions. It says, this objective is difficult to achieve when seeking to understand complex issues in which foreign actors go to extraordinary lengths to hide and obfuscate their activities. Once again, we're trying to determine motive, which is very different -- difficult. Do you agree with that? The determining motive is one of the most difficult challenges when it comes to an intelligence analysis?

COMEY: I -- I do Mr. Stewart. And I should -- I should emphasize something that Admiral Rogers said earlier, we made no judgment on whether the Russians were successful in any way and having an impact on the election, I just wanna be clear. That -- that's not in report because we didn't opine on it. We didn't -- that's not within our -- our...

3. Comey's statement re the offshoot investigation into potential coordination:

COMEY: ... I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

Because it is an open ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining. At the request of congressional leaders, we have taken the extraordinary step in coordination with the Department of Justice of briefing this Congress' leaders, including the leaders of this committee, in a classified setting in detail about the investigation but I can't go into those details here. I know that is extremely frustrating to some folks. I hope you and the American people can understand. The FBI is very careful in how we handle information about our cases and about the people we are investigating. ...