Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Report: 2016 Trump campaign chair “grave counterintelligence threat”

[essentialsaltes]

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

The Trump campaign chairman’s contacts with Kremlin-linked officials posed a “grave counterintelligence threat,” according to the final volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which also found that some of the campaign’s other Russian contacts had closer ties to Moscow’s government and intelligence services than previously reported.

The volume, released Tuesday, states that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

The report also states that Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Manafort, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered to them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report states.

But the panel also found that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election were “flawed,” and that the FBI gave “unjustified credence” to other allegations regarding Trump’s Russia ties that were made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three and a half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

 

[Andrewn]

Trump contemplating pardoning Snowden, who lives in Russia, can also be evidence of his involvement. It's quite conceivable that Snowden had a role.

Trump says he’s looking at possible pardon for Edward Snowden

 

[Fantine]

That Tom Cotton and other Republicans on the committee knew this and still.shield and protect Trump is unconscionable.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Some Axios highlights:

Highlights
Paul Manafort: The report found that the former Trump campaign chairman began working on influence operations for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs in 2004.

• Manafort hired and worked closely with Russian national Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee definitively calls a "Russian intelligence officer" that served as a liaison between him and Deripaska.
• On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to pass sensitive internal polling data and campaign strategy to Kilimnik. The committee was unable to determine why or what Kilimnik did with that information, in part due to the pair's use of encrypted messaging apps.
• The committee did, however, obtain "some information" suggesting Kilimnik "may have been connected" to Russia's hacking and leaking of Democratic emails. The section detailing these findings is largely redacted.

Roger Stone/WikiLeaks: The committee found that then-candidate Trump and senior campaign officials attempted to obtain advance information about WikiLeaks' release of damaging emails from Roger Stone, who they believed had inside information.

• It also assessed that Trump spoke with Stone about WikiLeaks on "multiple occasions," despite the fact that the president said he did not recall doing so in written answers to special counsel Robert Mueller.

• 2016 Trump Tower meeting: The committee found that Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive "derogatory information" that would benefit the campaign from a person he knew was connected to the Russian government, but that no information was ultimately transmitted.

• Two participants at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, had far more "extensive and concerning" ties to the the Russian government, including to Russian intelligence, than publicly known.

Michael Cohen/Russia business deal: The report found that by the end of 2015, Trump’s former personal lawyer had “reached out to the Kremlin directly to solicit the Russian government's assistance” about building a Trump Tower in Moscow.

• “Cohen kept Trump updated on the progress of the deal. While these negotiations were ongoing, Trump made positive public comments about Putin in connection with his presidential campaign.” The report found Cohen and Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Trump, “sought to leverage Trump's comments, and subsequent comments about Trump by Putin, to advance the deal.”

Trump transition: Russia "took advantage" of members of the Trump transition team’s "relative inexperience in government, opposition to Obama administration policies, and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy," the committee determined.

• The transition team "repeatedly took actions that had the potential, and sometimes the effect," of interfering with the Obama administration's diplomatic efforts, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn's conversations with the former Russian ambassador. [important to note this occurred while Obama was still president]

FBI investigation: The report concluded that "certain FBI procedures and actions in response to the Russian threat to the 2016 elections were flawed," specifically with respect to the bureau's interactions with the DNC about the email hacks and its treatment of the Steele Dossier.

 

[essentialsaltes]

• On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to pass sensitive internal polling data and campaign strategy to Kilimnik. The committee was unable to determine why or what Kilimnik did with that information, in part due to the pair's use of encrypted messaging apps.

I guess now we know what he did with it. (Not that it will stretch your imagination.) He gave it to Russian Intelligence.

 

[flicka]

Ridiculous

 

[TLK Valentine]

That Tom Cotton and other Republicans on the committee knew this and still.shield and protect Trump is unconscionable.

...but also unsurprising.