WASHINGTON – A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s 2016 interference revealed an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with ties to ‘ the intelligence of the land services.
The First Chamber Committee’s report, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprint for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government has launched a wide-ranging campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 U.S. elections to sabotage Mr. Trump to help become president, and some members of the circle of advisers to Mr. Trump was open to the help of an American opponent.
The report marks the end of the most heinous profile election in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long sought to discredit as part of a ‘witch hunt’ designed to legitimize Mr. Trump almost undermined four years ago.
Similar to the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who will release his findings in April 2019, the First Chamber report did not conclude that the Trump campaign was engaged in a coordinated collusion with the Russian government – a fact that Republicans seized on claims that “there was no conspiracy.”
But the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people connected to the Kremlin – including a longtime associate of the one-time president of Trump campaign Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who identifies the report as a “” Russian intelligence officer. “
The First Chamber report identified Mr Kilimnik as an intelligence officer. Mr. Mueller’s report had identified him as one with ties to Russian intelligence.
Democrats highlighted those ties in their own appendix to the report, noting that Mr. Manafort discussed campaign strategy and shared internal data of campaign polling with Mr. Kilimnik, and later lied to federal investigators about his actions.
Democrats also revealed a potentially explosive detail: that investigators have discovered information that may have linked Mr Kilimnik to the main operations of Russia’s interference carried out by the intelligence service, known as the GRU.
“The commission has received some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a long-term relationship, may be linked to the GRU’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the elections. the US in 2016, ”Democrats wrote. “This is what conspiracy looks like.”
The allegation was a sign that, although the investigation was conducted in a two-party manner, and Republican and Democratic senators reached a broad agreement on their main conclusions, a partisan divorce remained on some of the most politically sensitive issues.
The Prime Minister’s report said that the unusual nature of the Trump campaign – employees of long-time colleagues, friends and other businessmen of Mr. Trump – did not present attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable vulnerabilities to counter-intervention. “
The Senate inquiry found that two other people who met at Trump Tower in 2016 with senior members of the Trump campaign – including Mr. Manafort; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son – had “important ties with the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.”
The report said the links between the Russian government and one of the individuals, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, were “much more extensive and concerning than what was publicly known.”
Since the release of Mr Mueller’s report, Attorney General William P. Barr and a number of Republican senators have sought to discredit the special attorney’s job – dismissing the 2016 election investigation as “Russiagate.”
Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, lawmakers hope it will focus attention on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the US political process, which has continued unabated.
The report is the product of one of the few congressional studies in recent memory that bipartisan support has been widely supported. Lawmakers and commissioners have interviewed more than 200 witnesses and checked hundreds of thousands of documents, including intelligence reports, internal FBI notices and correspondence among members of the Trump campaign. The commission convened blockbuster hearings in 2017 and 2018, but much of its work took place in a secure office suite outside of public view.
Portions of the report with classified or other sensitive information were blacked out.
The Intelligence Committee released four previous sections on its findings over the past year. The first focused on election safety and Russian attempts to test U.S. election infrastructure, and included policy recommendations to stun future attacks. The second provided a detailed picture of Russia’s use of social media to sow political divisions in the United States.
Lawmakers then produced an inquiry into the response by the Obama administration and Congress in the very partisan run-up to the 2016 election. Most recently, they found that an assessment of the 2017 information community attributed the blame to Russia and its goals described to underline American democracy, had been unintentional by the politicians and despite attacks on it was made by allies of Mr. Trump.
The commission focused its work on issues of intelligence and counterintelligence. It did not investigate Mr Trump’s attempts to obstruct the work of federal investigators.
The report came at a fierce political moment, especially for Republican senators on the panel who resigned from it and thus may come to terms with Mr. Trump and other influential figures in her party. Since Mr. Mueller completed his work, Republicans close to Mr. Trump have sought to reappoint the president as a victim of politically motivated national security officials in the Obama administration.
The Independent Inspector General of the Justice Department found that law enforcement officials had sufficient basis to open the Russia investigation and act without political bias.
But two other members of the House of Representatives, the Judiciary and the Committees on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, are conducting investigations based on selecting aspects of the Special Advocate’s investigation. And although they did not dispute Russia’s interference, they decided to divert the party’s focus from the actions of a hostile foreign power to the activities of the investigation that took place, claiming that Mr Mueller would never be appointed and that the FBI should have thrown out any question dealing with the Trump campaign long before he was.
The Department of Justice is conducting a similar post-mortem. Mr. Barr told a congressional committee last month that he was determined “to get under the grave abuse involved in the false ‘Russiagate’ scandal.” He has appointed a criminal prosecutor, John H. Durham, to oversee the investigation and the actions of intelligence and law enforcement officials who in 2016 attempted to understand the Kremlin’s interference and possible links with Trump associates.
Much of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation was overseen by Senator Richard M. Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, but he stepped down as chairman of the panel in May due to a federal investigation into a stock market rush that he made before the coronavirus pandemic began rattling the United States. While watching a similar House inquiry into Russian interference splintered under partisan bickering and Mr. Trump attacking Mr. Mueller, Mr. Burr and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, worked slowly to ensure they could come to a authoritative bilingual conclusion. Mr Burr voted to support the final conclusions.
The conclusions broadly outweigh Mr. Mueller’s conclusions. His report documented Moscow’s attempts to undermine confidence in the election process and the elections to Mr. To subdue Trump by hacking and dumping Democratic emails and using sophisticated manipulation campaigns using social media.
After years of work, Mr. Mueller found dozens of contacts between Trump colleagues and allied actors, evidence that the Trump campaign welcomed the Kremlin’s efforts to sabotage the election and “expected it to profit electorally” from the hacking and dumping of Democratic emails.
New York Times reporters struggled with the report for major developments. Check back for updates.
