Washington A nearly 1,000-page report released Tuesday by the House Intelligence Committee documented a broad set of links and interactions between Russian government activities and members of the 2016 Trump campaign, adding new details and dimensions. to the account imposed last year by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and raising concerns about counter-awareness of certain Russian efforts that may have continued into the 2020 election season.
Tuesday’s report was the final, and long-awaited, chapter of the commission in its more than three-year inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election interference, marking the conclusion of what was considered to be the last and likely only bilingual congressional inquiry into the matter. Tension of 966 pages concluded, like other assessments of Russia’s efforts, that Moscow was “engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.”
The report, returned in parts, detailed extensive contacts between Trump President Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who had worked closely with Manafort for years. The report highlighted Kilimnik being a “Russian intelligence officer”, and said Manafort, for reasons the commission could not determine, sought on several occasions to “share secret internal campaign information with Kilimnik.” It also said the commission “got some information” that Kilimnik linked to Russian intelligence services’ attempts to hack and leak information to harm Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Overall, the report said, Manafort’s proximity to then-candidate Trump “created opportunities for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence and obtain confidential information about the Trump campaign.” Manafort’s willingness to share information with Kilimnik and other Russian operatives, it said, “represented a serious threat to counter-consciousness.”
Manafort was sentenced last March to a seven-year prison sentence for fraud prosecutors stemming from the Special Attorney’s investigation, although he was released to prison at home, with concerns about the coronavirus.
The report also documented, in intricate detail, interactions between Trump associate Roger Stone and WikLleaks – who at the time was still considered a “journalistic entity” by the U.S. government rather than a hostile organization, the report noted – when WikiLeaks conservatively timelessly released, hacked documents intended to harm the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
“WikiLeaks actively sought, and played, an important role in the Russian influence campaign and probably knew that it helped a Russian influence tension,” the report said. “Trump and senior campaign officials sought prior information about the planned release of WikiLeaks through Roger Stone.”
It said that Mr. Trump “officials” of the campaign “directed” to stay in touch with Stone, who also made many phone calls to Mr. Trump throughout the spring of 2016, according to the report. The authors described the Trump campaign as “excited” by the news of WikiLeaks’ planned releases, noting that its senior officials were for the most part “indifferent to the significance of purchasing, promoting or distributing material from a Russian hack-and-leak intelligence service. ”
Stone was convicted in November of seven crimes stemming from Mueller’s investigation, and sentenced to 40 months in prison. Mr. Trump planned Stone’s sentence last month. In written responses to the special counsel, Mr. Trump denied that he had any recollection of conversations about WikiLeaks with Stone.
The report also provided new details about a series of other interactions that it identified as worrying. It said Russian operatives were present at the Trump 2016 meeting in June 2016, which was attended by Manafort, Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner, had “important links” with the Russian government and its intelligence services. It noted others, campaigners at lower levels such as George Papadopoulos – although he was not defined as a “knowing co-opte” of Russian intelligence – presented a “prime intelligence target and potential vector for evil Russian influence.” And, it said, Russia “benefited” from the relative inexperience of the Trump transition team and expressed a desire to deepen ties with Moscow in order to establish “unofficial channels” to conduct diplomacy.
“The existence of a framework of informal advisers to the Transition Team with varying levels of access to the President-elect and varying awareness of foreign affairs presents attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable vulnerabilities for counter-intelligence,” the report said. .
The commission’s investigation was almost entirely led by staff and involved interviews with hundreds of witnesses, including some abroad, and the review of more than a million pages of documents. It stood out in contrast to other congressional candidates, including one led by the House Intelligence Committee, who suffered injuries due to leaks, partisan influence, and politically divided conclusions.
Unlike the Mueller report, the volume of the First Chamber explicitly avoided questions about crime rather than the application of a standard of proof required by trials. Investigators said they referred all instances of potentially criminal behavior to law enforcement while seeking to provide “a factual record” to the American people about Russian interference in 2016.
Released in April 2019, the Mueller report documented extensive interactions between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, but did not find that there was a criminal conspiracy between them. Six former employees of the Trump campaign have been accused or convicted of crimes – especially for lying to investigators – and more than two dozen Russian operatives have been accused by the special advocate of participating in election interferences. Overall, Mueller’s report resulted in 37 prosecutors pleading guilty.
The report of the First Chamber committee does not offer any meaningful treatment of, as an explicit conclusion on the subject of “conspiracy”, a legally nebulous, politically charged term that was once widely used. But the commission’s acting chairman, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, said in an accompanying statement that the panel’s investigators found “absolutely no evidence” that the Trump campaign “joined forces with the Russians.” He said the commission “found unforgettable evidence of Russian mediation.”
The Trump campaign also stated in a statement that the report showed “no collusion”, while deciphering the “Russian collusion disorder” as “the biggest political scandal in the history of this country.”
Senator Mark Warner, the commission’s vice-president, avoided references to “conspiracy” but said the report details “a breathtaking level of contact between Trump officials and Russian government officials that is a very real counter-threat to our elections. “
“This can not happen again,” the Virginia Democrat said. “While we are in the heat of the campaign season in 2020, I strongly urge campaigns, the Executive Department, Congress and the American people to listen to the lessons of this report to protect our democracy.”
In additional views added to the report, other Democrats on the panel said the report “unequivocally shows that members of the Trump campaign collaborated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected,” and, specifically, pointed to Manafort’s interactions with Kilimnik, saying “this is what conspiracy looks like.”
Committee Republicans – with the exception of former chairman Richard Burr, who did not run – said in their addendum that “the Russian government in many ways interfered unhindered in our 2016 general election, but then-candidate Trump was not a conspiracy. ” They also criticized the FBI for “sloppy work and bad judgment”, mainly for its handling of information contained in the file compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
While the First Chamber report covers much of the same territory as Mueller’s investigation, it is almost five times as long as the comparable portion of the Special Advocate’s report. In a rare, wide-ranging interview in 2019, Burr told CBS News that he believed the commission had interviewed several witnesses outside of Mueller’s question.
“I think it’s safe to say we interviewed people that I do not even know if the special council knows about them,” Burr said at the time. The North Carolina Republican resigned from the presidency in May amid an investigation into his shares.
On Tuesday, Burr said the threat of Russian interference in US elections “continues.”
“One of the commission’s most important – and overriding – findings is that many of Russia’s activities were not related to producing a specific election outcome, but sought to undermine our belief in the democratic process,” he said. he in a statement. “Their goal is to sow chaos, discord and mistrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections.”
The release of the volume comes on the heels of an unusual warning from the US intelligence community that Russia’s election interference teams had passed in 2020, and that Moscow was actively trying to “denigrate” the candidacy of Democratic nominee Joe Biden. China and Iran, which have told the intelligence community that they would rather not win Mr Trump re-election, are also considering taking action in the run-up to the election.
In a paragraph with its recommendations, the commission’s report urged the FBI to provide defensive briefings to “all presidential campaigns,” which, it said, themselves should “conduct a thorough assessment of personnel, particularly personnel. that have responsibilities that interact with foreign governments. “
It also said that campaigns “need notification [the] FBI of all foreign offers of assistance, and all personnel should be made aware of this expectation. “
Monday’s release also comes as a separate probe led by U.S. Attorney John Durham – which focuses on the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia, as well as, controversially, some of the analytical work of the intelligence community on the actions of Russia – is said to be approaching its final stages. A source familiar with Durham’s review confirmed former CIA director John Brennan was likely to be interviewed Friday, a detail first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has previously released four parts of its final product. The first focused on election security and was made public in July 2019. It was followed by a second, released in October 2019, about the coordinated campaign that Russia was conducting on social media. The third evaluated the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s efforts. And the fourth, released in April, evaluated the intelligence community’s assessment 2017 of Russia’s election interference and found the work “coherent and well-crafted.”
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