The report from the Senate Intelligence Committee published Tuesday, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, was the product of more than 200 witness interviews and nearly a million documents. It is the only two-partisan account of how the Trump campaign embraced Russia’s intelligence operation in 2016, designed to seduce Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Trump.
Much of the report covers ancient ground, albeit with more detail than ever before. But there are some important new revelations. Here are some of them:
Trump’s campaign president was dealing with a Russian spy.
The report says – at first – that Konstantin Kilimnik, an employee of then-Trump campaign president Paul Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer.” It also says that Manafort met regularly and shared information with Kilimnik, including internal data on Trump campaign polling.
But because the men used encrypted communications, and because Manafort never really cooperated with investigators, the commission could not determine what the couple was wearing.
The report says there is information contained in the document, suggesting that both Kilimnik and Manafort may have had some links to the Russian operation to steal and leak democratic emails. Whatever it was, it was not enough for Mueller to bring prosecutors.
That factual pattern alone led the commission to label Manafort, which saves prison time for unrelated crimes, a “serious threat of counter-consciousness.” Whether he is actually “Russian intelligence” with the 2016 Russian intelligence campaign can never be determined.
Although Trump said he did not remember talking to Roger Stone about Wikileaks, he almost did.
The commission – including some key allies of Trump – noted that Trump knew his campaign was communicating about Wikileaks, although he told Mueller he did not recall that.
Trump stated in a written response to the Special Advocate’s Office: “I do not remember discussing WikiLeaks [Stone], and I do not recall why I was aware that Mr. Stone has discussed WikiLeaks with people associated with my campaign. “
Trump further claimed that he “had no recollection of the specifications of any conversations I had with Mr. Stone between June 1, 2016 and November 8, 2016.”
Despite Trump’s recollection, the report says, “the Committee notes that Trump had in fact talked to Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”
That puts Trump in the midst of his zealous embrace of his campaign of material that he knew was being stolen by a foreign intelligence agency.
The report does not accuse Trump of lying, but it does outline a pattern of conversations with Stone that makes it hard to believe Trump does not remember.
The dossier by a British intelligence officer was deeply flawed.
The House of Representatives’ inquiry into trying not to verify or dismiss the allegations contained in the Steele case, a set of memos about Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, but it examined Steele’s work process and whether the The FBI must have looked into the case reliably.
The commission found that Steele’s trading in the dossier was “generally poor” compared to the standards of the intelligence community, and often relied on sources “several steps away from the information they provided.” The senators also said that there were “several opportunities for interested parties to insert disinformation” – a conclusion that buttresses worried that elements of Russian disinformation could have made their way into the dossier amid other exact parts.
The commission also found multiple links between Steele and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, and indications that Deripaska had early knowledge of Steele’s work. Yet Steele and his sources seem to be neglecting to take or miss Deripaska’s business relationship with Manafort, which appears to be a key link between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Steele declined to speak to the commission other than answer written questions, the report said.
At least two participants in the June 9, 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians in the Trump Tower had “important ties with the Russian government, including Russian intelligence services … much more extensive than what was in public.” known. “
Although the meeting was set to deliver filth about Clinton to the Trump campaign, no such information was passed on, the commission found. But the commission noted that two participants in the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, “have important links with the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.”
“Those connections, in particular regarding Veselnitskaya, were much more extensive and regarding what was publicly known, and neither Veselnitskaya nor Akhmetshin were with the commission regarding those connections,” the report said. “Both Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin may in some cases have sought to conceal the true intentions of their work in the United States.”
Veselnitskaya has acknowledged that they are working to repeal sanctions on Russia.
Akhmetshin’s lawyer, Michael Tremonte, said in a statement that his client was not a spy and did not “hide” anything in his testimony. “It is unfortunate that the commission would engage in trade in politically motivated innuendo, which undermines the integrity of the commission and expels the American public,” Tremonte said.
The idea that Ukraine included in the campaign – an idea that Trump embraced – arose with Russian intelligence.
Kilimnick, a Russian intelligence operative, “almost certainly helped settle some of the first public messages” that Ukraine was involved in the election, the report said. One cited example was his email to a Financial Times reporter who later wrote a headline story, “Ukraine’s leaders’ campaign against ‘pro-Putin’ Trump.”
Carter Page may have been wronged by the FBI, but the commission found him suspicious.
The Justice Department inspector general found that the FBI made serious mistakes in requesting surveillance of Page, a former aide to Trump campaign, and an FBI attorney had admitted to a crime as a result. Page was never charged in the investigation, but the commission was not happy with what he had to say to lawmakers. FBI control of Page was fair, the report says.
“The commission faced major challenges in its efforts to understand Page’s activities, including its role as foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. After weeks of negotiations and a possible contribution from the commission, Page produced some electronic documents,” he said. some of which included his own annotations and changes to the original document format, and sat for an interview that lasted six and a half hours.
The page’s answers to basic questions were hefty, prevalent, and involved several lengthy deviations. Despite the accurate records that Page kept on his personal hard drive with details of his daily routines, he could not remember details of his travels to Moscow, as the names of senior Russian officials with whom he met, despite his engagements with them to build his references within the campaign. “
In a footnote, the report adds, “The Carter Page FISA Sequence Seeker are examined in detail in the DOJ OIG FISA report. While there were several issues with the FBI’s FISA updates for Page, it assesses Committee that Page’s previous ties to Russian intelligence officers, along with his Russian trip, justified the FBI’s first concerns about Page. “
