It’s a red letter, if sad, day on the hypocrisy beat, after three years a Republican majority of the House of Representatives comes out with a report of 1000 pages that found that there is a whole direct contact was between the Trump 2016 campaign with Russian intelligence operators.
You know, the opposite of what Donald Trump has vigorously argued over and over again is a hoax.
Even Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), The new chairman of the commission, says that it does not represent ‘collusion’ – a conclusion that sen. Angus King (I-Maine) went on to say that Rubio did not read the same report as he did – he acknowledged a close interaction between Team Trump and Team Russia.
Of course, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III would also not place the label “collusion” on myriad interactions with Russians, for various reasons, in order to avoid a political conclusion. That prompted Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr and supporters of the president, including the convicted Roger Stone and former campaign chair Paul Manafort, to reiterate that lack of labeling as a starting point to investigate the investigators.
But the intelligence commission did “paint a stark portrait of a Trump campaign that agreed to accept help from a foreign power in 2016, and a candidate who was closely involved in the attempt,” NBC News said.
Here is a link to the report itself, which highlighted some previously unreported evidence, including three allegations of potentially compromising material related to Trump’s private travels to Russia unrelated to the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, on whom ‘ t Rubio took aim once more.
The commission found that Trump’s team knew in advance that emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian intelligence agents would appear in Wikileaks, and worked with Wikileaks to produce an “October surprise” to win those elections. .
Trump has denied this several times, and has refused to discuss the email with Stone, who worked with Wikileaks. He read to Mueller and us, and cried about it for four years. Now, Trump says he wants to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin again by November and we are concerned that not enough has been done to prevent new election interference.
The findings
Specifically, the commission said it found evidence that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort may be linked to the Russian operation to steal and leak Democratic emails. If that had been proved in court, it would have meant “conspiracy” by any definition, but no such charge was ever brought. Manafort was convicted of fraud and tax charges unrelated to Russia.
However, reports suggest that the Trump transition exposed him to Russian influence, name recordings and the operatives as a label information agent. “Russia and other countries took advantage of the Transition Team’s experience, transparent opposition to the Obama administration’s policies and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia …”
After three years of investigation, the commission “uncovered an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with links to the country’s intelligence services,” The New York Times reported.
According to the report, Russian spies worked, among other things, to blame Ukrainian officials and spies, identified fellow businessman Manafort Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer.
The report says: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the commission notes that Trump has in fact spoken to (Roger) Stone on several occasions about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks.”
Now what?
We have had the Mueller report. We have had the Trump efforts to undo the Mueller report. We even have a Barr-assigned criminal investigation to pop on some of those involved in the investigation itself. We learned about misteps at the FBI. We are subject to an attack on Trump statements that he fell victim to during this process.
Just Monday, Trump inanely said he deserves a third term, in violation of the constitution, to make up for ill-treatment at the hands of the “deep state” under Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Trump has repeatedly denied that he favors Russia, precisely because he denied that he or his team had anything to do with seeking to lie to Ukrainians in order to cast shadows on Biden.
Now we have two Republican-majority committees in the House of Representatives to continue by investigating the FBI and U.S. investigative efforts that look at Team Trump’s behavior. Remember, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general has found that the FBI had sufficient basis to open the Russia investigation and act without political bias, although some made mistakes.
This report confirms much of the mueller effort that there were dozens of contacts between Trump associates and Russian operatives, that the Trump campaign expected Russia to have its attempts to sabotage the elections and “expected it to benefit electorally. “of hacking and dumping Democratic emails.
Trump as a victim? Almost.
How does this make America great?
