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Washington – A nearly 1,000-page report released Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee documents a wide range of connections and interactions between Russian government agents and members of the 2016 Trump campaign, adding new details and dimensions to the account presented last year by the special advocate. Robert Mueller and raising counterespionage concerns about some Russian efforts that may have persisted into the 2020 election season.
Tuesday’s report was the committee’s long-awaited final chapter in its more than three-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, marking the conclusion of what has been seen as the last and arguably the only bipartisan congressional inquiry into the matter. Spanning 966 pages, it concludes, as have other assessments of Russia’s efforts, that Moscow “has engaged in an aggressive and multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election “.
The report details the extensive contacts between the President of the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort, and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who has worked closely with Manafort for years. The report called Kilimnik a “Russian intelligence officer” and stated that Manafort, for reasons the committee could not determine, was seeking “to secretly share inside campaign information with Kilimnik.” He also said the committee had obtained “information” linking Kilimnik to Russian intelligence efforts to hack and divulge information in order to harm Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Overall, according to the report, Manafort’s proximity to the then-candidate Trump “created opportunities for Russian intelligence agencies to exert influence over the Trump campaign and to acquire confidential information about it. -this”. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Kilimnik and other Russian agents, he concluded, “posed a serious counterintelligence threat.”
Manafort was condemned last March, to a seven-year prison sentence on fraud charges stemming from the special advocate’s investigation, although he was returned to house arrest over concerns over the coronavirus.
The report also documents, in intricate detail, the interactions between Trump associate Roger Stone and Wikileaks – which at the time was still considered a “journalistic entity” by the US government rather than a hostile organization, notes the report – as Wikileaks timed and published hacked material intended to harm the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
“WikiLeaks actively researched and played a key role in the Russian influence campaign and most likely knew it was helping a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report said. “Trump and senior campaign officials have sought advance information on planned WikiLeaks releases through Roger Stone.”
According to the report, Mr. Trump “ordered” campaign officials to stay in touch with Stone, who also made numerous phone calls to Mr. Trump personally throughout the spring of 2016. Its authors describe the campaign as being “elated” by news of planned WikiLeaks exits, noting that its senior officials appeared largely “indifferent to the importance of acquiring, promoting or disseminating material from an intelligence hacking and leaking campaign Russian. ”
Stone was convicted in November on seven counts arising from Mueller’s investigation and sentenced to 40 months in prison. Mr. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence last month. In written responses to special counsel, Mr. Trump denied having any recollection of conversations on WikiLeaks with Stone.
In a statement accompanying the report’s release on Tuesday, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the committee’s acting chairman, said investigators “had found absolutely no evidence” that the Trump campaign was “in collusion” with the Russians, but said the committee had found “compelling evidence of Russian interference.”
Senator Mark Warner, deputy chairman of the committee, noted in a statement that the report details “a mind-boggling level of contact between Trump officials and Russian government agents which poses a very real counterintelligence threat to our countries. elections”.
“It can’t happen again,” the Virginia Democrat said. “As we step into the heat of the action for the 2020 election season, I urge the campaigns, the executive, Congress and the American people to heed the lessons of this report in order to protect our democracy.”
The Senate committee report covers much of the same territory as that of Special Advocate Robert Mueller’s investigation, but is almost five times as long as the comparable portion of the Mueller Report. In a rare and extensive interview in 2019, then-committee chair Richard Burr told CBS News he believed the committee interviewed several witnesses outside of Mueller’s investigation.
“I think it’s safe to say that we’ve interviewed people who I don’t even know if the special advocate knows them,” Burr said at the time. The North Carolina Republican stepped down from the presidency in May amid an investigation into his stock transactions. Rubio, a Republican from Florida, is now the interim chair of the panel.
On Tuesday, Burr said the threat of Russian interference in the US election was “ongoing.”
“One of the most important – and overlooked – conclusions of the Committee is that most of Russia’s activities were not linked to producing a specific electoral result, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process himself, “he said in a statement. “Their goal is to sow chaos, discord and mistrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections.”
The Mueller Report, released in April 2019, documented numerous interactions between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian agents, but did not find a criminal plot between them. Six former Trump campaign associates have been indicted or convicted of crimes – mostly for lying to investigators – and more than two dozen Russian agents have been indicted by the special advocate for meddling in the election. Overall, Mueller’s report resulted in 37 indictments or guilty pleas.
The Senate committee’s investigation, first launched in January 2017, was almost entirely staff-led and involved interviews with hundreds of witnesses, some overseas, and the review of over a million pages of documents. Their work contrasted with other congressional investigations, including one led by the House Intelligence Committee, which resulted in leaks, partisan infighting and politically divided findings. Burr and Warner have declared their intention to present a united and cohesive front from the outset and only take investigative steps that they both agree on.
The committee acknowledged that it recommended that the special advocate initiate criminal investigations after some witnesses appeared to give false or misleading testimony to investigators. In 2018, Burr said publicly that the committee submitted criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on the testimony. It is still unclear whether the department followed up on these recommendations.
Monday’s post comes amid a separate investigation 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 Russia’s actions – would be nearing its end. final steps.
Recently released court documents on Friday showed former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith allegedly pleading guilty to forging a document used to gain surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser. They did not show his actions were part of a larger conspiracy against the president, who has long decried the scrutiny of his campaign’s ties to Russia as a “hoax” or a “witch hunt.”
The publication of the volume also follows an unprecedented warning from the US intelligence community that Russia’s electoral interference efforts have continued until 2020 and that Moscow is actively seeking to “denigrate” the Democratic candidate’s candidacy. Joe Biden. China and Iran, which the intelligence community believes prefer Mr. Trump not to be re-elected, are also considering taking steps towards the election.
The Senate Intelligence Committee previously released four volumes of its final product. The first focused on electoral security and was released in July 2019. It was followed by a second, published in October 2019, on Russia’s coordinated campaign on social media. The third assessed the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s efforts. And the fourth, released in April, assessed the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of Russian election interference and found the work to be “cohesive and well-constructed.”
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