OBrien: Bipartisan Senate report on Trump and Russia is a triumph for truth – The Denver Post

One of Trumpisms enduring scars will be the social fissures its widened by waging war on objective reality and public faith in bedrock institutions. Its also fostered a cult of personality around Donald Trump, allowing him to posture as the final arbiter of truth and guardian of the downtrodden. But division, chaos and disrepair and the corruption of the American experiment are the long-term consequences.

So its encouraging when a bipartisan group of federal legislators reminds us that facts matter.

A966-page Senate reportpublished Tuesday leaves no doubt that an extensive network of Russian operatives with intelligence ties workedwith Trumps operatives to torpedo Hillary Clintons campaign four years ago. Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw the effort, including a successful hack of Democratic Party computer systems. Why? To smear Clinton and hobble her administration if she won, and to gain leverage with Trump if he won.

The Republican-led committee that produced the report said that Trumps former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was so steeped in the effort with Russia that he posed a grave counterintelligence threat. It said that Donald Trump Jr., the presidents son, participated in a covert effort by the Russian government to help his father in 2016. It said the president himself may have been a possible target of Russian blackmail. It said that Putin was aware that Trump during his presidential campaign was secretly pursuing a deal to build a skyscraper in Moscow.

The committee also found that Roger Stone, Trumps longtime political hatchet man, made elaborate efforts to learn about Russian leaks of confidential Democratic emails through Julian Assanges hacking collective, Wikileaks. And in the course of that discovery, the committee learned that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone aboutWikileaksand with members of his campaign about Stones access toWikileakson multiple occasions. Thats interesting, because the president himself, in written testimony to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said he couldnt recall those conversations.

Mueller concluded his work last year by saying he hadnt found enough evidence to charge Team Trump with a criminal conspiracy. He clearly found evidence that the Trump camp tried to obstruct justice, however, and he left it to Congress to hash out the matter. For its part, the Senate report said that the Trump campaigns intersection with Putins underlings didnt amount to a coordinated conspiracy and that in some cases the sheer dimwittedness of the people working for Trump exposed them to manipulation.

You may remember that Trump and his GOP backers tried to spin Muellers findings by saying that no collusion meant that Trump and those around him did nothing wrong. Republicans on Tuesday resurrected the no collusion mantra, working hard to convey the idea that the Senate report somehow meant that everythings all right, everythings fine, and we want you to sleep well tonight.

But, of course, everything isnt all right. The Russia scandal wasnt a hoax. It was reality.

Even if the skullduggery the Senate documented didnt amount to a formal conspiracy, sabotage and malfeasance took place. Russia got its hooks into a presidential election, Trump used his campaign to try to make business deals in Moscow, the people around Trump invited foreign influence into an election, and the president apparently lied to Mueller. Its not a mystery why Trump has cultivated and coddled Putin throughout his presidency, even if the Senate didnt chart the money trail all the way to Russia. The president, who spent his business career consorting with mobsters, has always had an affinity with grifters and those, like Putin, who he thinks might help him grift.

Trumps supporters have worked overtime focusing on tangential aspects of the Russia scandal to keep Trumps presidency in play, confirm their own biases or soften any guilt they might feel for looking the other way in the face of overt corruption. Right-wing media and Republican apologists have argued that a minor piece of evidence used by federal investigators an unreliable dossier about Trumps Russia ties prepared by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele meant that the entire Russian probe was improper.

AsI noted at greater lengthlast year, the Steele dossier wasnt the reason the Russia probe began, and its shortcomings simply werent pivotal enough to demonstrate that the probe was ill-considered. The Senate report points out that the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled the Steele dossier and gave it too much credence. More important, however, the report doesnt dismiss the far greater weight of all the other evidence of Trumps corrosive and dangerous game of patty-cake with Russia.

Russias threats to American elections and national security are ongoing, and thats another reason the Senate report is valuable. Because facts are fundamental, and its impossible to make good decisions without them. Mother Nature has reminded us of this truth with the coronavirus pandemic. The Senates report teaches the same lesson in its assessment of Russia, the Trump administration and White House propaganda.

Timothy L. OBrien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion.

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OBrien: Bipartisan Senate report on Trump and Russia is a triumph for truth - The Denver Post