US Senate Releases Final Report Into ‘Aggressive’ Russian Interference in 2016 Election – The Daily Beast

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its fifth and final report on Russias aggressive, multifaceted effort to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.

The committee described its 966-page bipartisan report as the most comprehensive description to date of Russias activities and the threat they posed. The report goes further than Special Counsel Robert Muellers report by concluding that President Trump most likely did have advance knowledge of Russias hack of Democratic National Convention emails before WikiLeaks released themcontrary to what the president told Muellers team.

It also provides fresh evidence of Paul Manaforts connections to Russian intelligence officers, establishing a clear pipeline between Russia and the top level of the Trump campaign. And it has new details of how the FBI handled the dossier from ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

But while it offers a damning assessment of the Trump campaigns extensive contacts with Russia, its vulnerability to foreign manipulation, and its indifference to Russian interference, it does not conclude that the campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with Russia.

Although the full committee signed off on the startling report, which took three years to compile and involved 200 witnesses, Democrats and Republicans ended up with wildly different interpretations about what it reveals about the Trump campaign.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the report exposes the breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections.

Less than three months out from another presidential election, Warner added: This cannot happen again.

However, Acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.

Trump 2020 communications director Tim Murtaugh chose to highlight just one instance of foreign interference outlined in the report. The report does remind Americans that there was, however, political reliance on foreign assistance in 2016, since Hillary Clintons campaign and the DNC paid for the bogus Steele Dossier assembled by a foreign operative using Russian disinformation.

The report says that Manaforts high-level access to the Trump campaign and his willingness to share information with Russian and Ukrainian operativesparticularly Konstantin Kilimnik, who hed previously hired and worked with, and oligarch Oleg Deripaskarepresented a grave counterintelligence threat.

[His] presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over and acquire confidential information on the Trump Campaign, it states.

The committee wasnt able to determine why Manafort shared internal polling data and campaign strategy information with Kilimnik, or what Kilimnik did with it. However, the committee did obtain some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the Russian hack of Democratic emails.

The report goes further than Muellers report by classifying Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer who was an integral part of Manaforts prior work in Ukraine and Russia, and worked closely with Trumps campaign manager.

It also states that, after the election, Manafort continued to coordinate with Kilimnik and other Russian operatives to workshop narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the election by instead fingering Ukraine. The committee concluded there was no evidence Ukraine was behind the interference.

The report goes further then previous public reports to conclude that two other key players, Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who were at the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting aimed at providing Donald Trump Jr. and others with dirt on Hillary Clinton, have significant connections to the Russian government, including Russian intelligence services.

Manafort was convicted of financial crimes in mid-2018 and was released to home confinement amid the coronavirus pandemic, after serving almost two years of a seven-and-a-half year sentence.

The report addresses the Steele dossier, which made lurid accusations about potentially compromising material from Trumps trips to Russia. The committee didnt use Steeles memos as evidence in their report and states that the FBI gave it unjustified credence, using it to obtain FISA warrants despite having an incomplete understanding of Steeles past and the reliability of his sources.

But the committee says it independently became aware of three general sets of allegations involving women that were in the Steele dossier.

The first allegation, based on testimony and other witnesses, was made by Moscow businessman David Geovanis, who stated that during Trumps travel to Russia, both in 1996 and 2013, Geovanis was aware of Trump engaging in personal relationships with Russian women.

The report states another businessman said in 2015 he overheard two people discussing sensitive tapes of a Trump visit to Russia. The information reached Trumps longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who told the committee he knew of other similar allegations from Trumps travel to Moscow in 2013 that he was unable to corroborate.

Finally, the report states an executive at Marriott International overheard two colleagues discussing how to handle a tape of Trump with women in an elevator at the Ritz Carlton Moscow. The report stresses that the allegations were not confirmed.

The report concludes, for the first time, that the Russian government was the source of the hacked DNC emails, contrary to WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assanges claims.

The committee says they found significant evidence to suggest WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials when it hacked and released the emails in an effort to derail Clintons campaign.

The report provides a detailed timeline of the release of the emails, which came about 30 minutes after The Washington Posts Oct. 7 story on Trumps Access Hollywood tape. Roger Stone, who was in contact with WikiLeaks, had a six-minute call the night before with a phone number belonging to Trumps bodyguard Keith Schiller. While the substance of the call is unknown, it appears quite likely that Stone and Trump [using his bodyguards phone] spoke about WikiLeaks, the report concludes.

The Trump campaign first heard of the Access Hollywood tape about an hour before its release, the report says. Stone then called Jerome Corsi and, according to Corsi, told him to get Assange to drop the Podesta emails immediately.

WikiLeaks then released 2,050 emails that Russia had stolen from DNC chair John Podesta, the report says.

While the Senate committee found no evidence that Trumps campaign knew for sure that the hack was done by Russia, the campaign was indifferent as to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian interference effort.

The findings go further than Muellers report, which didnt conclude that Trump knew about the WikiLeaks hack prior to its release and didnt take a position on whether Trump was lying when he said in written answers to Muellers team that he didnt recall ever discussing WikiLeaks with Stone during the campaign.

Despite Trumps recollection, the Committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stones access to WikiLeaks, the report says.

Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks, but Trump later commuted his prison sentence.

The report is most critical of the Trump campaigns general incompetence and vulnerability to Russian contact during the transition to the White House. It concludes that the Kremlin capitalized on the relative inexperience of Trumps teamand the new presidents desire to deepen ties with Russia.

The lack of vetting of foreign interactions by Transition officials left the Transition open to influence and manipulation by foreign intelligence services, government leaders, and co-opted business executives, the report states.

The disorganized and unprepared transition team also actively engaged with foreign actors, which created notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities and allowed Russian officials, intelligence services, and others acting on the Kremlins behalf to exploit Team Trumps shortcomings. The team repeatedly took actions that sometimes interfered with U.S. diplomatic efforts, were not part of a visible overriding foreign policy and were narrow and transactional.

This created unnecessary confusion among U.S. allies and other world leaders, creating the potential to harm Americas ability to conduct diplomacy both bilaterally and in multilateral institutions, and undermine U.S. credibility and influence.

The report provides new details about Robert Foresman, an American businessman who was named in Muellers investigation due to his high-level Kremlin contacts and alleged efforts to meet with Trump during and after the 2016 election.

Foreman testified that, at the end of a Dec. 6 meeting with chief strategist Steve Bannon, Bannon asked him to send a memo. In it, Foresman offered advice for structuring the National Security Council so that Russia was a main focus of the council, including the creation of a Russia-specific deputy national security adviser.

After submitting that memo, Foresman met with national security adviser Michael Flynn and told Flynn he was on his way to Russia to meet with people close to President Putin. He asked if the Trump team wanted to convey a message from the incoming administration.

Flynn replied, You can convey that on behalf of the President-elect and myself, we genuinely hope for improved relations between our two countries, the report states, adding that Foresman said that he conveyed the message to Russian banker Sergey Gorkov, who relayed the message to Putin.

Separately, Foresman, who wanted a position in the Trump administration, conveyed messages between the Trump campaign and several Kremlin-linked people, including Putin confidant Matthias Wamig, the report states.

Go here to see the original:

US Senate Releases Final Report Into 'Aggressive' Russian Interference in 2016 Election - The Daily Beast