A Senate Intelligence Committee Report Reveals Damning New Information About Trump's Russia Ties

[Nevilledog]

A Senate Intelligence Committee Report Reveals Damning New Information About Trump’s Russia Ties

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/new-senate-report-manafort-linked-to-russian-intel-and-trump-campaign-helped-putins-2016-attack/

During the 2016 presidential race, while Vladimir Putin attacked the election in part to help Donald Trump, there was a “direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.” This damning statement comes from a long-awaited bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Tuesday morning. The report, 966-pages long, is the final volume resulting from the committee’s investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 campaign. It is full of revelations and findings that make clear that there is no Trump-Russia “hoax” and that Trump and his campaign aided and abetted Moscow’s assault on American democracy and sought to exploit it.

The report also explores the question of whether Russian intelligence developed blackmail material on Trump, revealing new information on this dicey subject but without reaching a conclusion.

A good chunk of the report is dedicated to Paul Manafort, who was a senior Trump campaign official for about five months in 2016. The committee notes that Manafort, who was imprisoned in 2018 for committing fraud and money laundering, posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his Russian connections. The report details his extensive dealings during the campaign with a former business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, who the committee describes as a “Russian intelligence officer.” (Special counsel Robert Mueller characterized Kilimnik as an “associate” of Russian intelligence.) The committee puts it bluntly: “Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” Throughout the campaign, according to the report, Manafort “directly and indirectly communicated with Kilimnik,” Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine:

On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik. The Committee was unable to reliably determine why Manafort shared sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy with Kilimnik or with whom Kilimnik further shared that information. The Committee had limited insight into Kilimnik’s communications with Manafort and into Kilimnik’s communications with other individuals connected to Russian influence operations, all of whom used communications security practices.

So their conversations were hush-hush.

*snip*