The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released its final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, documenting Russian intelligence operations in the election and alleged links between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
Several members of the Trump Crusade and his unofficial circle are being classified across the committee as automobiles for Russian intelligence efforts. The bipartisan report calls former Trump Crusade President Paul Manafort a “serious threat of counterespionage” for his coordination with a GRU-linked figure; Former crusader George Papadopoulos is being touted as a “primary intelligence target,” showing that Trump’s best friend, Roger Stone, communicated “directly” with Trump and the crusade, supposedly privileged data about the publication of pirated Democratic emails in Russia.
These vulnerabilities to Russian influence continued the post-election transition, according to the report, while Russia was not the only one who earned credit for the “relative inexperience” of those who advised Trump.
“The lack of interactions with foreigners through transitional officials has left the transition open to the influence and manipulation of foreign intelligence services, government officials and co-opted business leaders,” the bipartisan report says.
In seeking Manafort’s associations with figures related to Russian intelligence, lawmakers appear to have uncovered the first public evidence suggesting that Manafort’s resolution to provide data from the internal crusade to pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs through an intermediary, Konstantin Kilimnik, would possibly have been related to Russian. cross-hacking of army intelligence elections.
The report states that the senators “obtained information” suggesting that “Kilimnik would possibly have been linked to the GRU’s hacking and filtering operation.”
The segment of the report justifying this statement is absolutely worded, stating only that “a channel of coordination on the filtration and hacking operation of GRU would possibly have existed through Kilimnik”. The report describes Kilimnik as “a Russian intelligence officer,” which shows pages of data written in the claim.
A later segment deals with two data that “raises the option of a possible connection of Manafort to piracy and filtering operations”. This segment is drafted, with the exception of a brief reference to the former eler of Manafort.
“The committee found that Manafort’s presence in Trump’s crusade and proximity created opportunities for Russian intelligence agencies to exert influence and gain confidentiality over Trump’s crusade,” the bipartisan report said.
The report also highlighted Manafort’s discussions with Kilimnik on a “peace plan” for Ukraine for the Kremlin, discussions that began the crusade and continued until 2018. Manafort’s coordination with Kilimnik and other Russian-affiliated Americans continued after the election and included some to “undermine evidence that Russia intervened in the 2016 US election.”
Lawmakers detailed Manafort’s habit during the crusade in damning terms, accusing the imprisoned former Republican agent of seeking to “take advantage of his position for his multimillion-dollar foreign disputes and obtain new paintings in Ukraine and elsewhere.”
“Once Manafort’s hiring was publicly announced, Manafort used Kilimnik to send personal messages to 3 Ukrainian oligarchs, at least one of whom Manafort believed owed him cash, and Deripaska,” the report says.
The Trump campaign, according to the report, did due diligence on Manafort, ousting him “after his verification was not known.”
The report also recounts an April 2016 exchange kilimnik had with an anonymous associate, conducted in Russian. Kilimnik told the user that Manafort had a wise plan for Hillary Clinton and that there may be surprises, even in American politics.
The researchers were blocked by Manafort’s extensive use of encryption. His connection to Russian intelligence, according to the report, was never established obviously because of this.
Manafort contacted Kilimnik through dozens of encrypted programs described in the report or by recording an email to a personal account that either had access to. When the email was ready, Manafort asked Kilimnik to check the “tea bag”.
Kilimnik, for his part, allegedly told a spouse in 2017 that he was not involved that his communications with Manafort would be revealed to investigators because Manafort “is a little accustomed to this life,” assuming he is under constant surveillance.
Senate investigators realized that there was no one to realize the true nature of the relationship between Manafort and Kilimnik. The bipartisan committee apparently noted that Manafort had lied to Mueller’s investigation of “his interactions with Kilimnik,” which blocked “the maximum direct link between senior Trump crusade officials and Russian intelligence agencies.”
“Manafort’s genuine motive for deciding to face sanctions for tougher criminals than offering full answers about his interactions with Kilimnik is unknown, but the result is that many interactions between Manafort and Kilimnik remain hidden,” the lawmakers concluded.
The report also describes Manafort’s position on the crusade as motivated almost entirely by his preference to pay long-standing debts with his former Ukrainian and Russian payers.
The report said Manafort had told a spouse in early 2016 that “painting for Trump’s crusade would be ‘good for business’ and a forward-looking way for Manafort’s company to get paid for the paintings he was due to make in Ukraine.”
Surprisingly, the committee was unable to download any data from the Manafort Company – DMP International.
Lawmakers issued citations to the DMP, but got no answer. A subpoena to the company hosting the DMP also didn’t work either.
“Efforts to interact with Manafort directly with his incarceration have also not provoked a really extensive response,” the bipartisan report reads.
In examining the cross’s reaction to Russia’s hack and dump effort, the committee concluded in its bipartisan report that Trump’s crusade “seeks to maximize the effect of those leaks to help Trump’s election prospects.
His report showed what had long been alleged about Trump’s ally Roger Stone: that he had “directly” shared with Trump and others the crusade his “alleged knowledge” about Wikileaks’ exit plans.
The committee noted that Trump, in his written responses to Robert Mueller’s special suggestion, said it did not include Wikileaks-related conversations with Stone or the campaign, nor did Trump have the main points of Stone’s talks between June and November.
The committee’s bipartisan report said that “despite Trump’s” recollection, “assesses that Trump talked to Stone about WikiLeaks and members of his crusade about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on several occasions.”
“Trump and the Campaign believed Stone had data and expressed satisfaction that Stone’s data indicated that more publications were coming,” the report said, while noting that the crusade had told Stone to look for the data.
Prior to Wikileaks’ public announcement of an upcoming landfill, Stone reported in June to veteran Manafort and Manafort congressman Rick Gates of Wikleaks’ plans to publish something similar to Clinton.
Once Wikileaks began publishing the emails, the crusade overturned its efforts to use Stone to download more data about his long-term document dump plans, adding a directive last July from Trump that was sent to Stone via Manafort. In reaction to the instruction, Stone targeted Corsi as an imaginable intermediary. While coordinating Wikileaks’ reach with Corsi, Stone also remained in common communication with the crusade, adding that during a July 29 phone call with Manafort that lasted 68 minutes, the longer verbal exchange between Manafort and Stone had heard of by the committee.
Meanwhile, the crusade has obsessively worked to build a communication strategy and an opposition seeks an operation around pirated emails, according to Intel’s Senate report.
Lawmakers in particular pointed out the indications given through Stone on the August crusade that Clinton’s Crusade President John Podesta would be the target of an upcoming Wikileaks statement.
The committee said it could verify the authenticity of Stone’s alleged internal data. Far-right commentator Jerome Corsi, whom Stone contacted to obtain data on Wikileaks landfills, made “contradictory” statements about how he learned some things about pirated emails, while coordinating a “cover” with Stone about Stone’s activities, according to the report. Training
He also noted that Trump’s crusade had not received warnings from the government until October that the emails had been hacked through Russian government actors, although media reports in the past had warned of Russian involvement.
“Trump and the Campaign continued to publicitate and disseminate the hacked WikiLeaks documents, even after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Decomposer issued a joint statement that officially attributed the hacking and leaking crusade to Russia as a component of its interference in the U.S. Presidential Election,” the bi-component report said. “Trump’s crusade publicly undermined the attribution of the hacking and leaking crusade to Russia and was indifferent as to whether she and WikiLeaks were making an effort to interfere in the Russian elections.
The committee said That George Papadopoulos, the adviser to Trump’s crusade who pleaded guilty to the FBI’s mendacity in his Russia investigation, “presented a key intelligence target and a vector of Russian evil influence.
The committee said it had exposed “evidence that Papadopoulos probably learned of Joseph Mifsud’s active response crusade from Russia as early as April 2016,” an enigmatic education with ties to Russia. The committee found that it was “unlikely” that Papadopoulos did not tell anyone about the crusade of this account, the committee may simply not realize definitively that it had.
Lawmakers concluded that Carter Page, some other adviser to the crusade, was “probably a topic of interest to Russian officials in the 2016 election,” but they may simply not find “evidence that Page made a really important contribution to the crusade or that he once met with Trump. “
Before being officially added to the crusade, Page briefed the crusade officials on his contacts with Kremlin affiliates and proposed that candidate Trump meet with Vladimir Putin. According to the report, “there is no indication” that the crusade has accepted Page’s offer to make contact with Russia, and the committee also cannot corroborate Page’s claims about his relations with Russia.
However, he said that “almost all” the accusations made about Page in the so-called “Steele file,” a collection of Trump-Russia accusations compiled through a British ex-opia, “are not verified.”
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This article has been updated.