Senate: Russian contacts are ‘grave’ threat
WASHINGTON — The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday as it detailed how associates of Donald Trump had regular contact with Russians and expected to benefit from the Kremlin’s help.
The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and that other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
The report is the culmination of a bipartisan probe that produced what the committee called “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.” The investigation spanned more than three years.
The findings echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia. Trump has called the Russia investigations a “hoax.”
The report issued several recommendations, including that the FBI should do more to protect presidential campaigns from foreign interference.
Among the more striking sections of the report is the committee’s description of the professional relationship between former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee describes as a Russian intelligence officer.
“Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik, represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the report says.
The report notes how Manafort shared internal Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik and says there is “some evidence” Kilimnik may have been connected to Russia’s effort to hack and leak Democratic emails, though that information is redacted.
Both men were charged in Mueller’s investigation, but neither was accused of any tie to the hacking.
A Manafort lawyer, Kevin Downing, said Tuesday that information sealed at the request of Mueller’s team “completely refutes whatever the intelligence committee is trying to surmise.” He added, “It just looks like complete conjecture.”
The report also found no reliable evidence for Trump’s longstanding supposition that Ukraine had interfered in the election but did trace some of the earliest public messaging of that theory to Kilimnik and said it was spread by Russian-government proxies who sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference.
The report purposely does not come to a final conclusion about whether there is sufficient evidence that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election away from Hillary Clinton.
Several Republicans on the panel submitted “additional views,” saying that while the Russian government “inappropriately meddled” in the election, “then-candidate Trump was not complicit.”
The panel’s acting GOP chairman, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, signed on to that statement.
Democrats submitted their own views, saying the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.”
The report also delved into the FBI’s reliance on opposition research on Trump’s ties to Russia that was compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, whose work was financed by Democrats.
The committee found the FBI gave Steele’s “allegations unjustified credence” as it relied on the dossier of research to seek court approval to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It says many of the dossier’s allegations remain uncorroborated “nearly four years after Steele delivered the first of these memos.”