Vladonald Trump Probe sees grave threat in 2016 and NOW
WASHINGTON — The 2016 Trump campaign participated in, and enabled. “one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats” against the United States, a damning Senate report concluded Tuesday, warning that Trump associates are trying to do it again in 2020.
The 952-page document — the fifth volume in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s long-running probe of President Trump’s election, deliberately stops short of declaring whether its findings amount to any sort of conspiracy.
But its hundreds of pages list numerous cases of contact and information sharing between Team Trump and Russian intelligence agents, particularly Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and longtime adviser Roger Stone.
Democrats on the committee said there was coordination.
“It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the committee’s report, that the Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016
U.S. electoral process and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modem era,” they said. “Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the resident’s associates are amplifying those efforts.”
Republicans on the committee are less definitive, and in their partisan addendum deny active coordination.
“After more than three years of investigation by this
Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” said the GOP members, although the committee chairman for much of those three years, Sen. Richard Burr (RN.C.), did not sign that statement.
Still, both Republicans and Democrats back the main part of the report, which details a vast campaign orchestrated by Vladimir Putin to help Trump.
An enormous amount of the document — more than 140 pages — focuses directly on the damning details of Manafort’s actions, his longrunning work with a man definitively identified as a Russian intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik (photo), and Russia-connected
Ukrainian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
“The committee found that Manafort’s 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,” the bipartisan report said.
“Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services …represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the report said in its unanimous summary, referencing Kilimnik and Deripaska.
Among the many contacts, the report looks at the infamous meeting in Trump Tower, where Donald Trump Jr. was aware he might get dirt from Russians. The report, however, found no “reliable evidence” that useful information was exchanged, or that Trump himself knew in advance.