Fla. is mentioned in report 30 times
Trump Jr. retweeted fake Russian claim of Broward election fraud
The report details information about Roger Stone’s meeting with a Russian operative.
The long-awaited, redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report released Thursday refers to several Florida connections to Russia’s attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election — including a reference to Broward County.
New information is sparse in relevant sections of the report, which blacks out some material— including details about some of the people and events related to Florida.
“As you will see, most of the redactions were compelled by the need to prevent harm to ongoing matters and to comply with court orders prohibiting the public disclosure of information bearing upon ongoing investigations and criminal cases, such as the IRA case and the Roger Stone case,” Attorney General William Barr said at a Washington, D.C., briefing.
The IRA refers to the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia. The IRA orchestrated meddling in the campaign and is close to Russian intelligence and President Vladimir Putin.
Russians target Florida
The IRA was active in Florida, the Muller report said.
Donald Trump Jr. retweeted posts from the IRA-controlled Twitter account @TEN_GOP, including this declaration: “BREAKING: #VoterFraud by counting tens of thousands of ineligible mail in Hillary votes being reported in Broward County, Florida.”
The IRA also organized rallies supporting Trump or opposing Hillary Clinton, including “a series of proTrump rallies in Florida in August 2016.”
The Florida rallies “drew the attention of the Trump Campaign, which posted about the Miami rally on candidate Trump’s Facebook account.”
“THANK YOU for your support Miami!” Trump’s Facebook post said about “TRUMP SIGN WAVING DAY” in Miami on Aug. 20, 2016.
An IRA Facebook account using the name “Matt Skiber” wrote to a tea party activist that “Mr. Trump posted about our event in Miami! This is great!” The IRA account included a screenshot of candidate Trump’s Facebook account.
Roger Stone
Roger Stone, the Fort Lauderdale resident who is a longtime informal adviser to President Donald Trump, was indicted in January on seven counts of obstruction, false statements and witness tampering.
At the center of the charges against Stone are his conversations involving WikiLeaks, which released internal Democratic Party emails that were hacked by Russian operatives during the 2016 campaign. According to prosecutors, Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee about those communications and tried to persuade another person to provide false testimony.
Stone isn’t charged with conspiring with WikiLeaks or with the Russian officers Mueller says hacked the emails.
The Mueller report doesn’t provide new information about the criminal case against Stone, who hasn’t yet gone on trial.
There is redacted material that appears to relate to Stone. Page 5, for example states: “Beginning in June 2016, Harm to Ongoing Matter forecast to senior Campaign officials that WikiLeaks would release information damaging to candidate [Hillary] Clinton.”
“Harm to Ongoing Matter” over blacked-out material is the way the Justice Department redacted some parts of the Mueller report.
However, another section describes a different Stone meeting.
“In the spring of 2016, Trump Campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to Hillary Clinton. Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting.”
The report said Oknyansky was accompanied to the meeting by a Ukrainian associate involved in Florida real estate who offered to sell Stone derogatory information about Clinton. Stone asked about the nature of the information, but declined to buy it.
“Stone refused the offer, stating that Trump would not pay for opposition research,” the report said.
Aaron Nevins
Aaron Nevins has worked as a state legislative aide, lobbyist, political strategist and blogger.
Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign — and some of the information in the Mueller report — fits the way Nevins received and disseminated information stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by the Russians. The DCCC is the party campaign organization for U.S. House candidates.
In August 2016, according to Mueller’s office, conspirators posing as Guccifer 2.0 transferred 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news.
Guccifer 2.0 is an online entity that Muller’s office said is operated by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency.
Nevins has said he received a trove of information from Guccifer 2.0, some of which he published on hiswebsite and also farmed out some to Florida reporters about congressional primaries in their areas.
This is howit’s described in the Mueller report: “On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of Florida-related data stolen from the DCCC to a U.S. blogger covering Florida politics.”