Final Senate Report on ‘Aggressive’ Russian Interference Say Manafort Was a ‘Grave Counterintelligence Threat’

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its fifth and final report on Russia’s “aggressive, multifaceted effort” to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.The committee described its latest bipartisan report as “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.” It goes further than Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report by concluding that President Trump most likely did have advance knowledge of Russia’s hack of Democratic National Convention emails before WikiLeaks released them—contrary to what the president told Mueller’s team.It also provides fresh evidence on Paul Manafort’s direct connection to Russian intelligence officers and new details of how the FBI handled the dossier from ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.But, while it offers a damning assessment of the Trump campaign’s incompetence, vulnerability to foreign manipulation, and indifference to Russian interference, it does not conclude that the campaign colluded with Russia. ‘A Grave Counterintelligence Threat’The report says that Manafort’s high-level access to the Trump campaign and his willingness to share information with Russian and Ukrainian operatives—particularly Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik, who he’d previously hired and worked with, and oligarch Oleg Deripaska—represented “a grave counterintelligence threat.”“[His] 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,” it states. The committee wasn’t able to determine why Manafort shared internal polling data and campaign strategy information with Kilimnik, or what Kilimnik did with it. However, the committee did obtain “some information” suggesting Kilimnik “may have been connected” to the Russian hack of Democratic email accounts. The report released Tuesday goes further than Mueller’s report by describing Kilimnik as a “Russian intelligence officer” who was working closely with Trump’s campaign manager, and was an “integral” part of Manafort’s prior work in Ukraine and Russia. Steele DossierThe report also addresses the Steele dossier, which made lurid accusations about potentially compromising material from Trump’s trips to Russia. The committee didn’t use Steele’s memos as evidence in their report and states that the FBI gave it “unjustified credence,” using it to obtain FISA warrants despite having an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past and the reliability of his sources. But, the committee says it independently became aware of “three general sets of allegations” involving women that were also contained in the Steele dossier. The first allegation, based on testimony and other witnesses, was made by Moscow businessman David Geovanis, who stated that “during Trump’s travel to Russia, both in 1996 and 2013, Geovanis was aware of Trump engaging in personal relationships with Russian women.”The report states another businessman said in 2015 he overheard two people discussing “sensitive tapes of a Trump visit to Russia.” The information reached a friend associated with Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen told Trump but took “no additional action,” the report says. Cohen told the committee he knew of other similar allegations from Trump’s travel to Moscow in 2013 but he was unable to corroborate the claim. Finally, the report states an executive at Marriott International overheard two colleagues “discussing how to handle a tape of Trump with women in an elevator at the Ritz Carlton Moscow.” The report stresses that the allegations were not confirmed. The WikiLeaks DumpThe report concludes, for the first time, that the Russian government was the source of the hacked DNC emails, contrary to WikiLeaks’ and founder Julian Assange’s claims that it wasn’t.The committee said they found “significant evidence” to suggest WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials when it hacked and released the emails in the lead up to the 2016 election in an effort to derail Hillary Clinton’s campaign. WikiLeaks “actively sought, and played, a key role in the Russian influence campaign,” the report says.The report provides a detailed timeline of the release of the emails, which came about 30 minutes after the Washington Post’s now infamous October 7 story on Trump’s Access Hollywood tape. Roger Stone, who was in contact with WikiLeaks, had a six-minute call the night before with a phone number belonging to Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller. While the substance of the call is unknown, “it appears quite likely that Stone and Trump [using his bodyguard’s phone] spoke about WikiLeaks,” the report concludes.  The Trump campaign first heard of the Access Hollywood tape about an hour before its release, the report says. Stone then called Jerome Corsi and, according to Corsi, told him to get WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately.” WikiLeaks then released 2,050 emails that Russia had stolen from DNC chair John Podesta, the report says.While the Senate committee found no evidence that Trump’s campaign knew for sure that the hack was done by Russia, the campaign was “indifferent” as to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian interference effort.The findings go further than Mueller’s report, which didn’t conclude that Trump knew about the WikiLeaks hack prior to its release and didn’t take a position on whether Trump was lying when he said in written answers to Mueller’s team that he didn’t recall ever discussing WikiLeaks with Stone during the campaign. Inexperienced and Easy to ManipulateThe report is most critical of the Trump campaign’s general incompetence and vulnerability to Russia during the transition toward the White House. It concludes that the Kremlin capitalized on the “relative inexperience” of Trump’s transition team—and the new president’s “ desire to deepen ties with Russia.”“The lack of vetting of foreign interactions by Transition officials left the Transition open to influence and manipulation by foreign intelligence services, government leaders, and co-opted business executives,” the report states. The “disorganized and unprepared” transition team also actively engaged with foreign actors, which “created notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities” and allowed “Russian officials, intelligence services, and others acting on the Kremlin’s behalf” to exploit Team Trump’s shortcomings. The team repeatedly took actions that sometimes interfered with U.S. diplomatic efforts, were not part of a visible overriding foreign policy and were “narrow and transactional, seeking outcomes on only a select set of issues.” “This created unnecessary confusion among U.S. allies and other world leaders, creating the potential to harm America's ability to conduct diplomacy both bilaterally and in multilateral institutions, and undermine U.S. credibility and influence.” Differing ConclusionsAlthough the full committee signed off on the damning report, Democrats and Republicans ended up with wildly different interpretations about what the document reveals about the Trump campaign and its contacts with Russian actors.Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the almost 1,000-page document exposes the “breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections.”Less than three months out from this year’s presidential election, Warner added: “This cannot happen again.”However, Acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL,) said the committee has found “absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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