DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Bipartisan Senate report details Trump campaign contacts with Russia in 2016, adding to Mueller findings

Bipartisan Senate report details Trump campaign contacts with Russia in 2016, adding to Mueller findings

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/18/politics/...orts/index.html


Hmmm... collusion and obstruction confirmed by BIPARTISAN Senate intel report. BTW- 40 and arch, this is another republican led investigation.

Yeah but they got the FBI Lawyer ... so Fox and Breitbart are saying "see we old you" LOL.... #factsabsolutelynevermatter!!!

Senate Intel says FBI gave 'unjustified credence' to Steele dossier, Russia 'took advantage' of Trump transition team
Committee released the fifth and final volume of its five-part report on Russian interference in the 2016 election

The Senate Intelligence Committee found that the FBI gave the unverified anti-Trump dossier “unjustified credence,” and that Russia “took advantage” of members of the Trump transition team’s “relative inexperience in government” in its final report as part of its years-long bipartisan Russia investigation.


The panel on Tuesday released the fifth and final volume of its five-part report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

"Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy," Acting Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in a statement Tuesday. "We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over 1 million pages of documents."

He added: "No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive."

“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” Rubio said. “What the Committee did find, however, is very troubling.”

Rubio detailed the committee’s findings, which included “irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling” and “deeply troubling actions taken” by the FBI, “particularly their acceptance and willingness to rely on the ‘Steele Dossier’ without verifying its methodology or sourcing.”

The committee found that the FBI gave the dossier, authored by ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, “unjustified credence, based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.

“The FBI used the dossier in a FISA application and renewals, and advocated for it to be included in the Intelligence Community Assessment before taking the necessary steps to validate assumptions about Steele’s credibility,” the committee found.

The findings come after the first charge in U.S. Attorney John Durham's case pertaining to former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith misrepresenting a detail in those FISA applications.

But the committee said Tuesday that members of the 2016 Trump campaign presented “intelligence” targets.

The committee found that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s “presence on the Trump campaign and proximity to then-candidate Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign.”

The committee noted that prior to Manafort joining the Trump campaign in March 2016, Manafort “directly and indirectly communicated” with Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik and other pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine.

“On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik,” the report stated, while noting that the committee was “unable to reliably determine why Manafort shared sensitive internal polling data or Campaign strategy with Kilimnik or with whom Kilimnik further shared that information.”

The committee noted that it had “limited insight” into Kilimnik's communications with Manafort and into Kilimnik's communications with other individuals connected to Russian influence operations, all of whom used communications security practices.

“The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU's hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the report stated.

The committee found that “after the election, Manafort continued to coordinate with Russian persons, particularly Kilimnik and other individuals close to Oleg Deripaska, in an effort to undertake activities on their behalf.”

“Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” the report found.

The committee added: “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 and associates of Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

The committee also noted that former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos “was not a witting cooptee of the Russian intelligence services” but said that he “presented a prime intelligence target and potential vector for malign Russian influence.”

Both Manafort and Papadopoulos were charged in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

The committee, though, said Tuesday that it “found no evidence that anyone associated with the Trump Campaign had any substantive private conversations” with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the April 27, 2016, Trump speech held at the Mayflower Hotel.

But the committee did note that Russia “took advantage” of members of the Trump transition team and their “relative inexperience in government, opposition to Obama administration policies, and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy.”

Meanwhile, the committee also said Tuesday that the FBI “lacked a formal or considered process for escalating their warnings” about the hack of the Democratic National Committee; while noting that WikiLeaks “actively sought, and played, a key role in the Russian influence campaign.”

The committee said WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort.”

Meanwhile, the committee shifted to the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, noting that “at least two participants” — Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin “have significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.”

“The Committee, however, found no reliable evidence that information of benefit to the Campaign was transmitted at the meeting, or that then-candidate Trump had foreknowledge of the meeting,” the committee said.

placeholder
The controversial meeting, when it was revealed in 2017, fueled allegations of Trump campaign coordination with Russia – as Donald Trump Jr. was apparently promised dirt from Veselnitskaya on Hillary Clinton’s supposed involvement with Russia.

The fourth volume of the report was released in April, and found that officials who drafted and prepared the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian interference in the last presidential election “were under no political pressure” to reach “specific conclusions” and praised the “strong tradecraft” applied in creating the document.

The third volume of the report was released by the committee in February, and found that the Obama administration was “frozen” in combatting 2016 Russian election meddling and “not well-postured” to counter Russian interference.

Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Ranking Member Mark Warner found that the Obama administration “struggled to determine the appropriate response,” and stated that it was “frozen by ‘paralysis of analysis,’ hamstrung by constraints both real and perceived” and debated courses of action “without truly taking one.”

The second volume of the report was released by the committee last fall and urged President Trump to warn the public about efforts by foreign governments to interfere in U.S. elections and take steps to prevent hostile nations from using social media to meddle in the 2020 vote.

But for 2020, Burr has said that the U.S. is “in a better position to identify foreign interference efforts and address vulnerabilities Russia and other hostile foreign actors may seek to exploit.”


The first volume of the report provided new details on how Russian government hackers directed extensive activity against U.S. election infrastructure, and faulted the FBI and Department of Homeland Security for providing inadequate warnings to state governments.

The committee’s investigation into Russia meddling went on for more than two years, with senators on the panel having the chance to interview more than 200 people.

"We have no factual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Burr said last year.

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller last year also concluded his yearslong investigation into whether Trump campaign associates colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. Mueller found no evidence of criminal coordination or conspiracy.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-intel-fbi-steele-dossier-russia-investigation-report

Deep state.

https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1295772241255424000

But the FBI Lawyer ....

You do understand that the paragraph you quoted is not from the actual report, but from a CNN article, right?

I don't think there are many Americans in love w/Russia. I do think many Americans are sick of the hysterical stories that the left keeps spreading on a daily basis.

So, I take it that the answer to my question to you is: no, you did not realize that what you quoted was part of the CNN article and not part of the actual report.

It is amazing to me how many Americans lack basic reading comprehension skills.

As Vers said in the other thread, reading is hard.

My thoughts on this whole situation (aka using logic):

Russia has actively been trying to undermine the legitimacy of our democratic elections for decades, way before Trump was running for office; that is a fact. Their main purpose is not to favor one side vs. the other, but, like I said, undermine our democratic elections. The online age has made this even easier for them to influence.

Both sides have fallen into their trap for the last 2 decades going back to Al Gore and Florida (questioning the legitimacy of our election), the left always claiming voter suppression, and the right always claiming voter fraud.

The Democrats made it very easy for the Russians to undermine the legitimacy of our democratic elections in 2016, because they rigged their primary for Hillary (people seem to forget that fact a lot). By exposing that, it definitely hurt Hillary's chances, but if the shoe was one the right foot, I'm pretty sure Russia would have done the same thing (and from what I read, they also tried hacking the Republicans as well).

I have been disappointed by Trump also falling into this trap recently by questioning mail in voting. He's just playing into Russia's plan of undermining our elections again.

So the Manifort connections mean nothing to you?

And Vers, this was a GOP lead senate investigation. Not some liberal exploit. Sometimes facts matter.

It doesn't mean nothing, but it had little to do with affecting the 2016 election.

Maybe you have your timeline backwards...ManAfort allegedly contacted Russia AFTER Wikileaks began exposing the emails from the Democrats and Clinton campaign, trying to get advanced info on what other information they had.

The damage at that point was already done. Clinton and the Democrats had already been exposed, with no known influence from Trump at that point.

Many people try to make it seem like the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to hack Hillary; there has been no information shown that points to that. In fact, it has been reported that the Russians tried hacking Rubio's campaign and the Republican National Committee as well.

The Democrats have played right in Russia's hand during this whole process by rigging the primary for Hillary and then blaming Trump for undermining the election, when it falls squarely on their own incompetence and Russia.

I didn't say Manifort contacted Russia about the Podesta emails. That was Roger Stone. And then we have Trump who publicly asked Russia to find Hillary's missing emails and asked China to investigate the Biden's.

Lol All GOP Senator Intel.? ewww boy Pffff trump supporters. 7 Out 10 Americans are embarrassed by trump.

Oh, I was confused, because you post said ManIfort, so I was thinking you were talking about ManAfort...I guess my bad?

Roger Stone tried to act as a go-between for the Trump campaign and Wikileaks, not so much Russia like you claim. Russia was Manafort. But the facts remain clear - Democrats had already been hacked and Wikileaks had the info before Roger Stone or Manafort were ever involved.

The Democrats got hacked back in 2015 and early 2016, and announced they got hacked around June 2016, I believe? Stone and Manafort sought to learn what info had been stolen after it had been announced that they had been hacked. Like I said, the damage was already done, with no influence from Trump.

Trump made his quote in late July, after it was already known the Democrats got hacked. So, once again, your timeline doesn't match up.

You seem to forget Rubio was one of the leading Republican candidates for President at that time.

But when has logic ever stopped you?

I posted what the GOP led investigation reported. It seems your issue lies with the people you support, not me. Stone was instrumental in getting the Podesta emails published for public consumption. That hadn't been done. But go ahead and keep trying to paint a different narrative.

Manafort shared campaign info with Russian intelligence officer, Senate panel finds

https://thehill.com/policy/national-secu...ligence-officer

That is the Manifort connection. For some reason it was you who tied that to emails.

And nothing disclosed involved Hillary's emails. So when trump asked Russia to find her emails it had nothing to do with what Stone was doing. But I guess any excuse will work when Trump openly requests a foreign government to interfere with American politics and uncover dirt on a political opponent.

Murica!

Yes, Wikileaks only posted the emails because Roger Stone told them to!

Because, you know, Wikileaks has such a strong reputation for withholding information from the public.

It's not like their name has "leak" in it, or anything

I'm sure Russia gave them the emails in hopes that they would just sit on them!

Those emails were getting published no matter what, sorry. Like I said, the damage was already done at that point.

This report does not have any proof that Roger Stone made Wikileaks publish those emails. That is just you reading into it what you want to read into it. So stop making things up to fit your narrative.

What? I never said it wasn't. I was simply replying to mac's absurd comments about how many Americans love Russia.

I was referring to this comment combined with the thread title. Those two things don't go together.

And yet WikiLeaks had not disseminated a word of it up until that time. Buy you just keep spinning. BTW- are you saying what they did was right or are you in denial about that? Are their acts right no matter the outcome?

j/c...

Donald J. Trump is smitten!

J\C
But...Biden and the left has an affinty with the pandemic causers Red China pffft

wow... I can't fathom how your mind works.

You’re assuming it does.

It started in January when President Trump announced a ban on travel to and from China to mitigate the spread of the disease in the United States.

“We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency,” Biden said in reaction to the ban.

In the past, Biden has said China isn’t a threat and has downplayed their ongoing campaigns to undermine the U.S. geopolitically, militarily and economically.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” Biden said during an Iowa campaign stop last summer “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”


“The fact of the matter is we can do all we need to do without punishing anybody,” he continued.

Biden’s position on China is dangerous and not based in reality.

https://thehill.com/opinion/katie-pavlich/495156-pavlich-joe-bidens-china-problem

Yet how did that stop Covid 19 from coming to the U.S.? It didn't. I think it was the smart thing to do however. But it had already spread to other places which allowed it to freely flow into our country.

You need to take it up with Riley01.

He is the only poster who is THINKING about what he sees.

The rest simply look away and follow their indoctrination.

Next they grunt, scratch and hurl insults.

Sad really.

You need to stop they grunting, scratching and hurling insults.

And if you believe Riley is the one doing the thinking around here I'll pray for you.

Your right 40 I get my point across if they dont like it oh well.

Maybe you would better off praying for yourself and you country if the insane PELOSI and the bird brain puppet Biden controls it peroid.

Awesome advice I wish you, and many others would heed.

What you read from him is clear evidence that it doesn't.

Sen. Angus King says Senate intel report shows 'serious and disturbing' Russian link to Trump 2016 campaign
Michael Isikoff
Yahoo News
August 19, 2020, 4:16 PM EDT

A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday disputed the assessment by Sen. Marco Rubio, acting chair of the committee, that a nearly 1,000-page report released by the panel this week found “absolutely no evidence of collusion” among President Trump, his campaign and the Russian government.

“I’m not sure Marco Rubio read the same report I did,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said in an interview on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.” “When you have the chair of the campaign, Paul Manafort, sitting down with a Russian intelligence agent and giving him detailed internal polling data — I don’t want to get into what’s collusion, what’s cooperation, what’s conspiracy, but it was certainly a link between the Trump campaign and the Russian intelligence services.”

“We couldn’t establish ... that there was an explicit agreement where somebody sat down in a room and said, ‘OK, we’re gonna do this and you do that,’” King elaborated. “It was more of an evolving sort of course of conduct that went as the thing unfolded, but Paul Manafort was at the heart of it.”

King, who ran as an independent and caucuses with the Democrats, was referring to damning new evidence in the committee’s report about Manafort, who had headed Trump’s campaign during the spring and summer of 2016. In particular, the report cites Manafort’s relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime business associate, who the report concludes was a “Russian intelligence officer.” The committee concluded that Manafort shared internal Trump campaign polling data and strategy with Kilimnik.

“To a politician, internal polling data is a road map to the campaign, it’s the blueprint,” said King. “So when you’re talking about handing over internal polling data to a Russian agent in August of an election year — I don’t know how anybody can say that’s not some kind of important and serious and disturbing link.”

Manafort’s sharing of internal Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik, including during a meeting at a New York cigar bar, was first revealed in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller, although Manafort’s reasons weren’t clear. The Mueller report cited testimony from a former Manafort aide, Robert Gates, suggesting it may have been designed to curry favor with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin, and to resume lucrative consulting work for Ukrainian oligarchs with ties to Russia.

The Senate committee report viewed Manafort’s associations as deeply disturbing.

“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 report states. “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 and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

King also cited new details in the report about Trump’s communications with his onetime political adviser Roger Stone regarding the imminent release of internal Democratic National Committee emails stolen by Russian intelligence and provided to WikiLeaks. The report notes that the Trump campaign had “brainstorming sessions” about how to prepare for the WikiLeaks releases and notes testimony from Gates that as soon as then-candidate Trump finished a call with Stone, he immediately pronounced that “more information would be coming” from WikiLeaks.

“That indicates a couple of things,” King said. “One, they knew WikiLeaks was involved in this; two, they had advance knowledge of what was coming; and three, the candidate himself knew about it. And so it’s a pretty damning set of facts, in my view.”

Trump, in sworn written testimony to Mueller, said that he did not recall speaking with Stone about WikiLeaks. King said Trump’s responses were “a little hard to swallow.”

“On numerous occasions the president has touted his incredible memory, that he just remembers anything and everything and anything. And I think in this case he had a memory lapse. When somebody says ‘I don’t recall,’ it’s hard to call that an untruthful statement, but it’s a little hard to swallow, given what appears to be a trail of these kinds of communications.”

WikiLeaks — and its releases about the Democrats — were never far from Trump’s mind, King said.

“Donald Trump always says things out loud. Later in the campaign, he kept — at every rally, he talked about WikiLeaks and how he loved WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks was releasing these things so it’s on the record,” he said.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/senator-angus...-201601446.html

Riley is whacked, but what about Perfect and OCD? Why don't you ever call their loony-ass posts out?

Sorry Pit, but they are just as bad.

You must have lost your damn mind. And your post are far worse than mine because you just want to argue with everyone. You are so full of yourself it's unbelievable; really most of us just don't believe a word you say. Upscale... whatevs. Pfft. Done more for blacks than anyone... OKAY. I was this I was that, blah blah blah... Tell us why you quit teaching. I have a very good idea of why. And you should have kept your mouth off me because it's on until you say uncle.