Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the effort to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump, according to the findings of an exhaustive investigation released Tuesday by the Senate intelligence committee.
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After nearly three and a half years sorting through millions of documents and hundreds of witness interviews, the Republican-led panel unveiled its final 1,300-page report on Russian meddling, calling it “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.”
The committee “did not find evidence of collusion between President Trump and the Russians.”
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In one of the major findings, the report calls former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort a “grave counterintelligence threat” who “created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign,” the report states.
Manafort was convicted in 2018 on various charges of tax and bank fraud, conspiracy, witness tampering and lying to investigators; he is serving an eight-year sentence on house arrest due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Other findings from the Senate probe include:
- The Trump campaign sought advance information on email dumps from WikiLeaks through longtime associate Roger Stone; the report notably states that Stone and Trump discussed the hacked emails despite the president’s previous denials.
- Russia took advantage of the inexperience of the Trump transition team and leveraged opposition to policies of the Obama administration.
- A detailed account of Trump’s pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow, a deal that was being brokered by Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and one in which Putin was likely aware of.
- Russia continued to spread misinformation until at least January 2020
- A detailing of Donald Trump Jr’s efforts to obtain damaging information about Clinton during a 2016 Trump tower meeting in New York.
The report explicitly states that the Kremlin was directly behind the hacking and release of emails between Democratic Party officials, actions that were designed to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president,” the report states. “Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.”
Plausible deniability
For the past four years, Putin has maintained that his country played absolutely no role in the matter, despite U.S. intelligence showing the opposite and with threats continuing just weeks away from the November election.
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The bipartisan Senate investigation took much longer than the special counsel probe by Robert Mueller, however, does not reach a final conclusion about whether there is enough evidence of coordination with Russia to sway the election to Trump and away from Clinton, leaving the findings open to partisan interpretation, according to The Associated Press.
Some members of the committee submitted “additional views” on both sides of the argument, with Republicans saying there was no coordination between Russia and Team Trump, and Democrats maintaining there was clearly such cooperation.
‘Russia, if you’re listening’
During the 2016 campaign, Trump caused an uproar and invited more speculation about his campaign’s ties to Russia when he publicly encouraged the Kremlin to dig up Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails that were deleted from a private server she used while secretary of state.
“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said during a press briefing at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, on July 27, 2016. It was the third day of the Democratic National Convention. “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
“Do you have any qualms about asking a foreign government—Russia, China, anybody — to interfere, to hack into the system of anybody’s in this country?” asked NBC News correspondent Katy Tur.
“That’s up to the president,” Trump answered while praising Putin. “I don’t think Putin has any respect whatsoever for Clinton. I think he does respect me,” Trump said. “Putin has much better leadership qualities than Obama—but who doesn’t know that?”
Panel finds no conspiracy
The Senate probe did find numerous contacts between Trump associates and Russians or people with ties to the Russian government, but like Mueller, did not find a conspiracy between foreign operatives and Trump associates.
Mueller’s final report last year spelled out that Russia encroached the U.S. election through hacking and a covert social media campaign, and that the Trump campaign embraced the actions and expected to benefit from Putin’s apparent assistance.
“This cannot happen again,” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. “As we head into the heat of the 2020 campaign season, I strongly urge campaigns, the executive branch, Congress and the American people to heed the lessons of this report in order to protect our democracy.”
The Senate investigation also delved into areas of great interest to Trump that were not explored by Mueller.
Those include the FBI’s reliance on a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy whose work was financed by Democrats.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the committee’s acting chairman, said in a statement that the committee was troubled that the FBI had been willing to use the dossier “without verifying its methodology or sourcing” as it applied for secret surveillance warrants against a former Trump campaign adviser.
— This is a developing story. Stay with AJC.com for the latest updates. Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
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