Senate Intel report confirms criminality, collusion, cover-up and complicity

Putin’s puppet in Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, is facing mass protests in the streets after he rigged an election earlier this month. Under Siege in Belarus, Lukashenko Turns to Putin for help.

Putin’s puppet in the U.S., Donald J. Trump, is facing mass protests in the streets after he got caught trying to rig our election by suppressing mail-in ballots, and is threatening not to abide by the results if he loses in November. Trump also is turning to Putin for help. Trump eyes Putin meeting before November election.  What, is he going to sign a formal surrender and turn over the keys to the White House?

How did we ever come to this?

On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its fifth and final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. It establishes a trail of criminality, Trump campaign collusion with the Russians, and a cover-up by the Trump “Injustice” Department to prevent any prosecution of the key players. And Senate Republicans on the committee attached an addendum to the damning bipartisan report nevertheless saying that Republicans do not find any collusion, demonstrating their own complicity in the cover-up. It is a betrayal of the American people and their oath of office.

The Associated Press reports, The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat a Senate panel concluded Tuesday:

The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman [Paul Manafort] had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and that other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers.

The report is the culmination of a bipartisan probe that produced what the committee called “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.” The investigation spanned more than three years as the panel’s leaders said they wanted to thoroughly document the unprecedented attack on U.S. elections.

The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia.

Like literally every criminal I have ever encountered in court, “Trump said Tuesday he “didn’t know anything about” the report, or Russia or Ukraine. He said he had “nothing” to do with Russia.” “I’m innocent I tell ya! I was framed!”

While Mueller’s was a criminal probe, the Senate investigation was a counterintelligence effort with the aim of ensuring that such interference wouldn’t happen again. The report issued several recommendations on that front, including that the FBI should do more to protect presidential campaigns from foreign interference.

Wait, they blame the FBI? What part of “Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid” did they not read? “None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.” The Moscow Project: Trump’s Russia Cover-up By The Numbers. It was the responsibility of the Trump campaign to report these Russian contacts to the FBI.

“Moscow Mitch” McConnell and Senate Republicans have failed to consider a single bill passed by the House in the past three and one-half years to strengthen election security against foreign interference. It was “Moscow Mitch” McConnell who objected to a more forceful response in 2016. Mitch McConnell should explain why he obscured Russian interference in our election.

Among the more striking sections of the report is the committee’s description of the close, professional relationship between former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee describes as a Russian intelligence officer.

“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, represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the report says.

The report notes how Manafort shared internal Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik and says there is “some evidence” Kilimnik may have been connected to Russia’s effort to hack and leak Democratic emails, though that information is redacted. The report also says “two pieces of information” raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to those operations, but what follows is again blacked out.

The Washington Post adds, Who is Konstantin Kilimnik and why does his name appear 800 times in a Senate report? “Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” the report said. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Kilimnik and other people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, it added, “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

Like Mueller, the committee reviewed a meeting Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., took in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer he believed to have connections with the Russian government with the goal of receiving information harmful to his father’s opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The Senate panel said it assessed that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has “significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services,” as did another participant in the meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin.

The panel said it uncovered connections that were “far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” particularly regarding Veselnitskaya.

This is where the story takes another turn to the Trump “Injustice” Department engaging in a cover-up by failing to follow up criminal referrals from the Senate Intelligence Committee for lying to Congress. Senate committee made criminal referral of Trump Jr., Bannon, Kushner, two others to federal prosecutors:

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee made criminal referrals of Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and Sam Clovis to federal prosecutors in 2019, passing along their suspicions that the men may have misled the committee during their testimony, an official familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The official confirmed reports in the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, which reported on the matter last week. A criminal referral to the Justice Department means Congress believes a matter warrants investigation for potential violation of the law.

The committee detailed its concerns in a letter to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., in June 2019, the official said.

The Post reported that the letter was divided into two sections. One named those suspected of making false statements, The Post said: Bannon; Clovis, a co-chair of the Trump campaign in 2016; and Prince, a private security contractor.

A second section raised concerns about the testimony of other witnesses, including Trump Jr. and Kushner, whose statements were contradicted by Trump campaign aide Richard Gates, although it did not pointedly make a false-statements allegation, The Post reported.

And of course, Donald Trump committed perjury. Trump says he didn’t discuss hacked emails with Roger Stone. A bipartisan Senate report says he did. “[T]he committee assessed that the president discussed hacked emails with his longtime associate Roger Stone — even though Trump told special counsel Robert Mueller that he didn’t recall having done so.”

The key players in the Russian collusion effort lied to the intelligence committees and to Robert Mueller’s investigation, but somehow Mueller and the DOJ never brought charges against them for lying to federal investigators, to Congress, or for perjury. There is a story yet to be told here about why and how justice was subverted, and who ordered it, but suffice it to say this is a cover-up.

The AP continues:

The report also found no reliable evidence for Trump’s longstanding supposition that Ukraine had interfered in the election, but did trace some of the earliest public messaging of that theory to Kilimnik and said it was spread by Russian-government proxies who sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference.

The committee said that messaging campaign lasted to “at least January 2020” — after the House had impeached Trump for pressuring Ukrainian officials to investigate the family of Democrat Joe Biden, now Trump’s general election opponent. During that effort, some Republicans, including Trump, argued Ukraine was meddling, not Russia. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

The AP also notes:

The report was released as two other Senate committees, the Judiciary [“Leningrad Lindsey” Graham (R-SC)] and Homeland Security [Ron Johnson (R-WI) aka Putin’s “useful idiot”] panels, conduct their own reviews of the Russia probe with an eye toward uncovering what they say was FBI misconduct in the early days of the investigation. A prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William Barr, who regards the Russia investigation with skepticism, disclosed his first criminal charge Friday against a former FBI lawyer who plans to plead guilty to altering a government email.

Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa explain at Just Security blog, How Sen. Ron Johnson’s Investigation Became an Enabler of Russian Disinformation: Part I (excerpt):

Fellow Republican Senators — including the previous and current Chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sens. Richard Burr and Marco Rubio — have warned Senators Johnson and Chuck Grassley that their Ukraine investigations could aid the Kremlin. Johnson and Grassley appear committed to going further down that path regardless, taking some of their Republican colleagues down with him.

We provide a roadmap for understanding this disinformation operation currently in progress, using U.S. elected officials as a vehicle.

Key Players in the Russian Disinformation Campaign

1. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, Chair of Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee

2. Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, Chair of Senate Committee on Finance

3. Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, Chair of Senate Intelligence Committee (Jan. 2015 – May 2020)

4. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, Chair of Senate Intelligence Committee (May 2020-present)

5. Rudy Guiliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney

6. Andrii Derkach, a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker, identified by U.S. intelligence as running a disinformation campaign in conjunction with the Kremlin to damage Biden’s candidacy in support of Trump in the 2020 election

7. Andrii Telizhenko, former Ukrainian diplomatic aide; reportedly identified by the FBI as a conduit for Russian disinformation to damage Biden in the 2020 election

8. Oleksandr Onyshchenko, former pro-Russian lawmaker, spreading disinformation about Biden in 2020 election

9. Ken Vogel, journalist, previously at Politico, now at New York Times

10. John Solomon, journalist/commentator, previously at The Hill

There are three channels of Russian disinformation that have apparently affected Sen. Johnson’s Ukraine-related investigations.

Channel 1. Russian-linked Ukrainian operatives communicating directly with Sen. Johnson and his staff.

Channel 2. Russian-linked Ukrainian operatives spreading disinformation via media outlets, which have been picked up and expressly relied upon by Sen. Johnson.

Channel 3. Russian-linked Ukrainian operatives providing information via “Team [Rudy] Giuliani.”

In this piece, we will discuss the first two channels together because of how they relate to Johnson’s 11-page denial.

Read the full post for the analysis of Republican complicity in using and amplifying Russian propaganda in 2020.

Ron Johnson openly admits that his bogus investigation to smear Joe Biden is modeled after the eight bogus Benghazi! investigations to smear Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election which produced nothing substantive, but poisoned the well with propaganda. Besieged on all sides, Ron Johnson says his probe ‘would certainly’ help Trump win reelection.

Ron Johnson subpoenaed documents from FBI director Christopher Wray demanding he hand over all documents related to the bureau’s counterintelligence probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election (but not testimony). His own fellow Republicans on the Homeland Security committee, however, are blocking him from subpoenaing former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan and other figures involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and its contacts with Russia — even though the panel gave him the unilateral power to do so in the spring. Ron Johnson says committee Republicans blocking Comey, Brennan subpoenas.

Secretary of State Mike Pomeo’s aide ordered the State Department to provide Biden, Russia probe documents to Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa who are investigating the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe and Joe Biden’s dealings with Ukraine, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.

The memo, dated Aug. 17, is in response to a July 28 request from Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa for records and information about the bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. The memo asked officials to compile specific materials related to the 2016-era Russia investigation as part of a wide-ranging document request from the senators that included information about Ukraine and Obama officials.

It shows the senators are actively collecting documents in an investigation that has taken on political overtones — and one Democrats say has been seeded with Russian disinformation — less than 80 days from the election.

Attorney General William “Coverup” Barr’s hand-picked investigator to write the “alternative reality” version of the Russia investigation consistent with Donald Trump’s “deep state” QAnon conspiracy theory, U.S. Attorney John Durham, is scheduled to interview former CIA director John Brennan this Friday. John Durham to Interview Former CIA Director John Brennan This Week.

George Croner, former principal litigation counsel at the National Security Agency and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, explains at Just Security blog What Durham Is Investigating and Why It Poses a Danger to US Intelligence Analysis. Conclusion: “It is this exact willingness to pursue political objectives at the long-term expense of the nation’s foreign intelligence collection and analytic processes that reveals the significant dangers that the Durham investigation, and its architect, William Barr, pose to the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

William “Coverup” Barr is continuing to violate long standing DOJ policy, as former FBI Director James Comey did, by discussing the existence of and status of an ongoing case. Worse, Barr is promising to violate “long-standing Justice Department guidelines say prosecutors must not take investigative steps or issue criminal charges for the purpose of influencing an election or helping a particular candidate or party when the vote is less than two months away.” William Barr Disdains Election Deadline With Plan to Report on FBI Probe.

Finally, the AP reports:

The report purposely does not state a final conclusion, as Mueller did and as the House intelligence committee’s 2018 report did, about whether there was sufficient evidence that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the election to him, leaving its findings open to partisan interpretation.

Several Republicans on the panel submitted “additional views” to the report, saying it should state more explicitly that Trump’s campaign did not collude with Russia. They say that while the report shows the Russian government “inappropriately meddled” in the election, “then-candidate Trump was not complicit.”

The panel’s acting GOP chairman, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, signed on to that statement but the chairman who led the investigation, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, did not. Burr stepped aside earlier this year as the FBI was examining his stock sales. Another Republican committee member, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, also did not sign on to the GOP statement.

In other words, several Republicans on the committee are demonstrating their own complicity in continuing the coverup.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once pointedly said to Donald Trump, “with you all roads lead to Putin.” The Party of Trump is the Party of Putin. Not only will they not take security measures to prevent Russian interference in our election, they are actively soliciting and making use of Russian-supplied propaganda, and amplifying that Russian propaganda in the U.S. Senate, and in conservative media. There is not a patriot among them. They have betrayed their country and their oath of office. The disloyalty of these traitors should not be rewarded by American voters. Every one of them should be removed from office, and their names live in infamy.