New Russian sanctions announced today by the Treasury Department reveal a direct line between Trump’s 2016 campaign chief Paul Manafort and Russian intelligence agencies.
This intelligence was always in the possession of the Trump administration, but appears to have been withheld from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. New scandal: was it withheld?
Today’s Russian sanctions “closed the loop” that Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not close on his collusion investigation (because it was withheld from him? That would be obstruction of justice).
Igor Derysh at Salon reports, “This is what collusion with Russia looks like”: Feds say Manafort pal gave campaign info to spies:
A longtime associate of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort passed “sensitive” information to Russian intelligence agents during the 2016 campaign, the Treasury Department said Thursday.
Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked closely with Manafort on behalf of Russian-backed oligarchs in Ukraine, was hit with sanctions in the Biden administration’s latest response to Russian election meddling. The Treasury Department said in a news release announcing the sanctions that Kilimnik was a known Russian “agent” and “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy.”
The Treasury Department statement marks the first time that the government directly said that Kilimnik provided the internal data he received to Russian intelligence agencies.
Kilimnik, who also sought to “promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered” in the 2016 presidential election, according to the release, was sanctioned for also engaging in “foreign interference” in the 2020 election. The FBI is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
For the first time EVER, the US government said Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik provided Russian intelligence agencies with the internal Trump campaign polling/strategy data he received from Manafort and Gates in 2016. Even Mueller didn't go that far. https://t.co/wGNnHdFxRU pic.twitter.com/O9GEjpJ0CG
— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) April 15, 2021
Kilimnik was previously indicted in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in 2018 for alleged witness tampering after prosecutors said he and Manafort “repeatedly contacted” two individuals “in an effort to secure materially false testimony” in the probe. The Mueller investigation found that Manafort shared polling data from Trump’s campaign with Kilimnik, who “has ties to a Russian intelligence service.” Many of the relevant parts of the report were redacted, though it did say that Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager and a mutual associate of both Kilimnik and Manafort, believed that Kilimnik was a “spy.”
A Senate Intelligence Committee report released last year also found that Manafort had on several occasions passed internal polling data and campaign strategy to Kilimnik, who it said “may have been connected” to Russian intelligence, but these sections were likewise redacted. Kilimnik was mentioned 819 times in the report, including in one section that raised the “possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.”
Kilimnik was a key figure in both investigations. The Mueller report described a meeting between Manafort, Gates and Kilimnik at a Manhattan cigar club where Manafort instructed Gates to bring printouts of campaign polling data and later handed it to Kilimnik.
“They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort’s strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states,” the Mueller report said. “Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.”
The report said that Gates continued to “periodically” send internal polling data to Kilimnik after the meeting at Manafort’s behest. The report said Manafort expected Kilimnik to share the information with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a former client of Manafort and a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prosecutors said in court documents that Manafort was $10 million in debt to Deripaska when he volunteered to lead the Trump campaign for free.
But the report stopped short of saying that Kilimnik was working with Russian intelligence agencies.
“Because of questions about Manafort’s credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, the Office could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have given it to) did with it,” the report said.
The Senate report went further, identifying Kilimnik as a “Russian intelligence officer.”
“Manafort’s presence on the campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign,” the report said. “The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort’s access to gain insight [into] the Campaign.”
It’s unclear whether Trump himself knew that Manafort was sharing internal campaign data with Kilimnik. He told reporters in 2019 that he knew “nothing about it.” [Trump always denies knowing anything every time he is in trouble, what does this prove?]
It’s also unclear what Russia may have done with the polling and “strategy” information. Media reports in 2017 showed that Russian-linked Facebook ads specifically targeted voters in Michigan and Wisconsin, two states that proved critical in Trump’s 2016 victory, but there is no evidence that those ads were targeted using internal information from the Trump campaign nor that Russia’s efforts had much of an effect on the outcome of the race.
The Senate report also said that Kilimnik may be connected to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Documents stolen during that hacking operation were later published by WikiLeaks. Gates testified in 2019 that Trump adviser Roger Stone may have had an inside line to the organization and told Trump in July of 2016 that “more information would be coming” from WikiLeaks, contradicting Trump’s sworn statements in the Mueller investigation. Gates said Stone had relayed this information to Manafort as well, who “thought that would be great.”
Russia’s role in Trump’s 2016 victory has been a controversial subject for years and its effect is difficult to quantify, as with former FBI Director James Comey’s last-minute announcements first reopening and then closing the investigation into Clinton’s email server. Research looking at whether Russia’s online efforts to suppress the Black vote and stoke Democratic divisions suggests they were not very effective. But the Treasury Department sanctions underscore the Mueller investigation and Senate probe’s findings that Russia tried to help Trump win.
“This is what collusion with Russia looks like,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees, said on Twitter. “The former President won the 2016 election with the help of Russia. That’s simply a fact.”
Completing the coverup of this crime last December, Trump Pardoned Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. Trump did not pardon his deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, Manafort’s business partner in Ukraine.
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Philip Bump of the Washington Post adds, “The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/15/government-finally-connects-line-trumps-campaign-russian-intelligence/
[The closest] Mueller got to demonstrating a connection between Trump’s campaign and the Russian effort to aid his candidacy, [was] an effort that included both a bid to influence public opinion using social media and the release of data stolen from the Democratic Party and a senior staffer for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent. It left unanswered two questions: How close was Kilimnik to Russian intelligence, and what did he do with the polling information he’d received?
The Mueller report acknowledged both uncertainties, writing that “Because of questions about Manafort’s credibility and our limited ability to gather evidence on what happened to the polling data after it was sent to Kilimnik, the [special counsel’s team] could not assess what Kilimnik (or others he may have given it to) did with it.”
Last year, one of those questions was answered. A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee identified Kilimnik explicitly as an agent of the Russian government: “Kilimnik,” it read, “is a Russian intelligence officer.”
On Thursday, the Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions against the Russian government linked to its apparent hack of U.S. government networks. But the news release also included a statement clearly answering our second question.
“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the statement read.
“Kilimnik has also sought to assist designated former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. At Yanukovych’s direction, Kilimnik sought to institute a plan that would return Yanukovych to power in Ukraine,” it read.
Yanukovych was a member of the pro-Russian party for which Manafort had worked, the Party of Regions.
That one sentence, though, appears to finally complete the long-speculated line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence.
[W]hat [this reveals] is that the government’s concern about the Trump campaign’s links to Russia — links that extended to other members of Trump’s team — was in this case probably warranted. Manafort’s presence in the campaign prompted head-scratching from the outset, given his ties to various international ne’er-do-wells. He had been on the radar of federal intelligence agencies for years. It’s not surprising, then, that this link should be demonstrated. It just took awhile for the line to be drawn as clearly as it was Thursday morning.
Among the reasons that Mueller’s team couldn’t draw that line clearly in the first place was that Manafort misled investigators (spurring false-statement charges) and otherwise refused to offer a detailed assessment of his time on the campaign.