President Trump is touting a new report that suggests special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report left out key information that skewed its findings.
Trump Friday morning tweeted an article by John Solomon suggesting Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian businessman who had worked for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was not just tied to Russian intelligence as the Mueller report alleged, but was also a “sensitive intelligence source for the U.S. State Department” too — a fact Solomon says did not make it into Mueller’s official findings.
“John Solomon: Factual errors and major omissions in the Mueller Report show that it is totally biased against Trump,” Trump tweeted Friday.
Mueller’s report describes Kilimnik, a former Soviet Army translator, as someone “who the FBI assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence.” Solomon claimed that approach put every contact between Kilimnik and Manafort in a negative light. Solomon further suggested Kilimnik had passed along information to U.S. officials since 2013 or earlier.
Federal court transcripts from February 2019 show that Mueller’s team acknowledged they were aware of Kilimnik’s discussions with the U.S. government. Andrew Weissmann, a member of the special counsel team, raised it in front of the D.C. District Court: “There is no question that Mr. Manafort had communications with people at the State Department … I don’t see how that is in any way relevant to this issue before the court.”
And Judge Amy Berman Jackson addressed the issue as well when discussing whether or not Manafort had lied about his interactions with Kilimnik. “Whether Kilimnik is tied to Russian intelligence or he’s not, I think the specific representation by the Office of Special Counsel was that he had been, quote, assessed by the FBI, quote, to have a relationship with Russian intelligence, close quote.”
