A new, bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee confirms, unambiguously, that the Justice Department had good reason to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. It also indicates that investigators were right to examine potential conspiracy with the Kremlin by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Again, this is a bipartisan report, not a partisan Democratic attack document. It is endorsed by Republican committee chairman (on leave), Richard Burr of North Carolina, by acting Chairman Marco Rubio of Florida, and by all other Republicans on the committee in addition to the committee Democrats.
The very first substantive words of the report say this: “The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.”
The report “focuses on the counterintelligence threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. In this volume the Committee lays out its findings in detail by looking at many aspects of the counterintelligence threat posed by the Russian influence operation,” with special attention on the multitudinous Russian connections of Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who for more than a decade had conducted “influence operations” on behalf of a major Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska.
Also, “Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer.” And: “[C]ontinuing throughout his time in the Campaign, Manafort directly and indirectly communicated with Kilimnik, Deripaska, and the pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine. On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik.”
That’s just from the report’s initial summary. The report contains 952 pages of evidence and analysis showing that these Russian efforts were a serious intelligence threat. Moreover, several Trump officials were at least somewhat aware of, and quite open to, the Russian help, even if not criminally “conspiring” with the Russians.
In sum, repeat after me: The investigation into Russian perfidy was not a hoax. There was no hoax. There was no hoax. Trump fans need to get this through their heads.
The lack of formal conspiracy (too often miscalled “collusion”) does not obviate the importance of, or the need for, the Justice Department investigation. First, with so much irrefutable evidence of illegal Russian interference and so much circumstantial evidence (and, later, hard evidence) of an unusual number of contacts between Trump agents and Russians, the Justice Department would have been derelict not to investigate (even had the controversial “Steele dossier” not existed). Second, it is extremely illogical to say the investigation’s end result (no direct criminal conspiracy by Trump) could have been known before the investigation even began, and thus that the investigation was illegitimate.
The Justice Department investigation, later conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, produced dozens of indictments and (so far) 10 convictions. As the new Senate report makes clear, the Russian activities were highly nefarious. They needed to be unearthed and punished, and the information obtained from the investigation should be used to guard against Russian and other foreign electoral mischief in the future.
Meanwhile, several people in the Trump campaign were far from angels in all of this. Manafort in particular was criminally corrupt. Others were at least morally compromised.
Mueller did his job well. So well, in fact, that the ultimate legal exoneration of Trump is more credible than it would have been if Trump had had his way in sweeping the whole investigation under the rug. In the long run, Mueller helped, not hurt, the president. Any claim to the contrary is a hoax.
