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G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russia G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russia
(about 3 hours later)
WASHINGTON — A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian government officials and other Russians, including some with ties to the country’s intelligence services. WASHINGTON — A sprawling report released Tuesday by a Republican-controlled Senate panel that spent three years investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election laid out an extensive web of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials and other Russians, including at least one intelligence officer and others tied to the country’s spy services.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 American election to help Mr. Trump become president, and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary. The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional investigations in recent memory and could be the last word from an official government inquiry about the expansive Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 election.
The report drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional inquiries in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long tried to discredit as part of a “witch hunt” designed to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election nearly four years ago. It provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government disrupted an American election to help Mr. Trump become president, Russian intelligence services viewed members of the Trump campaign as easily manipulated, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers were eager for the help from an American adversary.
Like the investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who released his findings in April 2019, the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government — a fact that Republicans seized on to argue that there was “no collusion.” The report portrayed a Trump campaign that was stocked with businessmen with no government experience, advisers working at the fringes of the foreign policy establishment and other friends and associates Mr. Trump had accumulated over the years. Campaign figures, the report said, “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”
But the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom the report identifies as a “Russian intelligence officer.” Like the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who released his findings in April 2019, the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government — a fact that Republicans seized on to argue that there was “no collusion.”
The Senate report for the first time identified Mr. Kilimnik as an intelligence officer. Mr. Mueller’s report had labeled him as someone with ties to Russian intelligence. But the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom the report identified as a “Russian intelligence officer.”
Democrats highlighted those ties in their own appendix to the report, noting that Mr. Manafort discussed campaign strategy and shared internal campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, and later lied to federal investigators about his actions. The Senate report was the first time the government has identified Mr. Kilimnik as an intelligence officer — Mr. Mueller’s report had labeled him as someone with ties to Russian intelligence. Most of the details about his intelligence background in the Senate report were blacked out.
Democrats also laid out a potentially explosive detail: that investigators had uncovered information possibly tying Mr. Kilimnik to Russia’s major election interference operations conducted by the intelligence service known as the G.R.U. Mr. Manafort’s willingness to share information with Mr. Kilimnik and others affiliated with the Russian intelligence services “represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the report said.
“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to the G.R.U.’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.” It also included a potentially explosive detail: that investigators had uncovered information possibly tying Mr. Kilimnik to Russia’s major election interference operations, conducted by the intelligence service known as the G.R.U.
The assertion was a sign that even though the investigation was carried out in bipartisan fashion, and Republican and Democratic senators reached broad agreement on its most significant conclusions, a partisan divide remained on some of the most politically sensitive issues. Democrats highlighted Mr. Kilimnik’s potential ties to the interference operations in their own appendix to the report, noting that Mr. Manafort discussed campaign strategy and shared internal campaign polling data with the Russian and later lied to federal investigators about his actions.
The White House sought to downplay the report, highlighting the Republican’ conclusion that there was “no collusion.” “This never-ending, baseless conspiracy theory peddled by radical liberals and their partners in the media demonstrates how incapable they are at accepting the will of the American people and the results of the 2016 election,” a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said in a statement. “They should stop wasting taxpayer dollars with partisan witch hunts and actually work to accomplish things for this country.” “This is what collusion looks like,” Democrats wrote.
But the Senate report said that the unusual nature of the Trump campaign — staffed by Mr. Trump’s longtime associates, friends and other businessmen with no government experience — “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.” Their assertion was a sign that even though the investigation was carried out in bipartisan fashion, and Republican and Democratic senators reached broad agreement on its most significant conclusions, a partisan divide remained on some of the most politically sensitive issues.
The Senate investigation found that two other people who met at Trump Tower in 2016 with senior members of the Trump campaign — including Mr. Manafort; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son — had “significant connections to Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.” The report is an exhaustive look at the various ways that the Kremlin’s intelligence services exploited ties to the Trump campaign to help carry out a stealth attack on American democracy. By focusing on the Russian actions as a national security threat, the Senate investigation differed from the Mueller inquiry, which examined whether there was evidence to charge anyone with specific crimes.
The report said that the connections between the Russian government and one of the individuals, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.” The Senate investigation found that two other Russians who met at Trump Tower in 2016 with senior members of the Trump campaign — including Mr. Manafort; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son — had “significant connections to Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.”
Since the release of Mr. Mueller’s report, Attorney General William P. Barr and numerous Republican senators have tried to discredit the special counsel’s work — dismissing the investigation into the 2016 election as “Russiagate.” Links between the Kremlin and one of the individuals, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” the report said.
Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, lawmakers hope it will refocus attention on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated. The report’s findings about Mr. Kilimnik and other Russians in touch with Trump campaign advisers confirmed an article in The New York Times from 2017 that said there had been numerous interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence in the year before the election. F.B.I. officials had disputed the report.
The report is the product of one of the few congressional investigations in recent memory that retained bipartisan support throughout. Lawmakers and committee aides interviewed more than 200 witnesses and reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents, including intelligence reports, internal F.B.I. notes and correspondence among members of the Trump campaign. The committee convened blockbuster hearings in 2017 and 2018, but much of its work took place in a secure office suite out of public view. Though there was no evidence of any agreement between the Russians and the Trump campaign to work together, there was clear coordination, said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats and is a member of the Intelligence Committee.
Portions of the report containing classified or other sensitive information were blacked out. “The Russians were doing things to disrupt American democracy and help the Trump campaign and the Trump campaign was doing things to amplify and utilize what the Russians were supplying,” Mr. King said in an interview. “There may not have been an explicit agreement but they were both consciously pursing the same end, which was the election of Donald Trump. And for the Russians, the extra benefit was disrupting American democracy.”
The Intelligence Committee released four previous volumes on its findings over the past year. The first focused on election security and Russia’s attempts to test American election infrastructure, and included policy recommendations to blunt future attacks. The second provided a detailed picture of Russia’s use of social media to sow political divisions in the United States. The president and his allies have long tried to discredit the government investigations into the 2016 election as part of a “witch hunt” intended to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election. Since the release of Mr. Mueller’s report, Attorney General William P. Barr and numerous Republican senators have recast the president as the victim of politically motivated national security officials in the Obama administration.
Lawmakers then produced a study of the response by the Obama administration and Congress in the highly partisan run-up to the 2016 election. Most recently, they found that a 2017 intelligence community assessment, assigning blame to Russia and outlining its goals to undercut American democracy, had been untainted by politics and was fundamentally sound despite attacks on it by Mr. Trump’s allies. Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, lawmakers hoped it would refocus attention on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated.
The committee focused its work on intelligence and counterintelligence matters. It did not investigate attempts by Mr. Trump to hinder the work of federal investigators. Members of Mr. Trump’s own party led the Intelligence Committee’s work. Much of the investigation was overseen by Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, but he temporarily stepped aside as the chairman of the panel in May because of a federal investigation into stock sales he made before the coronavirus pandemic began rattling the United States. He was replaced by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, though Mr. Burr voted to endorse the report’s conclusions.
The report arrived in a fraught political moment, particularly for Republican senators on the panel who signed off on it and thus may find themselves at odds with Mr. Trump and other influential figures in their party. Since Mr. Mueller finished his work, Republicans close to Mr. Trump have sought to recast the president as the victim of politically motivated national security officials in the Obama administration. The report could have partisan benefits for Democrats, who were using their convention this week as a platform to portray Mr. Trump as unfit and incapable of being president. Andrew Bates, a spokesman for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the report shows “the Russian government intervened in 2016 to help Donald Trump get elected and to undermine our democracy. Donald Trump welcomed it with open arms. They are working toward the same goals again this year, and Trump refuses to reject their assistance.”
President Trump called the report “a hoax,” but a White House spokesman said it helped confirm what the president and his allies had long said — “that there was absolutely no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“This never-ending, baseless conspiracy theory peddled by radical liberals and their partners in the media demonstrates how incapable they are at accepting the will of the American people and the results of the 2016 election,” said the spokesman, Judd Deere.
The report is the product of one of the few congressional investigations in recent memory that retained bipartisan support throughout. Lawmakers and committee aides interviewed more than 200 witnesses and reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents, including intelligence reports, internal F.B.I. notes and correspondence among members of the Trump campaign. The committee convened hearings in 2017 and 2018, but most of its work took place out of public view.
The report suggested that Mr. Manafort was compromised by his financial ties with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, who themselves were connected to Mr. Kilimnik, the Russian intelligence operative.
It cited Mr. Manafort’s ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch described as a “proxy” for Russian state and intelligence services who claimed that Mr. Manafort owed him money. And it described at length Mr. Manafort’s relationships with a cluster of pro-Russia oligarchs in Ukraine, who had paid him tens of millions of dollars as a political consultant in Ukraine.
“Manafort conducted influence operations that supported and were a part of Russian active measures campaigns, including those involving political influence and electoral interference,” the report said.
Before, during and after he was forced out as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, the report said, Mr. Manafort offered inside information and assistance to these Russian-aligned interests. Mr. Kilimnik was Mr. Manafort’s intermediary with both Mr. Deripaska and the Ukrainian oligarchs, according to the report. It recounted how he briefed Mr. Kilimnik at an August 2016 meeting on the Trump campaign’s strategy to defeat Hillary Clinton, describing efforts in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota and the margins by which Mr. Trump might win.
The report also shed new light on the interaction between Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks — and between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign. WikiLeaks, which released tranches of stolen Democratic emails that helped damage Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, not only played a clear role in the election interference but also “very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report said.
The Intelligence Committee sought to track calls between Mr. Trump and Roger J. Stone Jr. — an adviser to the Trump campaign who was in contact with Guccifer 2.0, the online pseudonym for Russian intelligence operatives dumping the Democratic emails — in an effort to discover what Mr. Stone might have told Mr. Trump about the hacked emails.
In written responses to Mr. Mueller, Mr. Trump said he could not recall discussing WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone, a response challenged in the Senate report. “The committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.
Last month, Mr. Trump commuted a prison sentence Mr. Stone had received after he was convicted on seven felonies of obstructing a congressional investigation that threatened the president, his longtime friend.
The committee sent a letter last summer to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington suggesting that Trump campaign advisers may have illegally made false or misleading statements to congressional investigators conducting the panel’s inquiry, according to four people with knowledge of the letter, which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times.
The committee said in the letter that Mr. Trump’s onetime chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis may have committed a crime by lying under oath, and they cast doubt on the testimony of Donald J. Trump Jr. and Mr. Kushner. Prosecutors never filed charges.
Mr. Barr has appointed a criminal prosecutor, John H. Durham, to review the actions that intelligence and law enforcement officials took in 2016 to better understand the Kremlin’s interference campaign and interactions between Russians and Trump campaign advisers. Last month, Mr. Barr told a congressional committee that he was determined “to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus ‘Russiagate’ scandal.”
The Justice Department’s independent inspector general has found that law enforcement officials had sufficient basis to open the Russia investigation and acted without political bias.The Justice Department’s independent inspector general has found that law enforcement officials had sufficient basis to open the Russia investigation and acted without political bias.
But two other Senate panels, the Judiciary and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees, are conducting investigations premised on picking apart aspects of the special counsel’s inquiry. And though they have not disputed Russia’s interference, they have decidedly turned the party’s focus away from the actions of a hostile foreign power toward the workings of the investigation it spawned, arguing that Mr. Mueller should never have been appointed and that the F.B.I. should have dropped any inquiry involving the Trump campaign long before he was. But the Senate report did criticize the F.B.I., saying the bureau should have done more to alert higher-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that their servers may have been penetrated by Russian hackers.
The Justice Department is doing a similar post-mortem. Mr. Barr told a congressional committee last month that he was determined “to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus ‘Russiagate’ scandal.” He has appointed a criminal prosecutor, John H. Durham, to review the investigation and the actions of intelligence and law enforcement officials trying in 2016 to understand the Kremlin’s interference and possible links to Trump associates. It also criticized the bureau’s handling of the so-called Steele dossier, a compendium of rumors about purported Trump-Russia links compiled by Christopher Steele, a British former intelligence agent. The bureau used some of Mr. Steele’s information in applications to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser.
Much of the Intelligence Committee investigation was overseen by Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, but he temporarily stepped aside as the chairman of the panel in May because of a federal investigation into a rush of stock sales he made before the coronavirus pandemic began rattling the United States. As they watched a similar House investigation over Russian interference splinter under partisan bickering and Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Mueller, Mr. Burr and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, worked steadily to ensure they could come to an authoritative bipartisan conclusion. Mr. Burr voted to endorse the final conclusions. The Senate report nonetheless endorsed the F.B.I.’s decision to investigate Mr. Page. “Page’s previous ties to Russian intelligence officers, coupled with his Russian travel, justified the F.B.I.’s initial concerns about Page,” it said.
The findings broadly echo Mr. Mueller’s conclusions. His report documented attempts by Moscow to undermine confidence in the electoral process and sway the election toward Mr. Trump by hacking and dumping Democratic emails and engaging in sophisticated manipulation campaigns using social media. The report portrayed the dossier as shoddy and criticized the F.B.I.’s vetting of Mr. Steele as “not sufficiently rigorous or thorough.”
After years of work, Mr. Mueller found dozens of contacts between Trump associates and Russian-connected actors, evidence that the Trump campaign welcomed the Kremlin’s attempts to sabotage the election and “expected it would benefit electorally” from the hacking and dumping of Democratic emails. At the same time, it dove into one of the main subjects of the dossier — whether the Russian government has compromising material on Mr. Trump from his past business dealings in Moscow. The report explicitly said it “did not establish” that the Russian government obtained any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that it tried to use such materials as leverage against him.
New York Times reporters are combing through the report for the most important developments. Check back for updates. It did, however, spend pages describing Mr. Trump’s relationships with women in Moscow during his trips there starting in the mid-1990s, when he began looking for sites to build a Trump Tower. Mr. Deere, the White House spokesman, did not comment on those details in the report.
According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they “might have had a brief romantic relationship.”
The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow.
Reporting was contributed by Charlie Savage, Sharon LaFraniere, Julian E. Barnes, Michael S. Schmidt, Nicholas Fandos and Katie Benner.