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Bipartisan Senate report: Trump campaign contacts with Russia in 2016 a “grave” threat, adding to Mueller findings

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President Donald Trump often says there was “no collusion” with Russia. A bipartisan Senate report now reveals that Trump’s campaign had contacts with Russia. And if the argument is still made there was no collusion it can’t be said that there was no coordination. It also paints a picture of Russia seeing a lot of openings with the Trump campaign and administration and making the best of them.

The bottom line: the Trump campaign wanted and welcome Russian help to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Details from CNN:

The Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday the most comprehensive and meticulous examination to date explaining how Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign welcomed the foreign adversary’s help, revealing new information about contacts between Russian officials and associates of President Donald Trump during and after the campaign.

In several key ways, the committee’s counterintelligence investigation goes beyond the findings of former special counsel Robert Mueller released last year, as the Republican-led Senate panel was not limited by questions of criminality that drove the special counsel probe.

Among the key findings:

**That then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort was working with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, and sought to share internal campaign information with Kilimnik. The committee says it obtained “some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected” to Russia’s 2016 hacking operation and concludes Manafort’s role on the campaign “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

**That Trump and senior campaign officials sought to obtain advance information on WikiLeaks’ email dumps through Roger Stone, and that Trump spoke to Stone about WikiLeaks, despite telling the special counsel in written answers he had “no recollections” that they had spoken about it.

**That information offered at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting “was part of a broader influence operation” from the Russian government, though there’s no evidence Trump campaign members knew of it. Two of the Russians who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort had “significant connections” to the Russian government, including Russian intelligence, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya’s ties were “far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.”

**That Russian-government actors continued until at least January 2020 to spread disinformation about Russia’s election interference, and that Manafort and Kilimnik both sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, and not Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

**That Russia took advantage of the Trump transition team’s inexperience and opposition to Obama administration policies “to pursue unofficial channels,” and it’s likely that Russian intelligence services and others acting on the Kremlin’s behalf exploited the Transition’s shortcomings for Russia’s advantage.

**That the FBI may have been victim to Russian disinformation coming through intelligence sources such as the Trump dossier author Christopher Steele.

**And that campaigns, political leaders and other influential Americans must be even more diligent in the future not to fall victim to Russian interference, given the extent of Russia’s efforts and successes to reach campaign operatives in 2016.

Follow more discussion on this issue HERE.

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