Bipartisan Senate Intel report details Trump campaign contacts with Russia in 2016, adding to Mueller findings

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. 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. 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. The Trump campaign echoed that sentiment in a statement on the report, saying it “proves – yet again – there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.” But Warner, the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement that the report was the “most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date – a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections.” “I encourage all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions,” Warner said. Noting Stone’s messages with the hackers’ online account during the campaign, the committee wrote its findings suggested Russian intelligence “sought to launder and amplify its stolen information through established outlets and individuals, including by cultivating a relationship with Stone, a known close associate of Trump.” Committee faults FBI for handling of Steele dossier The committee also probed how the FBI used the opposition research dossier compiled by Steele, an issue that’s been the subject of a scathing inspector general report and that two other Republican-led Senate committees are currently investigating.