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“The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a ‘grave’ counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday.” AP News
“Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty on Wednesday in federal court to falsifying a document as part of the bureau’s early-stage probe into whether President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russian government.” Reuters
Read our prior coverage of the Trump campaign and Russia here, here, here, here, and here. The Flip Side
The right generally dismisses the report and condemns Clinesmith.
“The Senate report throws innuendo at everyone from Carter Page to Donald Trump Jr., and claims that former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s ties to Russians posed a ‘grave counterintelligence threat.’ Perhaps, but interacting with foreigners is not a crime… After devoting pages to Mr. Manafort’s ties to a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska, a footnote concedes that several other people mentioned in the report also have ‘ties’ to that Russian influence peddler…
“It lists Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson, who hired Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign, as well as former Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer, who worked as an attorney at a law firm on Deripaska business. The report notes separately that no less than Mr. Steele ‘worked for Deripaska, likely beginning at least in 2012, and continued to work for him into 2017, providing a potential direct channel for Russian influence on the dossier.’ The Senate committee could as easily have written 1,000 pages about Russia’s entanglements with Donald Trump’s critics, but that wouldn’t fit the preferred theory.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Some note that “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 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.”
Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
Regarding Clinesmith, “Why would a lawyer working for the FBI on the biggest case in politics be so indiscreet as to create a record of altering a document in the course of making a false statement of huge importance? Either Clinesmith was so confident in being surrounded by allies in the anti-Trump resistance that he believed he would never be caught, or he was so blinded by Trump loathing that he was willing to do something breathtakingly out of character for a trained, experienced Washington lawyer…
“For Americans who actually care about how ideologically hostile members of a government bureaucracy were working to gather dirt on a presidential campaign, then a presidential administration, the story ought to inspire outrage. Or would CNN and the Times think it was no big deal if agents of Donald Trump’s FBI were currently spying on members of the Biden campaign based on a spurious pretense while sending each other texts saying, ‘Let’s stop those libtards! MAGA!’?”
Kyle Smith, National Review
“Clinesmith’s case is very serious: As an FBI lawyer, he tampered with a document that was key to an investigation involving the president of the United States. Specifically, after learning from the CIA that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had been a CIA source against Russia, Clinesmith told an FBI agent that Page had never been a CIA source, and falsified a CIA email to make it look as though the agency had acknowledged as much…
“Worse, Clinesmith knew the FBI agent had asked about Page’s status because the agent was preparing to submit a sworn application to the FISA court for a surveillance warrant. This was to be the fourth such warrant, all premised on the FBI’s theory that Page had worked for Russia against the United States, not the other way around. Clinesmith knew the agent and the court would rely on the misinformation he had provided.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
The left argues that the report shows serious misconduct committed by the Trump campaign.
The left argues that the report shows serious misconduct committed by the Trump campaign.
“Indeed, it’s true that the most lurid and speculative theories about Trump’s connection to Russia — say, that he’s been a Kremlin asset since 1987 or that he’s being blackmailed with a pee tape — have not been validated and have in some cases been outright debunked to the extent that’s possible. But it’s important not to forget that a crime really did unfold in plain sight in 2016 — Democratic officials’ private and personal correspondence was hacked and posted publicly, leading to a slew of negative news stories about them (which Trump frequently referred to on the campaign trail).”
Andrew Prokop, Vox
“The committee documented that, on Oct. 7, 2016, Mr. Stone received advance notice of the impending release of the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, in which Mr. Trump brags about sexually assaulting women. In response, Mr. Stone made at least two phone calls arranging for WikiLeaks to release stolen internal emails from the Democratic National Committee. The report also found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime business associate of Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was a Russian intelligence officer, and may have been linked to the Russian military’s hacking and leaking of the D.N.C. emails… Call it whatever you like: The Intelligence Committee report shows clear coordination between Russians and the Trump campaign, though there is no evidence of an explicit agreement.”
Editorial Board, New York Times
“Manafort and Kilimnik talked almost daily during the campaign. They communicated through encrypted technologies set to automatically erase their correspondence; they spoke using code words and shared access to an email account. It’s worth pausing on these facts: The chairman of the Trump campaign was in daily contact with a Russian agent, constantly sharing confidential information with him. That alone makes for one of the worst scandals in American political history…
“The thousand-page fifth volume doesn’t definitively settle the question [of collusion], in part because the SSCI was unable to procure a full record of events. The White House engaged in gamesmanship, invoking executive privilege to deny witnesses and block access to a paper trail. A slew of important witnesses invoked the Fifth Amendment. Others, such as Paul Manafort, lied relentlessly to investigators… The committee has referred five Trump aides and supporters to the Justice Department for possibly providing false testimony… The publication of this admirable report should not mark the end of the quest to uncover what really happened.”
Franklin Foer, The Atlantic
“The IG report released in December 2019 made clear that there was no ‘documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced’… the opening of the counterintelligence probe. It also found that the ‘FBI did not try to recruit members of the Trump campaign as [Confidential Human Sources], did not send CHSs to collect information in Trump campaign headquarters or Trump campaign spaces, and did not ask CHSs to join the Trump campaign or otherwise attend campaign related events as part of the investigation.’…
“What [the plea of Clinesmith] does prove -- especially when you consider the admitted errors by the FBI and the findings by the IG regarding the FISA applications -- is that there were significant screw-ups in the way in which the FBI went about making the case that it needed to surveil Page for as long as it did. What it doesn't prove is… Trump's wild claims that there is a ‘deep state’ conspiracy that tried to keep him from being elected and has worked against him since he got into office.”
Chris Cillizza, CNN
