Report found Russia didn't just interfere, but Trump campaign's interactions with them posed "grave" counterintel threat
...remember, the republican committee chaired by Marco Rubio didn't just outline and highlight interference by Putin on behalf of Donald Trump in the presidential election, it cited actual Trump campaign officials who were actively soliciting Russian intelligence agents ("in regular contact" ) for help winning their campaign against Hillary Clinton.
PBS:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday as it detailed how associates of Donald Trump had regular contact with Russians and expected to benefit from the Kremlin’s help.
The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
Among the more striking sections of the report is the committee’s description of the professional relationship between former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee describes as a Russian intelligence officer.
“Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik, represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the report says.
read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election
and, remember, as well:
A key Republican came back from the Kremlin seemingly shrugging off Russian aggression. His colleagues are confused as hell by his talk. Inside a controversial mission to Moscow.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson raised eyebrows when, after returning from the nine-day trip with five of his fellow GOP senators, he suggested that the U.S. should evaluate whether the sanctions currently in place are successfully harming Russian interests because “you'd be hard-pressed to say that sanctions against Russia are really working all that well.”
He also appeared to downplay the significance of election interference, saying it was “not the greatest threat to our democracy” and “we’ve blown it way out of proportion.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-senators-tell-contradictory-stories-about-moscow-trip/
...the report not only found Russia interfered, but chastised Pres. Obama for failures to counter Moscow's interference, even as it reportedly redacted evidence that pointed to Russian meddling.
The nearly 1,000-page report outlines the “breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement.
Previous volumes examined Russian attempts to break into U.S. election infrastructure, the Kremlin’s use of social media to divide American public opinion, the Obama administration’s failures to counter Moscow’s push, and a review of the U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment.
“...the counterintelligence concerns that surround Donald Trump constitute an ongoing threat to national security, but because this report includes redacted information that is directly relevant to Russia’s interference in the 2020 election,” Wyden said.
https://rollcall.com/2020/08/18/senate-intelligence-committee-russian-interference-2016-election-report/
watch:
= new reply since forum marked as read
Surprisingly (at least to me) the current CIA just confirmed all this russian-republicon electoral skullduggery in an official report published earlier this month (July 2025) I''ll hunt for a link...
The first is about the interference and the second is about Trump's actions taken toward trying to obstruct the investigation.
Paragraph 2 of the the second volume's introduction states:
"Beginning in 2017, the President of the United States took a variety of actions toward the ongoing FBI investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and related matters that raised questions about whether the President had obstructed justice."
"The second paragraph concludes by saying: This volume of our report summarizes our obstruction-of-justice investigation of the President."
In other words the second volume begins by stating that Trump's actions needed some investigating too. Trump's actions caused the report to need a second volume.
Does that help?
