Trump was a Russian asset, new Intelligence Community report shows.
By: William Saletan (Slate Magazine)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
He helped Putin manipulate the U.S. election in 2020, as he did in 2016.
By William Saletan March 18, 202112:07 PM Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and President Donald Trump at the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump was a tool in a long-running Russian campaign to weaken the United States. That's been documented in Republican-led investigative reports, and now it has been updated with new evidence, thanks to the U.S. Intelligence Community's assessment of the 2020 election. The report, drafted by the CIA, the FBI, and several other agencies, was released in unclassified form on Tuesday, but it was presented in classified form on Jan. 7. In other words, it was compiled, written, and edited during Trump's administration. It destroys his lies about the election, and it exposes him as a Russian asset.
The report debunks conspiracy theories, promoted by Trump and his lawyers, that hackers in other countries robbed him of victory. "We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 US elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process," including "ballot casting, vote tabulation, or reporting results," says the document. A separate analysis released by the Department of Justice reaches the same conclusion. The IC report adds that evidence of such operations, if they existed, would have shown up in U.S. surveillance or in "post-election audits of electronic results and paper backups." The report implicitly mocks insinuations from Trump's lawyers that former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, somehow rigged Trump's defeat. "We have no information," it notes drily, that "current or former Venezuelan regimes were involved in attempts to compromise US election infrastructure."
During the campaign, Trump, his national security appointees, and his allies in Congress insisted that China was meddling in the election to help Joe Biden. They even claimed that China's interference was more dangerous than Russia's. The report shreds that fiction. China "did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election," says the assessment. It finds no attempt by China to "provide funding to any candidates or parties," and it challenges the Republican spin that China feared Trump because he was too tough. It argues, to the contrary, that Beijing saw Trump as a weaker adversary because he "would alienate US partners," whereas Biden "would pose a greater challenge over the long run because he would be more successful in mobilizing a global alliance against China."
As to Russia, the report leaves no doubt: In 2020, as in 2016, "President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations" to help Trump and hurt his Democratic opponent. For example, "Shortly after the 2018 midterm elections, Russian intelligence cyber actors attempted to hack organizations primarily affiliated with the Democratic Party." Then, in late 2019, Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, "conducted a phishing campaign against subsidiaries of Burisma holdings, likely in an attempt to gather information related to President Biden's family." Throughout the 2020 election, agents "connected to the Russian Federal Security Service," FSB, planted negative stories about Biden. Internet operatives working for the Kremlin, including the troll farm that had boosted Trump in 2016, continued to promote "Trump and his commentary, including repeating his political messaging."
Attacks on Biden and his son, Hunter, were part of this operation. Through "US officials and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration," the report says Russia's intelligence services "repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or misleading claims about President Biden and his family's alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine." In this way, Trump's circle "laundered" the Russian-planted stories, which were then recirculated—and promoted by Russia's online proxies—as American news.
One section of the report zeroes in on two Russian agents, Andriy Derkach and Konstantin Kilimnik, along with their associates. It says they met with and passed materials to people linked to the Trump administration to advocate for government investigations. Derkach peddled audio recordings that were edited to make Biden look corrupt, and he "worked to initiate legal proceedings in Ukraine and the US related to these allegations." The report doesn't name the Americans who collaborated with the Russian agents, but it's easy to identify them from news reports. Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, met with Derkach twice. Donald Trump Jr. promoted Derkach's tapes. Trump's 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave Kilimnik inside information on the campaign. Trump, in a 2019 phone call, pressed Ukraine's president to open an investigation of Biden, as Derkach proposed. And congressional Republicans, led by Reps. Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes, parroted a Russian-planted narrative "to falsely blame Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election."
Trump also helped Putin discredit American democracy. That was a major goal of Russia's 2016 and 2020 operations, the report explains: "Throughout the election, Russia's online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud." Trump peddled the samefears. After the election, as "Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results," Trump duplicated that message. Russia's agents also hyped "allegations of social media censorship," as Trump did.
The IC assessment doesn't address what Trump knew about the Russian influence campaign. But according to former officials who spoke last fall to the Washington Post and the New York Times, he was directly warned. In a December 2019 conversation, then-national security adviser Robert O'Brien told Trump that Giuliani had been "worked by Russian assets in Ukraine." Trump shrugged and went on promoting the allegations Giuliani was feeding him. That makes Trump more than a Russian asset. It makes him, in technical terms, an agent of a foreign power.
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Is anybody really surprised?
And here come the Trump apologists in 3...2...1...
Nyet
Not even Marlene
No surprise at all. It's been obvious all along. This is just further support for what we have already known, despite the fevered denials from the Trump acolytes.
you know this shit will be coming out piecemeal as each trump case makes it's way thru our legal system. like finding a xmas tree and presents in every room. federal prosecutors have hit the mother lode with russian involvement in the trump administration from before 2015 to the present. now flynn and manafort both have legal problems outside of their pardons and poor rudy has run out of people that will take his call. I expect a non-stop shit show once trump finds out where the first stop will be on his farewell to benedict arnold tour.
I was thinking Easter eggs with gold coins or Hershey's kisses
I am surprised you didn't pull a nameless member...
"Biden is not the topic & neither am I"....
So with all that help and support Trump still lost by ~7 million votes?
He lost by 3 million 4 years ago as well. Yet Russian help was able to help get him the job.
Yeah, apparently with four more years to work on their strategy with Russia, they got 3-4 million less votes than 2016 - relative to the opposition - and lost several states he had won in 2016.
Also, unlike literally everything else the White House did for the last four years, they managed to keep this a secret, and it is only now coming to light in secretly leaked “intelligence community” (whatever that means) documents.
You have to completely toss aside things like logic and reason for any of that to make sense.
Have you not paid attention? Trump got more votes last year than he did in 2016. Difference is that a lot more people, over all voted.
4 years ago Trump was an unknown, he was able to squeeze through. Last year people know what to expect from Trump, and were so utterly terrified of that notion, that record numbers came out to vote against him. They simply overwhelmed Russian plans.
What I said was that he got less votes relative to the opposition than he did in 2016. I.e. he lost the popular vote by 3-4 million in 2016, and he lost it by 7 million in 2020.
I read an article about how several people in donald's orbit were spewing Russian misinformation. They also blamed any attempts at election interference on China and the report said that China was mostly silent during the election, it came from Russia and Iran.
There were a number of people here on NT that were unknowingly, or knowingly, relaying Russian propaganda, as identified by the state department and DOJ.
the only thing separating the russian scumbags from trumpsters is language.
And a paycheck signed by Putin.
The same words that someone spoke to me earlier today....
This is only a hit job.
The exact words were "hit piece".
Ah...damn..Misquote...at least I didn't put the " ".
what's really funny is that trumpski awarded nunes and jordan freedom medals.
just wait until the declassified and unredacted version of the mueller report is released.
Truer words never spoken - although I would use "is" instead of "was"...
Wag the Dog ! Biden is screwing up and lying about it. He opened the border and caused a crisis and he wants to give them all citizenship before the next election. He's trying to suppress information from the border but it's not working. So "But Trump" don't look at the border look here "Trump Bad" "Russia" "Putin" "Collusion" pay not attention to hundreds of thousands of Illegal Immigrants crossing the border each month during a pandemic (so much for the lowest black unemployment rate ever, just remember who gave away your job). The Left just can't stop making up lies about Trump, it's all they have it's a smoke screen to blind the sheeple to the Democratic shit show. Gas prices up over 80 cents but "Trump !" Over a trillion in pork unrelated to pandemic relief "Orange Man Bad" "Russia, Russia, Russia". Pay no attention to what Biden is doing now, Dwell on the Lies the Democrats have been feeding the sheep for five years. "Putin and Trump sitting in a tree K.I.S.S.I.N.G" "Good China, Bad Russia" "Joe is proud of Hunter because Hunter is Good and Honest Business Man" "Trump Bad". Pay no attention to the million and a half well trained well armed soldiers in the US military, 300 rioting Jabronis was an Insurrection. "Trump's Fault ! He told them to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard" "That's rightwing code for Insurrection" "Biden Smart, He's not Sleepy" "Trump Orange Bad"
Did he? How?