Today the Senate Intelligence Committee released their 1000-page report basically affirming the Mueller Report and definitely at odds with the interpretation pushed by AG Bill Barr and the WH. Link to the report is here. Sorry it is behind a paywall but the gist is
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, provided a bipartisan Senate imprimatur for an extraordinary set of facts: The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 American election to help Mr. Trump become president, and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary.
The report drew to a close one of the highest-profile congressional inquiries in recent memory, one that the president and his allies have long tried to discredit as part of a “witch hunt” designed to undermine the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s stunning election nearly four years ago.
and…
But the report showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin — including a longstanding associate of the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom the report identifies as a “Russian intelligence officer.”
The Senate report for the first time identified Mr. Kilimnik as an intelligence officer. Mr. Mueller’s report had labeled him as someone with ties to Russian intelligence.
Doubtful this will gain much traction in the news or campaign but it is a pleasant surprise to see some GOP senators willing to put out something like this. I’m not sure how this will impact the Barr report that is likely to drop just before Election Day.
It won’t impact Barr’s hitjob one bit. The goal of that is to give soundbites to Sean Hannity as that’s the only thing that matters for half the voting population.
But wait: I thought the whole “Russia, Russia, Russia” thing was a total hoax? This bipartisan report makes it sound like it’s not! Must be the Deep State’s fault or something.
Apparently the report suggests Manafort may have some role in the hack and release and that Stone coordinated release of information after the Access Hollywood tape was released.
The Russia thing is a hoax like the coronavirus is a hoax. It’s too bad that Republicans run the show in the senate. We could have done the right thing and removed that motherfucker after an impeachment conviction. Instead, we have a senate without conviction.
The Democratic Convention itself is helping to kill this story.
Of course the real story is that none of the gist of this is a surprise to those Republican Senators who voted to give Trump a pass (by declining to hear witnesses, then voting to ‘exonerate’ him after he’d been impeached).
May those who face re-election this year be held accountable by their states’ voters.
The report is new. It contains instances of greater candor/plainspeaking than were found in Mueller’s report (and in fact it’s about twice as long as Mueller’s report).
It’s “old news” only in the sense that Republicans are predictable in their indifference to the security of their own nation.
The report just came out. There are several new things. Kliminik being a current Russian intelligence officer, Stone actively timing releases of hacked material, and Manafort somehow being involved in the hack and release operation are all new. Also that the people at the Trump tower meeting are more closely connected to Russian Intelligence than Mueller found out.
I mean it’s not new in that we already new Trump wanted illegal help and worked to get it, but some specifics are new.
It’s really Bizarro World to live in a society where this is pooh-poohed by Republicans, and (sadly, as noted upthread) ignored by Democrats at their own convention. They have made the calculation that it doesn’t help in the fight against Trump, and that may be correct, but it’s an extremely sad and alarming commentary on our population.
True. But from what I’ve seen on Twitter, the anti-Trump Republicans—‘Republicans for Biden,’ ‘The Lincoln Project,’ etc.—are prioritizing the topic of Trump’s disastrous effect on our national security.
So they, at least, won’t let this story fade away.
For example, today, there was attention to the UN slap-in-the-fact to the Trump Administration:
The USA has lost standing in the world under Trump (to understate the matter). And the anti-Trump conservatives are hyper-aware of this fact.
I don’t think this story is going to go away. I just don’t think Democrats are going to undermine/overshadow their own convention to publicize it – which is one reason I expect Republicans dropped it now.
I hope and believe this topic comes roaring back after the convention.
But the Mueller Report, Adam Schiff’s hearings, etc.: all that time, Trump had some of his highest approval ratings! Not sky-high, obviously; but it sure didn’t seem to hurt him at all. Which is frankly appalling.
I mean, as a pragmatic matter, if Trump loses for other reasons I’ll be greatly relieved. But the fact that his approval didn’t drop to single digits over all this, or at least to Truman/Nixon/Carter/Bush levels, just seems like a serious indictment of a huge swath of the public. I’m not even sure a bare majority of the population has a problem with this stuff, since there are so many other reasons to hate him and his disapproval is generally around 55%. It’s a serious dropping of the ball by the American people. I mean, could any of us imagine five years ago a president retaining more than 40% support despite all this, including the previous nominee of his own party voting in the Senate to convict and remove him from office? FFS, America!
His supporters basically all get their information through the right-wing media bubble. To them, it’s all a giant hoax, he was exonerated, etc. Hell, the AG lied under oath about the Mueller report, if you get your information from Fox News, you have no chance.