{"id":40818,"date":"2020-08-20T12:17:24","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T19:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=40818"},"modified":"2020-08-20T12:17:24","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T19:17:24","slug":"so-much-for-no-collusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/20\/so-much-for-no-collusion\/","title":{"rendered":"So Much for "No Collusion""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on Russian interference in the stolen 2016 Residential election, and the cooperation of criminal Fuhrer Trump* and members of his campaign staff with that interference.  So much for “No Collusion”!<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0820Collusion\"<\/strong> <\/p>\n

IT\u2019S WORTH wondering what the impact might have been had the Senate Intelligence Committee\u2019s final report on Russia\u2019s interference in the 2016 election appeared six months ago, before the report of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the twisted account of it provided by Attorney General William P. Barr<\/strong>. On their own terms, the Senate\u2019s findings, released Tuesday after a bipartisan investigation, are explosive<\/a>: that then-candidate Donald Trump\u2019s campaign chairman Paul Manafort \u201cformed a close and lasting relationship\u201d with \u201ca Russian intelligence officer,\u201d with whom he shared inside information from the president\u2019s campaign and collaborated to concoct a false narrative that Ukraine, and not Russia, was behind the election interference. <\/p>\n

Further, the Senate report states that the Trump campaign \u201csought to maximize\u201d the impact of leaks of Democratic documents by WikiLeaks, knowing the original source was the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU<\/strong>. The campaign\u2019s intermediary was Roger Stone, whose prison sentence for lying about his involvement and tampering with witnesses was commuted last month by Mr. Trump<\/a>; the president, the committee \u201cassesses,\u201d lied when he said he never talked to Mr. Stone about WikiLeaks. <\/p>\n

Then there is what the Senate investigators glimpsed but could not nail down. The report cites \u201cfragmentary\u201d evidence that Mr. Manafort\u2019s Russian associate<\/a> Konstantin Kilimnik \u201cmay have been connected to the GRU\u2019s hack and leak operation,\u201d and two pieces of information linking the campaign chairman himself. The full truth is unknown in part because Mr. Manafort chose to incur an extended prison sentence rather than tell prosecutors the truth about his relationship with the Russian spy. <\/p>\n

It is a sad tribute to Mr. Trump\u2019s skill at obfuscation and disinformation that these revelations will likely be ignored by many voters already sated by conflicting accounts of what the president calls the \u201cRussian hoax.\u201d<\/strong> He did it again Tuesday, and on cue, his Senate sycophants \u2014 including, contemptibly, the acting Intelligence Committee chairman, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) \u2014 <\/strong>rushed to assert that the report<\/strong><\/a> shows \u201cno collusion\u201d between Mr. Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign and the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

That may be true, in the narrow sense of a criminal conspiracy. <\/strong>Yet the report leaves no doubt that<\/strong><\/a>, on instructions of Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence sought to aid Mr. Trump\u2019s election; that Mr. Trump and his campaign welcomed and sought to exploit that aid; and that the president, Mr. Manafort, Mr. Stone and several other key campaign officials then lied about the affair<\/strong>…  [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

Click through for more.  This is certainly worth reading!<\/font><\/p>\n

‘Devastating’: Revelations From Senate Intel Report<\/a><\/p>\n