Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election by
Robert S. Mueller III
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
The beginning of the report reminds us that all of our intelligence agencies confirmed that the Russians "influenced" our election by 1) buying lots of ads that were pro-Trump and anti-Hillary, 2) posing as Americans in online social media, 3) hacking Democratic and Republican email servers and releasing only Democratic emails, 4) attempting to hack directly into voting machines (but were stopped by the Obama administration on this count). Numerous Russians have also already been prosecuted for this in the US.
Part 1 of the Report: Conspiracy with Russian Interference in U.S. Election
Paul Manafort joined the Trump Campaign on March 2016 and was campaign chairman from June to August 2016. (Manafort has been under investigation by the FBI since 2014 and under investigation by all branches of US intelligence since at least 2017 for communications and financial transactions with the Russian government.)
On August 2, 2016, Paul Manafort met in New York with Konstantin Kilimnik, "who the FBI assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence." Kilimnik delivered "....a peace plan for Ukraine..." (for those of you not following along, Russia has been occupying the Ukraine for some time, "peace" means letting Russia get away with that). "... "Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's Office was a 'backdoor' way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine; both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump's ascent to succeed (were he to be elected President)."
"They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort's strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states. Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting." This was not just a one-off event, Manafort was illegally working with the Russian government for years.
He was charged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, making false statements to investigators, and witness tampering. He is a F#$#% TRAITOR. He is now a convicted felon.
Michael Flynn began as an adviser to the Trump Campaign in February 2016. 1) Flynn accepted money from foreign entities without the required approval. 2) On Flynn December 29, 2016, he asked Russia's ambassador Sergey Kislyak, "to refrain from escalating ... in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day." The sanctions were imposed on Russia for their interference in the American elections. [Presumably, Flynn offered them something to avoid retaliation. Maybe lifting of these sanctions once Trump was inaugurated?] 3) Flynn then lied to the FBI about this meeting. Trump appointed Flynn to be National Security Advisor from January 23, 2017, despite warnings from numerous people about his potential crimes.
On December 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to "willfully and knowingly" making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia's ambassador. He is now a convicted felon.
Also, on June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer to get opposition research on Hillary Clinton (which is illegal). Trump Jr. keeps claiming it was mostly about adoption but the Mueller Report explains how the Russians offered to help the campaign with information about Hillary in exchange for working to lift the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act was a 2012 bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009. It authorizes the US government to sanction human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.
Meanwhile, Trump, through Cohen, was trying to negotiate with Russian authorities to build hotels in Russia. They also lied about how long this continued.
There are many more horrible things in this part but these are the most important I think. We can get lost in the mountains of crimes coming out of this administration, but it's important to see the worst offenses in the Mueller Report clearly as they are an attack on our country and our democracy. On the other hand, note that a lot of evidence is missing because it was encrypted and Donald Trump refused to be deposed for the investigation. So this might just be the tip of the iceberg.
Part 2 of the Report: Obstruction of Justice
Part 2 is basically just a laundry list of the hundreds of times Donald Trump obstructed justice by impeding the investigation into confirmed Russian interference in the election. I may or may not be exaggerating "hundreds," because I lost count but triple digits is not impossible. (Here are the main groupings of his obstructions:
https://time.com/5573521/donald-trump. Obviously obstruction of justice is a crime, so if Donald Trump were not currently President he'd be in jail as a convicted felon for these offenses. I realize that many people don't care about this. However, they really should especially care about all the instances where Trump specifically obstructed the investigations into Manafort and Flynn who sold out our country.
Our survival as a democracy depends on enough people mustering up some righteous indignation about not just Russia's acts, but all the traitorous acts against us by US citizens.
Full report available here:
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf.
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