US Intel report: Russia tried to win it for Trump in 2020, also.

[Joe Capitalist]

If it sounds like the GOP enthusiastically embraced a Russian disinformation campaign, promoting garbage pushed by the Kremlin, it's not your imagination.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/intel-report-makes-clear-russia-tried-rescue-trump-2020-too-n1261284

It was five years ago when the Russian government first targeted the U.S. presidential election, launching a multifaceted attack on our political system with a single goal in mind: putting Donald Trump in power.

As part of the fallout from this scandal, the nation's intelligence community is now required to do an assessment after every major election, reporting on possible foreign efforts to interfere in our political process.

And with that legal requirement in mind, National Intelligence Council submitted a classified version of its report on the 2020 presidential election in January, the declassified version of which was released to the public yesterday. Among the many important revelations in the document: Russia took steps to help Trump last year, too. The New York Times reported:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the election last year, including by mounting covert operations to influence people close to President Donald J. Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released on Tuesday.... The declassified report represented the most comprehensive intelligence assessment of foreign efforts to influence the 2020 vote.

The Kremlin not only targeted our political system as part of a pro-Trump campaign twice, in some cases, it relied on an identical cast of characters. As Rachel explained in detail on the show last night, the U.S. intelligence community specifically focused attention on Russian influence agent Konstantin Kilimnik who was responsible for trying to "denigrate" then-candidate Joe Biden in order to "benefit" Donald Trump's re-election prospects.

If Kilimnik's name sounds at all familiar, it's partly because he's one of the stars of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, and partly because this Russian intelligence officer is a longtime associate of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman.

Indeed, remember when Manafort shared sensitive internal campaign information with a Russian operative during the 2016 race? The head of Trump's political operation was feeding the information directly to Kilimnik -- the same guy who also tried to help keep Trump in power last year.

As for the bigger picture, the new report from the intelligence community is amazingly straightforward in its conclusions:

"We assess that President Putin and the Russian state authorized and conducted influence operations against the 2020 US presidential election aimed at denigrating President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure. We have high confidence in these judgments because a range of Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin's interests worked to affect US public perceptions. We also have high confidence because of the consistency of themes in Russia's influence efforts across the various influence actors and throughout the campaign, as well as in Russian leaders' assessments of the candidates. A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of people linked to Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-through US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration.

U.S. intelligence officials further found that Russia's "primary effort" focused on falsely accusing Biden of Ukrainian-based corruption -- a popular Republican talking point throughout 2020.

The same report found that Kilimnik, Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian member of Ukraine's Parliament, and others "sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences. These Russian proxies met with and provided materials to Trump administration-linked US persons to advocate for formal investigations; hired a US firm to petition US officials; and attempted to make contact with several senior US officials. They also made contact with established US media figures and helped produce a documentary that aired on a US television network in late January 2020."

 

[Jack]

Pretty sure Republicans will call this 'Fake News' and ignore it.

 

[anatta]

same report found that Kilimnik, Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian member of Ukraine's Parliament, and others "sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences. These Russian proxies

usual pack of Russiaphobic lies by the IC.
Kilimnik is Ukraine political operative - not "Russia proxie"

 

[LV426]

Not a surprise to anyone who was following or reading Anatta/Dukkha's posts all year...like this one:

I didn't ask for a mail in, I would have never known it was sent except my Russian neighbor
( who values American democracy more then most Americans) was kind enough to bring it over
return postage paid envelope included.. what could possibly go wrong??

This was one of Russia's Active Measures, according to DHS:

We assess that Russia is likely to continue amplifying criticisms of vote-by-mail andshifting voting processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine public trust in theelectoral process.

 

[LV426]

Kilimnik is Ukraine political operative - not "Russia proxie"

That's the same thing.

And you said Kilimnik was a State Department Asset, except you never proved that, and now Kilmnik is wanted by the FBI for conspiracy.

And you're also a Russian proxy because this:

I didn't ask for a mail in, I would have never known it was sent except my Russian neighbor
( who values American democracy more then most Americans) was kind enough to bring it over
return postage paid envelope included.. what could possibly go wrong??

Is this:

We assess that Russia is likely to continue amplifying criticisms of vote-by-mail and shifting voting processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine public trust in the electoral process.

 

[Concart]

usual pack of Russiaphobic lies by the IC.
Kilimnik is Ukraine political operative - not "Russia proxie"

Usual set of lies from Putins little puppet boy.

 

[anatta]

That's the same thing.

And you said Kilimnik was a State Department Asset, except you never proved that, and now Kilmnik is wanted by the FBI for conspiracy.

And you're also a Russian proxy because this:



Is this:

We assess that Russia is likely to continue amplifying criticisms of vote-by-mail and shifting voting processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine public trust in the electoral process.

Ukraine politics (Party of Regions is a UKRAINE BASED PARTY - not a "Russian proxie

 

[anatta]

In “Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source,” Solomon asserts that Konstantin Kilimnik, the mysterious Ukrainian cohort of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, has been a “sensitive” source for the U.S. State department dating back to at least 2013, including “while he was still working for Manafort.”

Solomon describes Kilimnik meeting “several times a week” with the chief political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. Kilimnik “relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words,” according to memos Solomon reviewed.

Solomon’s report, which raises significant questions about an episode frequently described as the “heart” of the Mueller investigation (and which was the subject of thousands of news stories), came out on June 6th. As of June 8th, here’s the list of major news organizations that have followed up on his report:

The Washington Examiner

Fox News

That’s it. Nobody else has touched it.

Solomon is a controversial figure, especially to Democratic audiences. The Columbia Journalism Review has hounded him in the past for what it called “suspect” work, especially for pushing “less than meets the eye” stories that turned into right-wing talking points. The Washington Post has done stories citing Hill staffers who’ve complained that a trail of “Solomon investigations” that veered “rightward” was also misleading and lacking “context.” The Post likewise quoted staffers who complained that Solomon was making too much of texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok of the FBI.

On the Russiagate story, however, Solomon clearly has sources, as he’s repeatedly broken news about things that other reporters have heard about, but didn’t have in full. He reported about former British spy and FBI informant Christopher Steele speaking to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavelec before the 2016 election, among other things admitting he’d been speaking to the media.

Solomon also reported that Kavelec’s notes about Steele had been passed to the FBI, eight days before the FBI described Steele as credible in a FISA warrant application.

It would be one thing if other outlets were rebutting his claims about Kilimnik, as people have with some of this other stories. But this report has attracted zero response from non-conservative media, despite the fact that Kilimnik has long been one of the most talked-about figures in the whole Russiagate drama.

This story matters for a few reasons. If Kilimnik was that regular and important a U.S. government source, it would deal a blow to the credibility of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Kilimnik’s relationship with Manafort was among the most damaging to Donald Trump in the Mueller report. Here was Trump’s campaign manager commiserating with a man Mueller said was “assessed” to have “ties to Russian intelligence.”

In one of the most lurid sections of the Mueller report, Manafort is described writing to Kilimnik after being named Trump’s campaign manager to ask if “our friends” had seen media coverage about his new role.

“Absolutely. Every article,” said Kilimnik. To this, Manafort replied: “How do we use to get whole. Has Ovd operation seen?” referring to Deripaska.

The implication was clear: Manafort was offering to use his position within the Trump campaign to “get whole” with the scary metals baron, Deripaska. Manafort believed his role on the campaign could help “confirm” Deripaska would drop a lawsuit he had filed against Manafort.

When Manafort later sent “internal polling data” to Kilimnik with the idea that it was being shared with Ukrainian oligarchs and Deripaska, this seemed like very damaging news indeed: high-ranking Trump official gives inside info to someone with “ties” to Russian intelligence.

Mueller didn’t just describe Kilimnik as having ties to Russian intelligence. He said that while working in Moscow between 1998 and 2005 for the International Republican Institute– that’s an American think-tank connected to the Republican Party, its sister organization being the National Democratic Institute – IRI officials told the FBI he’d been fired because his “links to Russian intelligence were too strong.”

In other words, Mueller not only made a current assessment about Kilimnik, he made a show of retracing Kilimnik’s career steps in a series of bullet points, from his birth in the Dnieprpetrovsk region in 1970 to his travel to the U.S. in 1997, to his effort in 2014 to do PR work defending Russia’s move into Crimea.

Mueller left out a bit, according to Solomon, who says he “reviewed” FBI and State Department memos about Kilimnik’s status as an informant. He even went so far as to name the U.S. embassy officials in Ukraine who dealt with Kilimnik:

Alan Purcell, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, told FBI agents that State officials, including senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, deemed Kilimnik to be such a valuable asset that they kept his name out of cables for fear he would be compromised by leaks to WikiLeaks.

“Purcell described what he considered an unusual level of discretion that was taken with handling Kilimnik,” states one FBI interview report that I reviewed. “Normally the head of the political section would not handle sources, but Kasanof informed Purcell that KILIMNIK was a sensitive source.”

This relationship was described in “hundreds of pages of government documents” that Solomon reports Mueller “possessed since 2018.” The FBI, he added, knew all about Kilimnik’s status as a State Department informant before the conclusion of Mueller’s investigation.

This is one of a growing number of examples of people whose status as documented U.S. informants goes unmentioned in the Mueller report, where they are instead described under the general heading, “Russian government links to, and contact with, the Trump campaign.”

 

[LV426]

Ukraine politics (Party of Regions is a UKRAINE BASED PARTY - not a "Russian proxie

Yes, he is and was a Russian proxy, just like you're a Russian proxy for this thread (and others) that we now know was a Russian Active Measure that you personally spread on JPP:

I didn't ask for a mail in, I would have never known it was sent except my Russian neighbor
( who values American democracy more then most Americans) was kind enough to bring it over
return postage paid envelope included.. what could possibly go wrong??

This wasn't just a lie...this was a carefully and thoughtfully constructed tactic intended to undermine confidence in our elections, like DHS said about 2 months after you posted that lying thread:

We assess that Russia is likely to continue amplifying criticisms of vote-by-mail and shifting voting processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine public trust in the electoral process.
https://www.scribd.com/document/474711820/DHS-Russia-Intel-Sept-3-2020-Voting-w-Redactions

You are a Russian proxy on JPP.

 

[LV426]

In “Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source,” Solomon asserts that Konstantin Kilimnik, the mysterious Ukrainian cohort of former Drumpf campaign manager Paul Manafort, has been a “sensitive” source for the U.S. State department dating back to at least 2013, including “while he was still working for Manafort.”

This statement here is tantamount to all the proof you have.

No document says this.

No report says this.

In fact, the only things said about Kilimnik is that he is a Russian asset with connections to Oleg Deripaska, with whom Paul Manafort asked Kilmnik to share confidential GQP polling data when he was campaign manager for Trump.

You've been running interference for Kilimnik, Manafort, and Trump since the beginning by copying and pasting bullshit from other sources.

 

[anatta]

Much was made of the fact that Kilimnik visited the Trump Tower in August of 2016 to present a plan for resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict:

Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine 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 Trump assent to succeed.

But Solomon’s report indicates Kilimnik traveled to the U.S. twice in 2016 to meet with State officials, and delivered the same “peace plan” to Obama administration officials. Kilimnik appeared to have discussed the plan in Washington with former embassy official Alexander Kasanof – who’d since been promoted to a senior State position – at a dinner on May 5, 2016.

Not that anyone much cares, but Kilimnik has angrily denied the characterization of him as a spy. As Solomon writes:

Officials for the State Department, the FBI, the Justice Department and Mueller’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Kilimnik did not respond to an email seeking comment but, in an email last month to The Washington Post, he slammed the Mueller report’s “made-up narrative” about him. “I have no ties to Russian or, for that matter, any intelligence operation,” he wrote.

The Manafort-Kilimnik tale is a fundamentally different news story if Kilimnik is more of an American asset than a Russian one.

If Kilimnik was giving regular reports to the State Department through 2016, if his peace plan was not a diabolical Trump-Manafort backdoor effort to carve up Ukraine, if Kilimnik was someone who could be “flabbergasted at the Russian invasion of Crimea,” as Solomon says the FBI concluded, then this entire part of the Russiagate story has been farce.

It would become a more ambiguous story that was made to look diabolical through inference and omission.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/expos-in-the-hill-challenges-mueller

 

[LV426]

Much was made of the fact that Kilimnik visited the Trump Tower in August of 2016 to present a plan for resolving the Russian-Ukrainian conflict:

If Kilimnik was not a Russian asset, then why did Paul Manafort ask him to share confidential GQP polling data from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania with Oleg Deripaska?

When Taibbi was asked that question on Bloomberg, he fucking froze like a deer in the headlights, just like you're doing on this thread.

The reason he froze is the same reason you freeze...because the answer to that question is that Manafort wanted Oleg Deripaska to target certain states and voters with his troll army, and he needed that polling data in order to do that.

 

[Concart]

Yes, he is and was a Russian proxy, just like you're a Russian proxy for this thread (and others) that we now know was a Russian Active Measure that you personally spread on JPP:



This wasn't just a lie...this was a carefully and thoughtfully constructed tactic intended to undermine confidence in our elections, like DHS said about 2 months after you posted that lying thread:



You are a Russian proxy on JPP.

A Russian proxy and a traitor to the United States. Enough said.

 

[Nordberg]

Putin set up a staff with a million dollar a month budget to hack America. They worked directly with Trump's people including Manafort and Stone. The reds hacked Americans and sent tweets and emails backing Trump and slaughtering Clinton. They were directed where to focus by Trump's people. Mueller listed the connections at the beginning of his report. It was a long list. He made the mistake of thinking congress would follow up and do their jobs.