Mueller Report findings: What Donald Trump actually did in 2016 - Vox.com

In the midst of the Mueller report’s lengthy chronicle of Trump associates’ contacts with Russia or other shady characters during the 2016 campaign, there’s intriguing new information about just what Donald Trump personally was involved in.

The report details how Trump authorized and remained very interested in Michael Cohen’s efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. It also reveals that Trump repeatedly told his campaign associates to find Hillary Clinton’s emails — and that Michael Flynn tried to make that happen for him.

Furthermore, tantalizingly redacted passages of the report appear to describe Trump getting some sort of information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release more damaging material about Clinton — though it remains unclear how accurate this information was or how strong Mueller’s evidence is.

So altogether, what the report reveals is that Trump had ambitions for a lucrative Russian business deal, he was eager to “find” his opponents emails, and he apparently heard something about WikiLeaks.

However, Mueller discloses no evidence of any personal involvement from Donald Trump pertaining to Russian contacts from George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, or Jeff Sessions. He found “no documentary evidence” that Trump was aware of his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer beforehand.

And, of course, Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump and Russian government officials to interfere with the election — and his report does not give off the impression that he was anywhere close to making such a charge.

Rather than any super-spy conspiracy involving the highest levels of the Trump campaign, then, the Mueller report seems to tell a story of a series of disorganized contacts, missed opportunities — and, occasionally, outright bullshit.

The Mueller report’s first volume, on Russian interference with the election, covers a host of events, but only goes into detail about Donald Trump’s personal role in three of them.

1) Trump Tower Moscow: Michael Cohen told Mueller that, while Trump was running for president in 2015 and 2016, he approved Cohen’s effort to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow. Cohen said that, “on several occasions,” Trump would bring up the project and ask for updates. At one point, Cohen reached out to Vladimir Putin’s press secretary’s office to try and advance the project; he then briefed Trump on the ensuing conversation, he says.

In May 2016 — when Trump was the Republican nominee-in-waiting — Cohen says Trump told him he’d be willing to travel to Russia if that could nail down the deal. That summer, after Trump publicly denied having anything to do with Russia, he checked in with Cohen on the status of the Moscow project, Cohen says. In the end, Cohen was unsuccessful in moving the project forward and it fizzled out that summer.

None of this was criminal, but the details on Trump’s long-running interest in this potentially “highly lucrative” Moscow business deal cast new light on what might have been motivating his unusually warm words for Putin on the campaign trail.

2) WikiLeaks and Roger Stone: Did Donald Trump have some sort of inside information on WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails?

We still don’t know, because this is one of the most heavily redacted sections in the report — though what we can see of it makes clear that this section describes conversations Trump had with his advisers.

The redactions apparently hide references to Roger Stone, so as not to prejudice his upcoming trial. Prosecutors have alleged that Stone tried to get in touch with Julian Assange in the summer of 2016 in order to get ahold of future WikiLeaks releases related to Clinton. But while the indictment against Stone presented some evidence he learned the group had leaks related to John Podesta coming, it didn’t attempt to tell the whole story of what he knew.

That whole story — at least as far as Mueller could nail it down — appears to be in pages 51 through 59 of the report’s first volume. And the unredacted bits there have several references to Trump, Cohen, Rick Gates, and Paul Manafort discussing WikiLeaks, apparently with or about Stone.

For instance, at one point, Trump is described as having a phone call with a redacted person, and then telling Rick Gates that more damaging information is coming.

Later in the report, Mueller writes that one potential motivation for Trump to obstruct the Russia investigation would be “potential uncertainty about whether certain events — such as advance notice of WikiLeaks’ release of hacked information” — could be criminal on the part of Trump, his campaign, or his family.

So did Stone and Trump in fact end up getting solid advance information about WikiLeaks’ plans? Or is it a murkier situation? We’ll likely have to wait for either a leak or the end of Stone’s November trial to find out.

3) Trying to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails: Whatever did happen with WikiLeaks, Mueller’s report makes one thing clear: Trump wanted to get ahold of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

On July 27, 2016, Trump publicly made his now-infamous comment, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” — referring to emails that Clinton deleted rather than turn over to investigators, because she said they were personal and not work-related. (These emails became an obsession among some conservatives, who asserted they would reveal Clinton’s corruption.)

Now, the report reveals Trump privately asked his advisers to get Clinton’s emails, too: Michael Flynn, then advising Trump’s campaign, “recalled that Trump made this request repeatedly.”

Flynn then took action on Trump’s request, contacting “multiple people in an effort to obtain the emails,” including Republican donor Peter Smith, who suggested he was reaching out to Russian hackers about it. But Mueller’s report implies Smith (who has since died) was bullshitting about that, and Clinton’s own emails never surfaced.

Trump’s request to find Clinton’s emails wasn’t necessarily for illegal activity — some conservatives believed the emails were already out on the “dark web” somewhere, waiting to be found. But it certainly shows a willingness to solicit shady and questionable behavior, and makes one all the more curious to learn what actually happened with WikiLeaks.

Nearly two years ago, the world learned that, in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. eagerly accepted a meeting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton — dirt said to be coming from the Russian government. It seemed to come quite close to the “collusion” that Trump had long denied occurred.

So almost immediately, the question arose about whether Don Jr. told his father about this endeavor. Steve Bannon told journalist Michael Wolff that there was “zero” chance Trump wasn’t involved. And Michael Cohen publicly testified this year that he remembers Don Jr. telling his father about a meeting beforehand — though not mentioning anything about Russia explicitly.

Mueller’s report describes Cohen’s claims — but admits they couldn’t be proved. The special counsel writes that he found no “documentary evidence showing that he [Trump] was made aware of the meeting — or its Russian connection — before it occurred.”

Importantly, the special counsel also seems to accept the Trump team’s long-standing claims that the meeting was a dud, producing no useful dirt or any significant consequences. For instance, Mueller writes that Kushner texted Manafort “waste of time” during the meeting, and writes that “the Russian lawyer’s presentation did not provide” the information offered. The special counsel also writes that “the investigation did not identify evidence connecting the events of June 9 to the GRU’s hack-and-dump operation” — that is, the Democratic email leaks.

So in the end, as shady as the Trump Tower meeting looked, it didn’t amount to anything significant and there was no hard evidence that Trump was aware of it.

Finally, though Mueller outlines a rather breathtaking assortment of contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and people with ties to Russia, he doesn’t produce any evidence showing that Trump himself was involved in most of them. Here are seven of the main ones:

1) George Papadopoulos’s “dirt”: In April 2016, Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos got a tip that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, in the form of thousands of emails. (The tip came from a London-based professor, Joseph Mifsud, who said he had connections in the Russia government and had just returned from a visit there.)

In the ensuing weeks, Papadopoulos shared this news about Russian dirt on Clinton with the foreign minister of Greece and a diplomat from Australia. Papadopoulos also talked to Trump campaign aides about messages from the Russian government and a potential trip to Moscow. He even wrote in a journal at one point: “They are talking to us. It is a lot of risk. Office of Putin.”

Naturally, one would think that Papadopoulos also told people in the Trump campaign about the Russian “dirt” on Clinton — it’s big news! But Mueller’s investigation failed to establish that this occurred.

Papadopoulos himself said “he could not clearly recall” having told anyone on the campaign, and the campaign officials Mueller’s team questioned “stated, with varying degrees of certainty, that he did not tell them.” And there’s no apparent evidence of this information making its way to Trump himself.

2) Manafort’s sharing of polling data: Mueller’s report found that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort had internal campaign polling data sent to a Russian associate, with the understanding it would be given to several Ukrainian and one Russian oligarch. Manafort also met Kilimnik and discussed the campaign’s strategy, including targeting of Midwestern states.

But there is no indication in the report that Trump was aware of or involved in what Manafort was doing. And Mueller’s report leaves open the possibility that Manafort was merely out to drum up future business.

“The Office did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort’s sharing polling data and Russia’s interference in the election,” Mueller writes. He adds: “The investigation did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian government on its election-interference efforts.”

3) Carter Page’s Moscow visit: The July 2016 trip to Moscow from Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page has stoked conspiracy theories since it was first reported — and it was heavily featured in the Steele Dossier. (Steele claimed Page conspired with Russian officials about the DNC email leak and plotted a major financial payoff, but Page has always maintained nothing untoward happened.)

The only new evidence Mueller shows about this in the report looks exculpatory for Page. He reveals an email from Putin’s press secretary discussing Page’s trip, which says: “I have read about [Page]. Specialists say that he is far from being the main one. So I better not initiate a meeting in the Kremlin.” That is: At least one Russian official was wary about meeting Page.

It remains curious that Page emailed Trump campaign advisers from the trip, bragging about “incredible insights and outreach” he’d received from Russian officials. But, Mueller writes: “The Office was unable to obtain additional evidence or testimony about who Page may have met or communicated with in Moscow; thus, Page’s activities in Russia — as described in his emails with the Campaign — were not fully explained.”

In any case, Mueller did not charge Page with any crimes; he writes, “The investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.” And there’s no sign of any involvement from Donald Trump (who Page says he’s never even spoken to) in any of this.

4) Roger Stone’s Russian contacts: While many details about longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone’s contacts with WikiLeaks are redacted in the report, Mueller does describe two contacts Stone had during the campaign — contacts that seem not to have led anywhere.

First, in May 2016, Stone took a meeting with a Florida-based Russian named Henry Oknyansky and a Ukrainian associate of his named Alexei Rasin, who tried to sell Stone “derogatory information on Clinton” that he said he had. But a deal does not appear to have been made. Mueller writes that his investigation could not “determine the content and origin of the information” offered, and “did not identify evidence” to any connection to Russian interference efforts.

Second, in August 2016, Stone exchanged Twitter DMs with “Guccifer 2.0,” an online persona created by Russian intelligence officers involved in the hack-and-leak operation. These messages have long been public and seem innocuous. And, Mueller writes, “The investigation did not identify evidence of other communications between Stone and Guccifer 2.0.”

5) The amendment to the Republican platform about Ukraine: During the 2016 Republican convention, one delegate proposed an amendment that would arm Ukraine. The Trump campaign’s efforts to weaken that amendment raised eyebrows, with many wondering if the campaign was carrying water for Moscow.

Trump campaign official JD Gordon led this effort — and, per the delegate he butted heads with, Gordon said he had been on the phone with Trump about the topic. But the delegate herself was skeptical about whether that was true, and Gordon’s phone records suggest he may have been engaged in some puffery — they don’t include calls to a number associated with Trump, Mueller writes.

In the end, Mueller concludes: “The investigation did not establish that Gordon spoke to or was directed by the candidate to make that proposal.”

6) Jeff Sessions and Sergey Kislyak: Back in 2017, a media frenzy erupted when word leaked out that Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions had met with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the campaign — despite telling a Senate committee he had not. (Sessions was a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser at the time.)

Mueller writes that his office considered charging Sessions with making false statements, but decided against it. He opines that it is “plausible” that Sessions truly didn’t think of the meeting when asked about it in the heat of the moment during Senate testimony.

Meanwhile, Mueller presents nothing to contradict Session’s story that his meeting with Kislyak barely mentioned the presidential campaign, and that other interactions they had were brief and at public events. Overall, Sessions’s story seems to have held up.

7) Michael Flynn, Sergey Kislyak, and sanctions: In December 2016, after Trump had won the election but before he was sworn in, President Obama announced new sanctions on Russia. Michael Flynn and Kislyak then spoke on the phone, and Flynn urged Kislyak that Russia should respond with restraint. Putin soon announced he would do so, and Kislyak told Flynn his words made the difference.

Flynn lied about these contacts to the FBI, denying that he talked about sanctions with Kislyak. After Flynn struck a plea deal with Mueller’s team in December 2017, many wondered whether Flynn would reveal that Trump had in fact ordered him to send that message to Kislyak — perhaps as a payoff for election help.

But Mueller dug into this matter thoroughly — scrutinizing communication records, accounts from Flynn, and accounts from other Trump transition officials involved — and he concludes: “The investigation did not identify evidence that the President-Elect asked Flynn to make any request to Kislyak.”

Instead, by the account in Mueller’s report, this was a plan hatched among transition advisers — notably Bannon and K.T. McFarland — but not Trump personally. Even a week later, “Flynn did not have a specific recollection of telling the President-Elect about the substance of his calls with Kislyak,” Mueller writes (and he appears to view Flynn’s testimony as credible).

As to why Flynn lied about this afterward, by his account, it was because Trump was angry when word of the Kislyak calls first leaked in the Washington Post. “Flynn recalled that he felt a lot of pressure because Priebus had spoken to the ‘boss’ and said Flynn needed to ‘kill the story,’” Mueller writes. So Flynn started falsely denying there was any talk of sanctions with Kislyak — first to other Trump advisers, then to the FBI.

That didn’t end well for Flynn, but, by Robert Mueller’s account at least, it doesn’t seem to have been part of some massive Trump-Russia conspiracy either.

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https://www.vox.com/2019/4/25/18510852/mueller-report-trump-russia-collusion-conspiracy

2019-04-25 12:30:00Z