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(THREAD) I'm still figuring out exactly how to respond to today's Senate report—as I already wrote about so much of this counterintelligence evidence in my books and here on the feed. A lot being treated as news folks here already know. I'll focus in this thread on what *is* new.
1/ That Konstantin Kilimnik, who advised the 2016 Trump campaign, initiated the campaign to pin Russian interference on Ukraine *in 2016*—a course of events that led to Trump's impeachment—is discussed at length in the Proof series. Here's a new tidbit: https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1295729450437480450
2/ The Proof series meticulously details how Flynn was working on a clandestine energy deal involving Russians—and other foreign agents—from 2015 onward, and reached out to Russians to get stolen docs in mid-2016, so this is interesting but not surprising: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295713949845946373?s=20
3/ That Kilimnik is a Kremlin agent and Russian intelligence is well-established in the Proof series, and Proof of Corruption (out in 21 days) has a chapter about him (entitled "Kilimnik").
So while this isn't news, it *is* nice that media is noticing it: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295715073290317825?s=20
So while this isn't news, it *is* nice that media is noticing it: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295715073290317825?s=20
4/ Natasha Bertrand does great Trump-Russia work. This feed has aggressively endorsed hers since way back in 2017, when her investigations for Business Insider were being unjustly under-acknowledged. Here she catches a nice (but still unconfirmed) tidbit: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295715500622786561?s=20
5/ Kilimnik's association with the Russian hacking deserves the "
" Bertrand gives it because Paul Manafort—who Trump implied to friends in January 2018 (per NBC) could take him down—gave proprietary data to Kilimnik in mid-campaign, and then lied to the feds about *everything*.
" Bertrand gives it because Paul Manafort—who Trump implied to friends in January 2018 (per NBC) could take him down—gave proprietary data to Kilimnik in mid-campaign, and then lied to the feds about *everything*.
6/ That the Senate *redacted* what could very well be the *closest link* between Trump and the Russian hacking we have—mind you, not that it's strictly speaking necessary, as Trump has never seriously been accused of a hacking conspiracy—tells you about GOP senators' agenda here.
7/ We already know—and I've written a lot about—who began the Trump-Ukraine plot in 2016 (Kilimnik, Prince, and Flynn, with post-2016 aid from diGenova, Toensing, Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman, Nunes, Harvey, Solomon, and many others) but these details do help: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295716996814909450?s=20
8/ One thing I've written about much less—as major media has covered it much less—is exactly how WikiLeaks was connected to Russia by U.S. intelligence. Assange fanatics have used this evidentiary abscess to great effect. Well, that's over now, thankfully: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295719866708754436?s=20
9/ Again, though, the GOP senators appear to have won out in redacting *everything* about this absolutely critical evidence. Why? To protect Trump. Because the evidence confirms Trump knew what WikiLeaks was, what it planned to do, and coordinated with it via his adviser Stone.
10/ The obscuring of this critical evidence helps explain why I'm unsure how to think about today's report. Everything that would give the report real political import by directly inculpating Trump appears to have been redacted by GOP vote. I'm supposed to cheer that on? I can't.
11/ Natasha is right to focus on the Trump-Stone communications. I wrote a chapter entitled "Stone" for the forthcoming Proof of Corruption, just to detail the communications. But as she notes, the redactions still leave us asking "why"—and they shouldn't. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295721207564820481?s=20
12/ I wrote earlier that we'll need to wait for a Democratic AG and de-politicized ODNI to get an far-less-redacted account of Trump crimes and counterintelligence threats—and *action* on that evidence and intelligence in keeping with its severity. But this report gives us clues.
13/ As you read the report—and I hope you will—here's the equation you should make:
Report As Written + [redacted] = Democrats Writing in a Minority Report That Trump "Participated" in the Russian Cyberattack
If you want to know what "[redacted]" is, that should help you guess.
Report As Written + [redacted] = Democrats Writing in a Minority Report That Trump "Participated" in the Russian Cyberattack
If you want to know what "[redacted]" is, that should help you guess.
14/ Natalia Veselnitskaya, as detailed in Proof of Collusion (2018), refers to *herself* as a Kremlin agent, so the unredacted portion of the Senate report gives us little that's new—and again underscores how much we needed the redactions to be apolitical. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295724599301279744?s=20
