All of these actors were close enough to the Trump campaign that they presumably knew what was acceptable and would not have acted against the campaign's wishes, but far enough away to allow for plausible deniability. But all these efforts came to nothing, because the Russians did not, in fact, have Hillary's State Department e-mails.
What the Russians did have were hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Hillary Clinton campaign personnel, including her chairman, John Podesta. The DNC and Podesta e-mails that actually were hacked were released with considerable skill, so as to cause maximum damage, and showed a sophisticated more understanding of U.S. politics than one would not expect a Russian to have. This has led to speculation that the Trump campaign may have given the Russians advice on how to deploy the leaks to maximum effect. This is what most people have meant by collusion. To date no such evidence has emerged. It may well be that there was no such coordination. Perhaps Wikileaks has enough sophisticated US personnel to understand how best to deploy its leaks to cause maximum damage. And the Troll Farm, which had been studying the intricacies of US politics since 2014, may have figured out how to deploy its trolls, bots and hoaxes based entirely on open sources and computer algorithms.
But the Mueller Indictment of Russian Military Intelligence personnel has ample evidence of collusion the other way -- of US persons willing to accept stolen Russian information without regard to its origins.
The Russians actually launched the Website DCLeaks on June 8, 2016, six days before the hack was revealed on June 14, 2016 (paragraphs 36-40). Although DCLeaks received over a million page views (paragraph 36), it never attracted the same attention as Wikileaks. In fact, when the Washington Post revealed the hack on, it described the hack as "traditional espionage" and reassured readers:
The intrusions are an example of Russia’s interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president — much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders.In fact, noting that the hack had particularly focused on opposition research on Trump, the article speculated that the Russians were trying to understand a candidate who was very much an unknown. The article did not in any way associate the hack with DCLeaks; indeed, it is not clear that the Post was even aware of DCLeaks at the time.
The Russian origins of the DNC hack were announced by CrowdStrike (a cyber security company) and confirmed by other independent cyber security firms, and by US intelligence. Once the hack was publicly revealed, Russian Military Intelligence responded the next day (Mueller Indictment paragraph 40) by creating the online personal "Guccifer 2.0" claiming to be a loan Romanian hacker. Within a day of the appearance of "Guccifer," trained observers were detecting "Russian fingerprints" on Guccifer, revealing it as a front for Russian intelligence. This is significant because it means that everyone who received information from Guccifer was on notice, not only that the information was stolen, but that there was very strong reason to believe the information was stolen by the Russians.
The first to jump at the opportunity was apparently Wikileaks (referred to in the Mueller Indictment, paragraphs 47 and 48 as Organization 1). Wikileaks e-mailed Guccifer on June 22, 2016, saying that their release of documents "will have a much higher impact than what you are doing." On July 9, 2016, Wikileaks again contacted Guccifer explaining that the release of DNC e-mails right ahead of the party convention would be effective in driving a wedge between Hillary supporters and Bernie Sanders supporters. Guccifer answered, "ok . . . i see." (Indictment, paragraph 47.a). Wikileaks received the DNC e-mails from Guccifer about July 18, 2016 and started publishing them ahead of the convention.
Still, Wikileaks is not a US person, let along a political campaign. It has made clear it has no regard for privacy law. Nor is it a secret that Wikileaks was pulling for Trump during the campaign. More interesting are the US persons the indictment (paragraph 43) lists as accepting information from Guccifer.
- On August 15, 2016, a candidate for Congress requested and received information from Guccifer.
- On August 22, 2016, Guccifer sent some 2.5 gigabytes of stolen information from the DCCC to a state lobbyist and online source of political news.
- On August 22, 2016, Guccifer send a reporter stolen documents on Black Lives Matter and received advice on how to release them and and offer to publish.
- On September 9, 2016 (paragraph 44) a "person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump" received and e-mail from Guccifer about a stolen DCCC document posted online with information on Democratic turnout for the presidential campaign. Guccifer asked what he thought of the information. The unnamed correspondent answered "[p]retty standard."
The journalist has broken no laws. It is illegal for journalists to steal documents, but not to publish documents stolen by third parties. Still, there is something sleazy about giving Russians advice on how to release a document on Black Lives Matter for maximum racial impact. The journalist has not been identified, but I am guessing probably worked for Breitbart.
The Congressional candidate is unnamed and is in violation of laws against accepting foreign assistance in an election. (Another indictment coming up?). Keep in mind also that this unnamed candidate did not merely accept what was offered, but actively sought it out. My bet would be on Dana Rohrabacher. As a member of the House, he is up for election every election year, and his affinity for Russia is so notorious that he has been suspected of being a Russian agent for years.
As for the state lobbyist, he is almost certainly Aaron Nevins. Nevins is a Florida lobbyist and political consultant whose dirty tricks include a plan to shut down a highway running through many black communities during voting hours on election day in order to hold a private car race. (He was not successful). Nevins solicited and received get-out-the-vote strategies for Democratic candidates for Congress in Florida (no mention of the Presidential election). Nevins regarded the information as "worth millions of dollars" and had no compunctions about receiving the stolen information, regardless of who it came from. Presumably he is in violation of laws against accepting foreign assistance in an election. Nevins ran a blog that posted his analysis of the stolen information and sent a link to Roger Stone.
And then there is that mystery "person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump." There can be little doubt that he is Roger Stone. Stone's contacts with Guccifer are well-established. And it seems a safe bet that once Guccifer pointed out DCCC information on Democratic turnout for the Presidential election, Stone proceeded to bring this information to the attention of the Trump campaign, or that they used the information to their best advantage. But this is not quite the smoking gun. After all, once the information was posted online, it can hardly be a crime to use what is already public record.
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