So, we now have William Barr's summary of the Mueller Report and it appears to find in favor of Lawfare Theory Two: the Trump campaign attracted Russophiles, but never actually worked with the Russians.
The summary first makes clear the extensive investigation that went into the report. It found that neither Donald Trump nor anyone in his campaign "conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." There were two main instances of Russian interference in the election -- the Russian troll farm putting out internet disruptions, and that hack and release of Democratic campaign documents. The report did find multiple Russian offers to assist the campaign, but did not find that any were accepted. And it cleared the Trump campaign of "coordination" as well as conspiracy. The Mueller did not conclude one way or the other whether Trump obstructed justice, but Attorney General Barr has decided against prosecution due to the lack of any underlying crime. Finally, the letter states that matters occurring before a grand jury may not be disclosed, but that disclosure will be made once confidential part of the report are determined.
What are we to make of that?
Let's start with what we know so far about Russian offers to help.
We know that in April, 2016 Russian agents approached foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos asking about improved relations with Russia and saying that the Russians had "thousands of emails" on Hillary Clinton. This was before the Russian hack of the Democratic servers was public knowledge, but after it became public knowledge that Hillary Clinton had sent State Department e-mails on a private server, making it vulnerable to Russian hackers, and that some 33,000 of those e-mails had been deleted. So far there has been no indication that the Russian agents said which e-mails they were referring to. Nor is it known whether Papadopoulos passed the information about the e-mails up the line. What is know is that (1) Papadopoulos attempted to set up a meeting between the campaign and Russia but was rebuffed, and (2) Papadopoulos apparently found these communications damaging enough that he lied to the FBI about them and said that they took place before he joined the campaign.
My guess: Neither Papadopoulos nor anyone else in the Trump campaign suspected the Russian hacks at this time. They assumed that the e-mails being discussed were the missing State Department ones. We know later that Trump openly invited the Russians to reveal those e-mails. So why this lead was not followed up on is unknown. Maybe the Mueller Report will shine some light on it.
We know that on June 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. got an email from the show biz agent to a popular singer who was also a Russian oligarch's son offering "some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father." The message did not mention e-mails of any kind, but went on to add, "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump." Junior responded that he would "love it." A meeting was set but turned out to be an attempt to lobby the Trumps to repeal the Magnitsky Sanctions and did not offer any information about Hillary. It was never clear whether anything further came of this meeting. The answer would appear to be no.
We know that on July 7-8, 2016 Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page traveled to Moscow to give a speech at a commencement for the New Economic School. This is where things get dicey. The Steele Dossier on July 19, 2016 reported that Page met with Igor Sechin of Rosneft, Russia's major oil company, to discuss "future bilateral energy cooperation" and removing the sanctions. Page was favorable but non-committal. Steele also reports that security official Igor Divyekin met with Page and offered him possible damaging information on Hillary Clinton, while broadly hinting that there might be damaging information on Trump as well. On September 23, 2016, Michael Isikoff wrote a story in Yahoo.com News reporting that US intelligence officials were "seeking to determine" whether Page had met with Sechin to discuss lifting the sanctions, and also that he may have met with Divyekin (no details of the conversation). The source for this story was, in fact, Michael Steele, although Isikoff successfully concealed this fact, making it appear that the source was an intelligence committee in Congress. On October 18, 2016, Steele added a report that Sechin had offered the Trump campaign "brokerage of up to a 19 percent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" in return for lifting sanctions.
The FBI took these allegations seriously enough to use them as the basis to apply for a FISA warrant on Page in October, 2016. The application mentions the material from Steele's first report, but says nothing of the Rosneft share. Several blacked out pages follow. My speculation here is that our intelligence community may have some independent confirmation that the conversations with Sechin and Divyekin really did take place, but not of the contents. Thus Isikoff was able to get verification of the fact of the meeting only but not what was discussed. There may have been information that lifting sanctions was discussed, or that may simply have been an educated guess. The blacked out portion of the FISA application may consist of whatever the verification was that the meeting took place. Once again, we have an offer of damaging information on Hillary Clinton, but no evidence that it was accepted.
The most damaging evidence of cooperation was that on August 2, 2016 (and possibly in May), Paul Manafort gave polling data to his translator, Konstantin Kilimnik, a former employee of Russian military intelligence (the same agency responsible for the hack and release). If ever the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians, this would be it -- providing polling data that they could use in deploying their information. It is also possible that Manafort was a rogue actor here, providing information for financial reasons without the permission of the Trump campaign. And it is possible that Kilimnik was not still in contact with his old employer and used the information for some other purpose. (Manafort's departure occurred about two weeks after the August 2, 2016 meeting).
It is certainly possible the that the Papadopoulos proffer was rejected, that the Trump Tower meeting came to nothing, and that the Carter Page report proved inaccurate. But Manafort's data theft sounds like some sort of crime no matter how you look at it. Regardless of the details, I am hoping that the final report sheds some light on these close-calls, especially the sharing of polling data.
And as for the statement that there was no "coordination," defined as "an agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference" -- well that simply defies belief. There was obviously coordination at least in the sense that the Trump campaign regularly quoted from Russian propaganda and tailored its message to what was being released. Such coordination is not a crime, obviously. But it is "coordination" as normally understood, and certainly troubling.
And finally, if every Russian proffer of help was indignantly rejected, and if there was no crime in the underlying conduct, then why all the lying and attempt to obstruct?
This, too, is something I hope to learn more about when the report is released.
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