The contacts are frequent enough to look very bad for Team Trump. And, it must be added, these are not cases of everybody does it. It is normal for a presidential campaign to have meetings with foreign representatives to discuss plans for future policy. It is not normal for contacts with a hostile power to be of anywhere near the volume as the Trump Campaign had.
Nonetheless the Special Counsel did not find a criminal conspiracy. Neither did it affirmatively find that all contacts were innocent. One might divide the various contacts into different categories -- affirmatively determined to be innocent, innocent on the Trump side but not the Russian side, and offer to conspire by Russians that was affirmatively rejected, scandalous but not criminal, undetermined, or suspicious but not enough to bring criminal charges. There may be other categories as well.
Let us have a look.
Trump Tower Moscow:
The Trump Organization apparently sought to build a Trump Tower in Moscow as early as 2013, although the attempt never went anywhere. The was well before Trump declared he was running and is significant mostly in that Donald Junior represented the Trump Organization and his Russian counterparts were Aras Agalarov, the oligarch who purportedly first offered dirt for the Trump Tower meeting, and his son Emin, the pop singer whose agent set up the meeting. Ike Kaveladze, also present at the Trump Tower meeting was also involved. Clearly Junior was enticed into that meeting by the role of people he knew and had worked with.
A second attempt began in September, 2015 (about the time Trump first announced his candidacy), this time with Michael Cohen and Felix Sater doing the negotiating. The project appears to have been purely a matter of Trump licensing his name to the project in return for a share of the gross income, but not doing any actual construction or incurring any significant risk.
When they reached agreement on November 30, 2015, Sater sent Cohen an e-mail saying that he would "engineer" Trump's election as President, "get all of Putins (sic) team to buy in on this," and "manage this process." Whether this was an offer of illicit assistance or simply the bizarre claim that Putin's endorsement would swing the election to Trump (!) is not clear. Cohen said that no one on the Trump side ever addressed how Trump Tower Moscow would affect the election, although Trump did expect his run for President would be great advertising (probably further evidence he did not expect to win). Team Trump believed that the approval of the Russian government, going all the way up to Putin, would be required for so large a project and sought it. According to Cohen's possibly self-serving account, he took care to keep the commercial and political aspects separate. The Russians apparently sought a visit by Trump, but no such visit ever occurred. At least some of the persons involved were under sanctions, and/or wanted to discuss a "Ukrainian peace plan" that would favor Russia.
On the whole, though, these seem to have been business rather than political contacts. Cohen got in trouble, not for any of these contacts, but for lying about them under oath. Trump, too, lied during the campaign in denying that he had any Russian business ties.
With any other candidate, I would be confident that his Russian business ties did not inform his pro-Russian policy. With Trump, you have to wonder. Still, pursuing a pro-Russian policy while having strong business ties to Russia is not a crime, nor is lying to the American people about it. It is (as Rand Paul or some other Republican commented) an excellent reason not to vote for Trump. Conclusion: This was scandalous but not criminal. Probably not grounds for impeachment, but more than grounds for a primary challenge.
George Papadopoulos:
This is one of the less innocent contacts. Special Counsel's prior indictment of Papadopoulos revealed the general outline of what happened; the Mueller Report fills in a few details, most of which we need not follow. Papadopoulos got a job as foreign policy adviser to the Trump Campaign in March, 2016 after he left the Ben Carson campaign which was obviously failing and the Trump Campaign was desperate for a warm body with any foreign policy knowledge whatever. Papadopoulos went to London to seek contacts as some sort of foreign policy center there, and met up with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with numerous Russian contacts, most of them blacked out, but apparently including members of both the Troll Farm and Russian Military Intelligence. Mifsud showed no interest in Papadopoulos until he found out Papadopoulos was part of the Trump campaign, at which point he tried to get Papadopoulos to set up a meeting with the Trump Campaign and Russia. The Trump Campaign rejected the overtures. When Papadopoulos suggested a meeting in person at a March 31, 2016 meeting, Trump apparently expressed interest.
Regardless, no such meeting ever took place. We do not know what the Russians intended to do at the meeting, probably seek a favorable settlement in Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions. None of this is inherently sinister. Attempting to set up a meeting between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government is not a crime after all, and the Trump Campaign consistently rebuffed the offer.
What is more disturbing is what happened on April 26, 2016. This occurred after Papadopoulos had returned to London and Mifsud had visited Moscow and then went back to London. They met in person and Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had learned while in Moscow that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." Nothing in the report suggests that Mifsud told Papadopoulos about the hacks. Papadopoulos may have thought the e-mails were the 33,000 deleted e-mails. Or he may have thought they were e-mails openly exchanged with the Russian government during her tenure as Secretary of State.
The obvious question is whether Papadopoulos ever informed anyone in the Trump Campaign of this development, and there is no evidence that he did. He continued to e-mail the Trump Campaign, attempting without success to set up a meeting.* None of these messages mention Russian "dirt" on Hillary, and only one appears to request a telephone conversation. (The Report does not say one way or the other whether the telephone conversation took place). All members of the Trump Campaign deny that Papadopoulos ever told them about Russian dirt.
Papadopoulos definitely told two people outside of the Trump Campaign about the dirt. One was the Greek foreign minister (no date given). The other was the Australian Ambassador to London, who the Report is strangely coy about naming. Ten days after the meeting, Papadopoulos drunkenly informed the Ambassador that he expected the Russian government to anonymously release damaging information on Hillary.** The Report says that Papadopoulos "wavered" on whether Campaign Co-Chair Sam Clovis was upset to hear that Papadopoulos thought "they have her emails." (This would seem to imply they were thinking about the missing ones). The report does not give the origin of this vague rumor, possibly one of Papadopoulos' contradictory accounts.
It does seem decidedly odd that Papadopoulos would tell the Greek foreign minister and Australian ambassador this secret but not the Trump Campaign. However "it seems odd" is not evidence. All we have is that Papadoulos attempted to set up a meeting between the Trump Campaign and the Russians and was rebuffed, that he knew the Russians had some sort of e-mails on Hillary Clinton and intended to release them, that he told two foreign diplomats, but that there is no evidence that he told the Trump Campaign, even though it seems odd. He also recognized that this incident was disturbing enough that he saw fit to lie to the FBI about that and was indicted for doing so.
As I understand it, it is not a crime to be offered illegal information from the Russians and not report it to the authorities. This episode appears to fit in the category of not illegal but scandalous for Papadopoulos. We don't know if the Campaign was aware of the scandal.
Carter Page
The Mueller Report does not shed any light on Carter Page. The Report details his already known background working in Russia, acquaintance with Russian spies, and their attempt to recruit him in 2013, which never reached the level of any crime on his part. Page was recruited as a foreign policy adviser because of his experience in Russia. The Report focuses on Page's visit to Moscow to give a commencement address at the New Economic School. Page apparently encouraged Trump to go but was rebuffed and told that he (Page) would be acting on his own and not as a campaign official. Russian Deputy Prime Minister also attended the commencement and publicly shook hands with Page and spoke to him.
The Special Counsel was not able to determine what else Page did while in Moscow. He sent back e-mails, one of which said he spoke to "a few Russian legislators and members of the Presidential Administration" and "a diverse array of other sources close to the Presidential Administration." A section is then blacked out and the Report says:
The Office was unable to obtain additional evidence or testimony about who Page may have met or communicated with in Moscow; thus, Pages activities in Russia -- as described in his emails with the Campaign --- were not fully explained.The Yahoo News report alleging that Page met with Igor Sechin and Igor Divyekin cost Page his job with the campaign. It would appear, however, that my supposition that there was some additional evidence that Page met with these two officials but not of what they discussed is incorrect. The Special Counsel does not know what happened, other that that Page apparently talked to a variety of Russian officials. That raises some very interesting questions about what was on the two blacked-out pages of the application for a FISA warrant. The application has reports from the Steele Dossier, then two blacked-out pages, and then Page's denial. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees presumably know what is on those redacted pages. So, presumably, does the Special Counsel's Office. Yet the only verification the Special Counsel can give is in Page's e-mail, which is extremely vague, and which the FBI had no business having when it applied for the warrant. The only way the FBI could have those e-mails would be if it was somehow spying on Page (or the campaign) even before the FISA warrant. If true, that would be the real scandal, and it is strange that the Republicans are not raising it.
In any event, there is just not enough information here to find a scandal. This one fits in the unknown and undetermined category.
Dmitri Simes and the Center for the National Interest
OK, this is one I didn't know about. (Have I missed something, or is this new?) The Center for National Interest is apparently a reputable foreign affairs think tank, though one with Russian contacts, whose chairman Dimitry Simes is Russian-born, although he has lived in the US since 1970. Jeff Sessions was on the board of directors, although the position was largely honorary. CNI gave the Trump Campaign some foreign policy advice and invited him to give a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel. Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak attended the event and spoke briefly to Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner. Simes met with Trump Campaign officials on other occasions and gave them advice, particularly to avoid secret meetings with Russians. All of this appears to have been well within the norm for any campaign and not in any way improper. Classify this under affirmatively determined to be innocent.
The Trump Tower Meeting
This meeting has been dissected in minute detail in the public eye. Still the investigation does break some new ground here. One thing I did not realize was how extensive Junior's association was with Aras and Emin Agalarov (the ones who set up the meeting) and Ike Kavaladze (one person who attended). No doubt this made it hard for him to imagine that these old friends were doing anything improper. Rick Gates said that Junior announced to a meeting of himself, Eric, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks, Manafort and Gates that he expected negative information on "the Clinton Foundation" from Kyrgyzstan (the Agalarovs were from Azerbaijan). Manafort, a professional among amateurs, warned that the information was unlikely to be vital and to be careful. This is the first indication I have seen about what Junior expected, and it was not hacked e-mails. Whether he thought the documents were stolen is unclear. All participants deny informing the old man. (My own guess is that Manafort saw how dangerous this was and warned them not to). The outcome is well-known. The Russians did not have any dirt on Hillary, just on people associated with Bill Browder, the driving force behind the Magnitsky Sanctions. The worst they could say about Hillary was that she might have received donations from Browder's business partners. Junior and Jared quickly became impatient when they realized they were not getting dirt on Hillary.
The Special Counsel apparently decided against prosecuting Junior on the grounds that he didn't know better. Ignorance of the law is not usually an excuse, but it seems to have been accepted in this case. I look forward to seeing why Paul Manafort, who most certainly did know better, was not prosecuted for this meeting. It was quite arguably criminal and at a minimum scandalous. But nothing further appears to have come from it.
The Republican National Convention
This has drawn some attention and suspicion because the Republican platform was changed to take out calls for sending lethal weapons to Ukraine to fight the Russians. Could this be the work of Manafort, who worked for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine, or some sort of quid pro quo? However, the change appears to have taken place within the normal drafting process, and to have been taken out as contrary to Trump's views. Ambassador Kislyak attended and chatted with Sessions, and followed up with Sessions after the convention. However, those appear to have been the sort of normal foreign policy discussions campaigns routinely have with foreign representatives. This one should be classified as affirmatively determined to be innocent.
Paul Manafort
If any sort of conspiracy was going on, Paul Manafort was the most likely suspect and, indeed, although Special Counsel did not charge him for any activities during the campaign, neither did they clear him. Special Counsel's main source of information in Manafort was is his deputy, Rick Gates, who has been a cooperating witness. This is one of the sections that reveals previously undisclosed information.
Part of it is familiar. Manafort was a lobbyist and adviser for the pro-Russian party in Ukraine and its leader, Viktor Yanukovych. He has been charged with being an unregistered lobbyist for the Ukrainian government. When the pro-Russian party was removed from power in Ukraine, Manfort's income dried up and his financial position became precarious. Manafort also did business with the Russian oligarch Oleg Derispaska, which ended up going badly and leading to litigation. Manafort was deep in debt to Deripaska at the time he went to work for the Trump campaign, with no means of paying, yet he offered his services for free. This rather strongly suggests that Manafort intended to monetize his access, and also that he had motives for rogue actions. Throughout the campaign Manafort was in contact with his translator, Konstantin Kilimnik, formerly a translator for Russian Military Intelligence. Through Kilimnik, Manafort communicated with his old Ukrainian patrons and also with Deripaska. The FBI believes that Kilimnik has ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, and Gates stated that he suspected the same.
It had already come out both that Kilimnik met with Manafort on August 2, 2016 to present a strongly pro-Russian "Ukrainian peace plan" to Manafort, and that that Manafort gave Kilimnik campaign polling data at the time. There were at least hints that there had been a transfer the spring as well. The Mueller Report reveals that there was much more than that. Manafort and Gates were in regular contact with Kilimnik and sent a steady stream of polling data from the campaign that continued even after Manafort left the campaign. Gates sent encrypted his messages and then deleted them. Manafort also sent frequent messages seeking to settle the debt and even offering Deripaska regular briefings. Manafort and Kilimnik met twice, on May 7, 2016 and on August 2, 2016, to discuss the state of the campaign and the Ukrainian peace plan. The "peace plan" would have created an "independent" state in eastern Ukraine with Yanukovych as its leader, fairly clearly as a Russian puppet.
Gates did not know why Kilimnik and his sponsors wanted campaign polling data, nor was the Special Counsel able to determine where the data went or what was done with it. (So much for Mueller knows everything). Gates speculated that Kilimnik's sponsors wanted the data to know whether Trump was worth investing in. Special Counsel found no evidence that the polling data was used to fine-tune Russian messaging. Certainly it appears that Kilimnik and his backers expected Manafort to use his influence with Trump to get him to sign onto the "peace plan."
Manafort continued to be in contact with the campaign and to give advice after resigning as campaign manager. He declined a job in the Trump Administration, intending instead to make money off his contacts. He also continued to be in contact with Kilimnik after Trump was inaugurated and to discuss the "peace plan," although there is no evidence that he ever brought it to the President's attention.
It is not at all clear to me why Special Counsel did not charge Manafort with being an unregistered foreign agent while serving with the campaign. And, just for the record, it is legal for private citizens to be foreign agents so long as they properly register and report their activities but (understandably) illegal for government employees. It is not illegal for a member of a political campaign to be a foreign agent, but it is considerably more serious than for a completely private citizen.
So, it would appear that there are three possible explanations for Manafort's activities. One is that he was a rogue actor, trading campaign data and promises to advocate for a pro-Russian "peace plan" for relief from his debts to Deripaska. Given what we know about Manafort's character and finances, this is certainly possible. In that case, Trump would be innocent of Manafort's schemes, but would show appalling judgment in hiring such a man. And he should be outraged by Manafort's disloyalty.
Another possibility is that Manafort secretly met with Trump, with no one else present and got permission to turn polling data over to the Russians to use in exchange for support for their "peace plan." This would be the smoking gun so many Trump foes are looking for, but there is no evidence of it, and it seems unlikely.
Finally, it is possible that Trump was rather loudly signalling his willingness to do such things, so Manafort took him up on it.
Manafort was either stealing data from his boss or conspiring with him and the Russians to skew the election. Either one sounds like a crime; the only reason Manafort is not being charged is that there is no real proof which is the case. This one fits in the category of reeks to high heaven, but just not enough to bring criminal charges.
Hiring such a man as Manafort may not be an impeachable offense, but it is more than grounds for a primary challenge.
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*Paul Manafort, of all people, appears to have been the one who made the firm decision that the answer was no.
**After the Russians did, in fact, release such information, the Ambassador informed the FBI of this conversation and the investigation began.
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