Volume V, Parts 10 and 11: Still Not Much Going On

 

The next two parts of Volume V are also not notably significant.

Part 9, Social Media Influence Companies

Part 9 (pages 663-701) deal with tech companies that worked with the Trump campaign, or attempted to work with the Trump campaign doing the sort of datamining and micro-targeting that will presumably be routine in politics from now on.  Although some of these companies were foreign, it found no evidence of Russian involvement. The British firm, Cambridge Analytica, drew the most attention, both because it clearly worked with Team Trump and because it has had shady Russian ties in the past. Cambridge Analytica has done international work, including a survey in 2014 doing focus groups in the US testing people's attitudes toward Putin and Russian expansion.  Steve Bannon and Konstantin Kilimnik were involved in these surveys.  No similar surveys were done on any other foreign country or leader.  Cambridge Analytica offered its services to almost all of the Republican Presidential primary candidates in 2016 and started out working for Ted Cruz, later transferring to Trump.  It appears also to have reached out to Wikileaks regarding Hillary Clinton's missing e-mails.  Nothing case of the outreach since Wikileaks did not have the e-mails.  

An Israeli company called Psy-Ops also reached out to the Trump Campaign, but did not end up working for it.  Psy-Ops' other clients include Eric Prince (founder and leader of Blackwater military contractors) and Oleg Deripaska the Russian Oligarch with ties to Paul Manafort.  A Psy-Ops employee wrote an e-mail that referred to Trump creating masses of fake accounts on social media, but the Committee found nothing to substantiate the allegation.  And another such organization, called Colt Ventures, and apparently American, did some social media work for Team Trump.  On the whole though, this section is a giant nothing burger.

Part 10: Contacts during the transition

Russian government and oligarchs scrambled to establish contacts with Team Trump after the election.  It is not, after all, inappropriate for a foreign government to reach out to an incoming administration.  Indeed, what ultimately convinced me there was no secret, hidden channel of communication during the election campaign was the frantic scramble to establish such a channel after the election.  (Jared Kushner made similar comments p. 764).

The unexpected election of Trump, and his desire to make considerable policy changes from the Obama Administration, the incoming team and the Russians reached out to each other, both through official channels and back channels.  Jared Kushner reached out to the Russian Ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.  Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian financier, reached out to Erik Prince, founder of Black Water.  Robert Foresman, a banking executive with experience in Russia, reached out to the transition team as an unofficial spokesman for Russia.  And, most famously, Michael Flynn contacted the Russians.  On one occasion, Flynn sought to delay a UN resolution condemning Israel that the Trump team intended to veto and the Obama Administration abstained on. (He was not successful).  Flynn also reached out to persuade the Russians not to retaliate against the US for the Obama Administration's large scale expulsion of diplomats over Russian election interference.  In that he was successful, and was ultimately prosecuted for lying to the FBI about the conversation.

Most of this was already well known, or is to obscure to be of any apparent significance.

But fear not.  The report has has a sort of catch-all provision about what Trump associates were up to that is interesting, and then describes the US government response -- also interesting.  More on that later.