Most here at ET are aware of your ridiculous posts. They know I can speak for myself and don't need you as spokesman.
To set the record strait, I have never maintained that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election, even though he may have. Instead I have always maintained that it would have been impossible for Trump not to know of the Russian interference, and that it was Trump's campaign, not Trump himself, via Trumps
unpaid campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort's business partner and Russian Intelligence Agent, Konstantin Kalimnik, that served as conduits of Trump campaign information to the Russians. Through a pervasive social media campaign, Russian Army Officers, who were specifically named, engaged in a massive effort to smear Hillary Clinton and express support for Donald Trump. Both the Muller report and the subsequent Senate investigation turned up extensive evidence of this Russian interference. The assumption that Manafort and Kalimnik were the conduits is my own based on the information that is known with certainty. I reached this conclusion early on, however I have since learned that U.S. Intelligence agrees with my assessment.
I posted here, in the politics forum, my view that Manafort learned of the Russian Intelligence capability to influence elections via his involvement with the Yanukovych campaign in Ukraine. Probably Manafort met Kalimnik for the first time in conjunction with the Ukraine job. Undoubtedly Manafort carried this knowledge of Russian capabilities with him to the Trump Campaign. Manafort owed Russian operatives large amounts of money when he surfaced early in the Trump campaign offering his services as Campaign Manager FREE OF CHARGE. From this, you're free to draw your own conclusions. I have drawn mine!
Manafort (later a pardoned felon) in center of table, Kalimnik far left in chair.
Konstantin V. Kilimnik (
Russian: Константин Килимник;
Ukrainian: Костянтин Килимник; born 27 April 1970) is a Russian/Ukrainian
[1] political consultant. In the United States, he became a
person of interest in multiple investigations regarding
Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, particularly due to his ties with
Paul Manafort, an American political consultant, who
was a campaign chairman for
Donald Trump.
Kilimnik was reported by
CNN,
The New York Times and
The Atlantic to be "Person A" listed in court documents filed by the Special Counsel against Manafort. He is also believed to be Person A in court documents filed in the criminal indictment of
Alex van der Zwaan.
[1][2] The April 2019
Mueller Report concluded Kilimnik was connected to
Russian intelligence agencies, while the August 2020 final report on 2016 election interference from the
Senate Intelligence Committee characterized him as a "Russian intelligence officer".
[3] In 2017, Kilimnik denied having ties to Russian intelligence agencies.
[4] Kilimnik was indicted by
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury on 8 June 2018 on charges of
obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice by attempting to
tamper with a witness on behalf of Manafort.
[5][6]
United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 found that Kilimnik was among proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and
laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Joe Biden "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration" to benefit the 2020 Trump presidential campaign.
[7][8] In April 2021, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Kilimnik for providing Russian intelligence with "sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy" provided to him by Manafort from the Trump campaign, and for promoting the false narrative that Ukraine, rather than
Russia, had interfered in the 2016 election.
[9] [see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Kilimnik ]
U.S. has new intel that Manafort friend Kilimnik gave Trump campaign data to Russia
Paul Manafort was chair of the Trump campaign for part of 2016. Kilimnik had worked for him in Ukraine. U.S. officials say Kilimnik is a Russian spy.
April 16, 2021, 6:38 PM CDT
By
Tom Winter and Monica Alba
The U.S. intelligence community has developed new information about Konstantin Kilimnik,
whom they call a Russian spy, that leads them to believe the associate of ex-Trump campaign chair
Paul Manafort passed internal Trump campaign polling and strategy information to Russian intelligence services, two U.S. officials say.
On Thursday the U.S. Treasury
sanctioned Kilimnik and for the first time said he passed along the data to Russian intelligence services.
That new detail, part of a factsheet released by Treasury, was not included in the 2019 report by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was tasked with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Konstantin Kilimnik.FBI
Mueller's team said in its report that Kilimnik was believed to “have ties to Russian intelligence,” and that Kilimnik had received the Trump campaign information from Manafort, but did not say what he did with it after receiving it.
A bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 said coordination between the Trump campaign and a Russian operation to hack and leak Democratic emails may have existed through Kilimnik but could not be established with certainty. The report drew no conclusions about what the Russians ultimately did with the data.
The officials did not disclose when or how the U.S. came into possession of the new intelligence about Kilimnik, including whether or not the information was developed during the Trump or Biden administrations. The officials did not identify the source or type of intelligence that had been developed.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury declined to comment.
In 2019, Mueller’s team authored a report that detailed the connection between Kilimnik and his former employer in Ukraine, Paul Manafort. Manafort was the Trump campaign chairman from the spring of 2016 until August 2016, when multiple press reports about his work in Ukraine and money he received there led to him stepping down. Manafort was working for the Trump campaign without pay.
Manafort was indicted by Mueller’s team and pleaded guilty in federal court to obstruction of justice and conspiracy. A judge found he had broken his plea agreement by lying to investigators on several issues, including his contacts with Kilimnik. He was convicted of additional charges in a separate case.
He later received a presidential pardon from Trump.
According to Mueller, Manafort met with Kilimnik in New York on Aug. 2, 2016 and “months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.”
New sanctions imposed by President Biden reveal a direct link between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia
April 15, 202111:23
Court documents show that some of that information was shared through former Manafort business partner and member of the Trump campaign, Rick Gates.
[Please note the above caption says "a direct link between the 2016
Trump Campaign and Russia. It does
not say, "a direct link between Donald Trump and Russia". I leave it to anyone interested to decide on their own whether Donald Trump knew of the Russian Interference.]
[see
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/na...-manafort-friend-kilimnik-gave-trump-n1264371 ]
