


That makes Trump more than a Russian asset. In a December 2019 conversation, then–national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump that Giuliani had been “worked by Russian assets in Ukraine.” Trump shrugged and went on promoting the allegations Giuliani was feeding him. But according to former officials who spoke last fall to the Washington Post and the New York Times, he was directly warned. The IC assessment doesn’t address what Trump knew about the Russian influence campaign. Russia’s agents also hyped “allegations of social media censorship,” as Trump did. After the election, as “Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results,” Trump duplicated that message. That was a major goal of Russia’s 20 operations, the report explains: “Throughout the election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud.” Trump peddled the same fears. Trump also helped Putin discredit American democracy. Now It’s Part of His Arrest.Ī Baffling Development in the Debt Ceiling TalksĢ024’s Loudest “Anti-Woke” Crusader May Not Be What He Seems George Santos Used an Eerily Simple Approach to Dupe People. Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes, parroted a Russian-planted narrative “to falsely blame Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.” And congressional Republicans, led by Reps. Trump, in a 2019 phone call, pressed Ukraine’s president to open an investigation of Biden, as Derkach proposed. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave Kilimnik inside information on the campaign. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, met with Derkach twice. Derkach peddled audio recordings that were edited to make Biden look corrupt, and he “worked to initiate legal proceedings in Ukraine and the US related to these allegations.” The report doesn’t name the Americans who collaborated with the Russian agents, but it’s easy to identify them from news reports. As the summary from Attorney General William Barr quoted Mueller’s report, 'the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian. It says they met with and passed materials to people linked to the Trump administration to advocate for government investigations. One section of the report zeroes in on two Russian agents, Andriy Derkach and Konstantin Kilimnik, along with their associates.
