Yea bullshit, what “communications”? With WHO?
What “financial transactions”? Be specific.
Editor’s Note: On December 9, 2019, the Justice Department Inspector General released a report regarding the opening of the investigation on Russian election interference and Donald Trump’s campaign. In the report, the IG contradicts what CNN was told in 2017, noting that the FBI team overseeing the investigation did not seek FISA surveillance of Paul Manafort: “We were also told that the team also did not seek FISA surveillance of Manafort…and we are aware of no information indicating that the Crossfire Hurricane team requested or seriously considered FISA surveillance of Manafort.”
Washington CNN
US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.
The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.
Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive.
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UNCLASSIFIED
March 26, 2018
MINORITY VIEWS
On March 1, 2017, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) approved a bipartisan “Scope of Investigation” to guide the Committee’s inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.1 In announcing these parameters for the House of Representatives’ only authorized investigation into Russia’s meddling, the Committee’s leadership pledged to undertake a thorough, bipartisan, and independent probe. The Committee explained at the time that it would “conduct interviews, take witness testimony, and review all reporting underlying” the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia’s covert campaign.
Importantly, Chairman Devin Nunes and Ranking Member Adam Schiff promised the American public that the Committee would “seek to ensure […] that allegations of Russian collusion with any U.S. Persons and the leaks of classified information are fully investigated.”
NOTE: Nunes, was he paid off with his later jobs after Leaving the House?
Chairman Nunes vowed that “on a bipartisan basis, we will fully investigate all the evidence we collect and follow that evidence wherever it leads,” a promise echoed by Ranking Member Schiff, who said that the Committee “must follow the facts wherever they may lead, leaving no stone unturned, and that must also include both the Russian hacking and dumping of documents as well as any potential collusion between Russia and U.S. citizens.”
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COMMITTEE SENSITIVE - RUSSIA INVESTIGATION ONLY
I. (U) FINDINGS
(U) The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi- faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Parts of this effort are outlined in the Committee's earlier volumes on election security, social media, the Obama Administration's response to the threat, and the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
(U) The fifth and final volume focuses on the counterintelligence threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. In this volume the Committee lays out its findings in detail by looking at many aspects of the counterintelligence threat posed by the Russian influence operation. For example, the Committee examined Paul Manafort' s connections to Russian influence actors and the FBI' s treatment of reporting produced by Christopher Steele. While the Committee does not describe the final result as a complete picture, this volume provides the most comprehensive description to date of Russia's activities and the threat they posed. This volume presents this information in topical sections in order to address coherently and in detail the wide variety of Russian actions. The events explained in these sections in many cases overlap, and references in each section will direct the reader to those overlapping parts of the volume. Immediately below is a summary of key findings from several sections.
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Report: Manafort part of intelligence review of intercepted Russian communications
American intelligence and law enforcement agencies are looking at intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of an investigation into possible ties between President-elect
Donald Trump’s associates and the Kremlin,
The New York Times reports.
The report, published less than 24 hours before Trump is inaugurated, is reportedly focused on examining the business dealings that some of Trump’s closest confidants and operatives have had in Russia, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, already the subject of an FBI
inquiry into his dealings in Russia and Ukraine.
At least two other campaign advisers, Carter Page and Roger Stone, are also being examined, according to The Times report.
{mosads}The investigation is being conducted by the FBI, the National Security Agency, the CIA and the financial crimes unit of the Treasury Department. But it is unclear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Trump or his campaign, the Times noted. It’s also unclear whether it is related to the investigation into hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Russian attempts to interfere with the election.
Manafort told the Times that he has never had any interaction with the Russian government and called the allegations “a Democratic Party dirty trick and completely false.”
Trump has repeatedly disputed that the Kremlin tried to influence the 2016 presidential election in his favor, despite overwhelming agreement by the U.S. intelligence community on that point.
The counterintelligence investigation is not tied to an unverified 35-page
dossier that’s said to show Russia has compromising information on Trump. That dossier — the subject of another FBI probe — became the subject of news reports earlier this month, when CNN reported that Trump and outgoing President Obama were briefed on a summary of the memos.
note: there's more
