*BELIEVE*thats because Barr distorted Mueller's findings.
Mueller found more obstruction than anything else.
Since then, now we now know...
- The Trump campaign and Donald Trump himself were certainly aware in real time of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election. The campaign had a heads-up that Russia had stolen Democratic emails. And Russian operatives sought and received a meeting with senior Trump campaign officials promising “dirt” on Trump’s opponent. As the campaign wore on, and the Russian efforts were increasingly made public, Trump personally and publicly encouraged them.
- The Trump campaign was run for a time by a man with an ongoing business relationship with a Russian intelligence operative, to whom he gave proprietary internal polling data.
- The Trump campaign did not discourage Russian activity on its behalf. In fact, it sought repeatedly to coordinate its messaging around WikiLeaks releases of information. The campaign, and Trump personally, sought to contact WikiLeaks to receive information in advance about releases and may well have succeeded.
- The campaign sought to obtain disparaging information about Hillary Clinton from actors who either were Russian operatives or it believed were Russian operatives. It did so through a number of means—some of these efforts were direct. Some were indirect.
- The Russian government and affiliated actors clearly regarded the Trump campaign as a prime target for influence and recruitment. Russia targeted a diverse array of people associated with Trump for contact and engagement through an astonishing variety of avenues. Some of these attempts were rebuffed. Many of them were successful. The result was a sustained degree of engagement between the campaign, and later the transition, and Russian officials and cutouts.
- Trump’s personal and business history in Russia provided a significant opportunity for kompromat. Such material was very likely collected. There is less evidence that it was ever deployed, though Trump’s mere awareness of his vulnerability gives rise to substantial counterintelligence concerns.
- Trump’s active pursuit of business deals in Russia while running for president and denying any such deals created significant counterintelligence risk.
- Trump’s campaign, and later transition, were filled with a remarkable number of people who had secret interactions with Russian actors, about which they lied either in real time or in retrospect.
- All of this activity, particularly cumulatively, amounts to a grave set of counterintelligence concerns, in which any number of Trump campaign figures—including the candidate himself—exposed themselves to potential coercive pressure from an adversary foreign actor.
- Trump to this day will not criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin or acknowledge unambiguously Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
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