Secessionists, fundamentalists, the NRA, and the far-left all played their role, but they didn’t make it into Barr’s summary report.
Special counsel Robert Mueller may not have found the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but plenty of Americans — wittingly or otherwise — have helped Moscow’s election meddling efforts in recent years. Secessionists, Jill Stein and her campaign, and members of groups organized around gun rights and far-right Christian movements have spent the past few years cultivating ties with those close to the Kremlin and using their platforms to promote Russia-friendly ideas.
None of these groups were mentioned by Attorney General William Barr, who issued a letter on Sunday confirming that Russia conducted coordinated campaigns to interfere in America’s elections.
According to Barr, Mueller’s report found that Russian operatives reached out to Trump’s campaign, but that no member of the campaign actively colluded with the Russian government. However, Barr wrote that Mueller also “determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.” Both of these efforts — social media interference, and stealing and disseminating internal Democratic documents and emails — were widely known before the report’s conclusion.
View the complete March 27 article by Casey Michel on the ThinkProgress website here.