President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.
In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.
It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated. Continue reading.