A New Report Adds Evidence That Trump Was a Russian Asset

He helped Putin manipulate the U.S. election in 2020, as he did in 2016.

BY WILLIAM SALETAN
MARCH 18, 202112:07 PM

"Donald Trump was a tool in a long-running Russian campaign to weaken
the United States. That’s been documented in Republican-led
investigative reports, and now it has been updated with new evidence,
thanks to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of the 2020
election. The report, drafted by the CIA, the FBI, and several other
agencies, was released in unclassified form on Tuesday, but it was
presented in classified form on Jan. 7. In other words, it was compiled, written, and edited during Trump’s administration. It destroys his lies
about the election, and it exposes him as a Russian asset.

The report debunks conspiracy theories, promoted by Trump and his
lawyers, that hackers in other countries robbed him of victory. “We have
no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020
US elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process,” including “ballot casting, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” says
the document. A separate analysis released by the Department of Justice
reaches the same conclusion. The IC report adds that evidence of such operations, if they existed, would have shown up in U.S. surveillance or
in “post-election audits of electronic results and paper backups.” The report implicitly mocks insinuations from Trump’s lawyers that former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, somehow rigged
Trump’s defeat. “We have no information,” it notes drily, that “current or former Venezuelan regimes were involved in attempts to compromise US election infrastructure.”

During the campaign, Trump, his national security appointees, and his
allies in Congress insisted that China was meddling in the election to
help Joe Biden. They even claimed that China’s interference was more dangerous than Russia’s. The report shreds that fiction. China “did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US
Presidential election,” says the assessment. It finds no attempt by
China to “provide funding to any candidates or parties,” and it
challenges the Republican spin that China feared Trump because he was
too tough. It argues, to the contrary, that Beijing saw Trump as a
weaker adversary because he “would alienate US partners,” whereas Biden “would pose a greater challenge over the long run because he would be
more successful in mobilizing a global alliance against China.”

As to Russia, the report leaves no doubt: In 2020, as in 2016,
“President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government
organizations conducted, influence operations” to help Trump and hurt
his Democratic opponent. For example, “Shortly after the 2018 midterm elections, Russian intelligence cyber actors attempted to hack
organizations primarily affiliated with the Democratic Party.” Then, in
late 2019, Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, “conducted a phishing campaign against subsidiaries of Burisma holdings, likely in an attempt to gather information related to President Biden’s family.” Throughout the 2020 election, agents “connected to the Russian Federal Security Service,” FSB, planted negative stories about Biden. Internet operatives working for the Kremlin, including the troll farm that had
boosted Trump in 2016, continued to promote “Trump and his commentary, including repeating his political messaging.”

Attacks on Biden and his son, Hunter, were part of this operation.
Through “US officials and prominent US individuals, some of whom were
close to former President Trump and his administration,” the report says Russia’s intelligence services “repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or misleading claims about President Biden and his family’s alleged
wrongdoing related to Ukraine.” In this way, Trump’s circle “laundered” the Russian-planted stories, which were then recirculated—and promoted
by Russia’s online proxies—as American news."
[snip]

TB

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