It took nearly four years, but the Republican-controlled Senate reveals that Donald Trump and his campaign did in fact work with Russia in 2016.
On August 18, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee releases a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report confirms much of what we already knew but includes new details discovered by the Senate investigation that were not addressed during the Mueller probe.
The simplicity of the scheme has always been staring us in the face: Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought and maintained close contacts with Russian government officials who were helping him get elected. The Trump campaign accepted their offers of help. The campaign secretly provided Russian officials with key polling data. The campaign coordinated the timing of the release of stolen information to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The Senate committee’s report isn’t telling this story for the first time, of course. (Was it only a year ago that Robert Mueller testified before Congress about his own damning, comprehensive investigation?) But it is the first to do so with the assent of Senate Republicans, who have mostly ignored the gravity of the Trump camp’s actions or actively worked to cast doubt about the demonstrable facts in the case.
The New York Times
The U.S. Intelligence community, Robert Mueller’s investigation, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and now the Senate Intelligence Committee all agree. Russia gave us Donald Trump.
Editor’s Note: We are updating the Trump File timeline with the events from the 966-page Senate report in the order that they happened.
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/opinion/trump-russia-2016-report.html?searchResultPosition=2
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf
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