While Trump's prime time television address droned on about urgent need for a border wall, the more consequential story coming out of Tuesday was the result of a flub by Paul Manafort’s defense team. It accidentally revealed, because of botched redactions, that the former Trump campaign chairman allegedly shared 2016 presidential campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate the FBI has said has ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort’s attorneys were responding to allegations by special counsel Bob Mueller that the former Trump campaign chairman lied repeatedly to prosecutors after agreeing to cooperate.
The filing indicates “a pathway by which the Russians could have had access to Trump campaign data,” Rachel Weiner, Spencer Hsu and Rosalind Helderman report. “The Russian citizen, who began working for Manafort’s consulting firm starting in 2005, has been charged with helping his former boss to obstruct Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference into the 2016 election. He is believed to be in Moscow…
“According to the filing, Mueller also accused Manafort of lying about discussing a Ukrainian peace plan with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign. ‘Manafort ‘conceded’ that he discussed or may have discussed a Ukraine peace plan with Mr. Kilimnik on more than one occasion,’ his attorneys quote the special counsel as saying, and ‘‘acknowledged’ that he and Mr. Kilimnik met while they were both in Madrid,’ without giving a date. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, said the Madrid meeting took place in January or February 2017, after the presidential campaign was completed. He declined to comment on other pieces of the filing.”
-- “A person knowledgeable about the situation” tells the Times that both Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Trump clinched the Republican nomination: “Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person. Mr. Manafort asked Mr. Gates to tell Mr. Kilimnik to pass the data to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to the Kremlin and who has claimed that Mr. Manafort owed him money from a failed business venture, the person said,” per Sharon LaFraniere, Ken Vogel and Maggie Haberman.
“Big story. New info,” said former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, a central figure in the Watergate scandal. “It’s called COLLUSION!”
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“If proven, then call it by whatever c word that you want -- collusion, cooperation, conspiracy -- but this is serious,” said former U.S. ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul, a professor at Stanford University.
“This is potentially very significant evidence of collusion,” said Post columnist Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who advised the John McCain and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns on foreign policy but has emerged as a Trump critic. “Why would Manafort share polling data with the Russians unless it was to help them target their pro-Trump social media campaign?”
Atlantic writer David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, posed another question: “Did the flow of data to the Russians from the Trump campaign halt when Manafort was fired August 19, 2016? Or not?”
-- “Internal polling data is precious. It reveals your strengths—and your weaknesses,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “Why share such valuable information with a foreign adversary—unless that adversary was really a friend?”
-- “It also bears asking, yet again, why someone like Manafort felt the need to allegedly lie about this stuff — especially at the expense of his cooperation agreement and further legal jeopardy he was well familiar with,” writes Aaron Blake.
-- Philip Bump argues that the revelation Manafort allegedly passed along polling is “more evocative than definitive”: “Perhaps there was a conduit for collusion that went from Trump to Manafort to Kilimnik to Russian intelligence. Or perhaps Manafort, ever the hustler, was working a hustle.”
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