WikiLeaks was the website that published the stolen emails in the weeks before the election. Gates described the RNC as energized by the emails and said that though Trump and Kushner were initially skeptical about cooperating with the RNC, “the WikiLeaks issue was a turning point”, the FBI notes show. Gates also described conversations with the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, who entered the White House as chief of staff. Gates also said that another point, Trump told him more leaks were coming, though the heavily redacted documents do not indicate how Trump knew that. One time on the campaign aircraft, Gates told the FBI, Donald Trump said “get the emails”.
The identity of one person who expressed interest in the emails is blanked out. Gates recalled that other key campaign aides, including future attorney general Jeff Sessions, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Flynn, also “expressed interest in obtaining the emails as well”, according to an agent’s written summary of one interview. Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, in part for financial crimes arising from his Ukraine work.ĭuring his interviews with investigators, Gates said Donald Trump Jr would ask where the hacked emails were during family meetings in summer 2016. He has yet to be sentenced as he continues working with investigators. Gates pleaded guilty last year and has been one of the government’s key cooperators. Gates worked with Manafort in a lucrative consulting business that included Ukraine and later testified against him. Attorney general William Barr, appointed by Trump, concluded that the president had not committed a crime. The report also examined multiple episodes in which Trump sought to seize control of the Russia investigation but did not conclude one way or the other about whether the president obstructed justice. Mueller’s investigation concluded in March with a report that found insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with the Russian ambassador. Gates also said the campaign believed that Michael Flynn, who became Trump’s first national security adviser, would be in the best position to obtain Hillary Clinton’s missing emails because of his Russia connections.įlynn said he could use his intelligence sources to obtain the emails and was “adamant that Russians did not carry out the hack” because he believed the US intelligence community couldn’t have figured out the source, according to the agent’s notes. Mueller’s team indicted 12 Russian agents in connection with the intrusion.
US authorities have assessed that Kilimnik, who was also charged in Mueller’s investigation, has ties to Russian intelligence. Gates said Manafort’s assertion that Ukraine might have done it echoed the position of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate who had also speculated that the hack could have been carried out by Russian operatives in Ukraine.
Manafort speculated about Ukraine’s responsibility as the campaign sought to capitalize on the DNC email disclosures and as Trump associates discussed how they could get hold of the material themselves, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates told investigators, according to a summary of one of his interviews. It could be a guy in New Jersey.”Īsked again, Conway said: “The president has great faith in the US intelligence community. On Sunday, White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway was asked on CNN’s State of the Union if Trump accepted the intelligence community’s belief that Russia hacked the DNC, or if he thought Ukraine did.Ĭonway prevaricated, saying: “He’s said it many times. Speaking with Ukraine’s new president in July, Trump asked about the DNC servers in the same phone call in which he pushed for an investigation into Biden. Information related to Ukraine took on renewed interest after calls for impeachment based on efforts by the president and his administration to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Democrat Joe Biden. The documents included summaries of interviews with other figures from the Mueller investigation, including Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Notes from an FBI interview were released on Saturday after lawsuits by BuzzFeed News and CNN led to public access to hundreds of pages of documents from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The unsubstantiated theory, advanced by Donald Trump even after he took office, would later help trigger the impeachment inquiry now consuming the White House.
0 kommentar(er)
