NedNotes (not blog): Transition & Extras; 'Lawfare' Summary of Senate Intel Report (Volume #5)

Contacts between Russian officials and cutouts did not stop with Trump’s electoral victory, so the report also examines contacts between the Trump transition team and Russian government officials and oligarchs. It asserts that these contacts are “notable in light of the U.S. Government’s determination that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election and its late-December decision to impose sanctions.”

Because the Russian government “had engaged in a months-long active measures campaign targeting the election, which Trump had just won,” the committee decided to examine these contacts in order to understand the Russian government’s purposes and any potential counterintelligence vulnerabilities on the part of the transition team they implied. The report states:

(U) Russia and other countries took advantage of the Transition Team’s inexperience, transparent opposition to Obama Administration policies, and Trump’s desire to deepen ties with Russia, to pursue unofficial channels through which Russia could conduct diplomacy. The lack of vetting of foreign interactions by Transition officials left the Transition open to influence and manipulation by foreign intelligence services, government leaders, and co-opted business Executives.

Across these interactions, the Trump transition team “appeared disorganized and unprepared,” creating “notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.” Specifically,

(U) Transition officials had little awareness of their counterparts within foreign governments and did not appear to take sufficient security precautions in light of known foreign intelligence efforts against the election.

(U) Russian officials, intelligence services, and others acting on the Kremlin’s behalf were capable of exploiting the Transition’s shortcomings for Russia’s advantage. Based on the available information, it is possible—and even likely—that they did so.

Direct, overt outreach to the transition started immediately after Trump won. On Nov. 9, 2016, Hope Hicks received a phone call from Sergey Kuznetsov, who said he was a political officer at the Russian Embassy. She later received an email from Kuznetsov in which he asked Hicks to convey to Trump a formal message of congratulations from President Putin, which states that he looked forward to working with Trump “on leading Russian-American relations out of crisis.”

Unsure if the email was legitimate, Hicks forwarded the email to Jared Kushner, who she understood was serving as “the conduit for foreign representatives throughout the campaign.” She wrote: “Can you look into this? Don’t want to get duped but don’t want to blow off Putin!”

Kushner reached out to Dimitri Simes, the president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, who recommended Kushner reach out to the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. According to Hicks, Kushner was never able to confirm Kuznetsov’s identity.

Hicks gave Trump the congratulatory letter from Putin, to which he responded, “Hmm; that’s nice,” which she did not find unusual from his reaction to congratulatory messages from other world leaders.

Trump asked Hicks to arrange a phone call with Putin. She scheduled the call and informed the transition team, and on Nov. 14, 2016, Trump and Putin spoke by phone. While Hicks was present, she had not been present for the briefing before the call, could hear only Trump’s side of the phone call and did not recall the topics discussed—despite taking notes of the call for a later read-out and press release. She remembered that various transition team members were also present during the call. She assumed Trump was making these sorts of calls on a secure line installed after the election but did not know whether this was true.

The outreach continued. On Nov. 16, Ambassador Kislyak sought meetings with both Kushner and Flynn, and on Nov. 30, the three met in Trump Tower. It was during this meeting that Kushner said he proposed what became one of the more infamous ideas of the period: using secure communications at the Russian Embassy for a call between the transition team and Russian military officials regarding Syria. The Russians rejected the idea:

The Russian military ... had a perspective on Syria that they wanted to share with us, and so he [Kislyak] wanted to know how to transmit that information. He basically said: Look, I could have them come in, but it seems like that wouldn’t be convenient for them; may we set up a call? Do you have a secure line? We said we didn’t have a secure line in the transition that we knew of. So I said: Well, why don’t we use your secure line at your embassy? They said: Let’s not do that. ... [T]hey wanted to convey information to General Flynn. It was their information. How they conveyed that information was up to them. So I assumed that there was a secure way that people communicated and he wanted to have that information communicated in that way.

During the meeting, Kushner asked Kislyak for a point of contact who had a direct line to Putin. (Amid redactions, the report notes that Kushner did not recall taking any electronic surveillance precautions during these meetings but said that at some point he became aware of “technological vulnerabilities” and started taking “different precautions.”) A few days later, Kislyak’s aide provided the name of Sergei Gorkov, a Russian official with direct access to Putin.

Who is Sergei Gorkov? According to the report, he graduated from the FSB Academy in Moscow, where Russian intelligence officers are trained and, in 2016, Putin appointed him as chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned bank. VEB was sanctioned in July 2014 in response to Russia’s destabilization of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.

Gorkov met with Kushner on Dec. 13, 2016, at Colony Capital, the investment firm of longtime Trump friend and billionaire Tom Barrack (who, among other things, helped facilitate Paul Manafort’s connections to the Trump campaign.) Gorkov presented Kushner with gifts, including “a bag of soil from Kushner’s grandparents’ hometown of Novogrudok, Belarus.” According to Kushner, Gorkov expressed excitement about the potential for a new relationship with the United States and indicated that Putin was frustrated by his relationship with America. He discussed the prospect of peace and more trade.

Notably, however, Kushner denied that any personal business was discussed. VEB, by contrast, released a press statement afterward indicating the meeting was business related:

During 2016, when preparing the new Vnesheconombank’s strategy, the Bank’s CEOs repeatedly met with representatives of the world’s leading financial institutions in Europe, Asia and America. In the course of negotiations the parties discussed the business practices applied by foreign development banks, as well as most promising business lines and sectors. The roadshow meetings devoted to Vnesheconombank’s Strategy 2021 were held with representatives of major US banks and business circles, including the CEO of Kushner Companies Mr. Jared Kushner.

Kushner stated that he was unaware that VEB was under U.S. sanctions before the meeting and that they did not discuss the issue. Substantial portions of this subsection are redacted, so it is difficult to understand its full import.

One witness told the committee that Gorkov would likely have briefed Putin on his meeting with Kushner. And indeed, the plane Gorkov took to the United States traveled to Japan on Dec. 14, where Putin was visiting, and “reports indicated that Gorkov would join Putin there.”

Several days later, an aide to Gorkov communicated to Kushner’s assistant, Avi Berkowitz, that “the information about the meeting got a very positive response!” and sought a second meeting in early February. Berkowitz never responded to the aide’s request.

In short, Kushner sought a direct line to President Putin—and he got one. And that person, Sergei Gorkov, was not only a trained FSB officer but also the head of Russia’s state-owned investment bank. The accounts of what, exactly, the two discussed in their private meetings conflict.

In addition to outreach through its officials, the report states, the Russian government also “leveraged business leaders with Western ties to advance its foreign policy goals with the incoming administration.”

Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s state-owned, sovereign wealth fund that was subject to U.S. sanctions, was tasked by Putin to try and make inroads with Trump transition team officials.

Beginning the morning following the election, Dmitriev made the first of multiple attempts to reach out to members of Trump’s inner circle. He sought the assistance of George Nader, a senior adviser to United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, known as MBZ. Dmitriev knew Nader because RDIF had co-invested in multiple projects with UAE sovereign wealth funds.

Nader will be a familiar name to those who have followed these events closely. The report states that he “had spent much of 2016 attempting to nurture contacts with both presidential campaigns, and keeping Dmitriev informed of his progress.” For example, he participated in a meeting in August 2016 attended by Donald Trump Jr., Stephen Miller, Erik Prince and Joel Zamel in which Nader discussed foreign policy matters and a potential social media campaign. Dmitriev asked Nader to assist him in making contact with incoming Trump administration officials. In particular, he asked Nader to help convey the message to incoming officials that “we [Russia] want to start rebuilding the relationship in whatever is a comfortable pace for them. We understand all of the sensitivities and are not in a rush.” Nader understood that Dmitriev and the Russian government had preferred that Trump win the presidency.

Dmitriev also sought to meet directly with Trump insiders, particularly Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., through Rick Gerson, a New York hedge fund manager. Although Gerson and Dmitriev had never met, Gerson had a relationship with the UAE’s ruler, MBZ, and was a personal friend of Kushner. Gerson told the committee that Tahnoon bin Zayed (MBZ’s son and his national security adviser) made the introduction in order to make a business connection between the two men. Gerson, in addition to being Kushner’s friend, was assisting the transition by arranging meetings for transition officials with foreign officials.

Dmitriev called Gerson on Dec. 1, 2016, and they also communicated using WhatsApp—though it is not entirely clear what they communicated about. Gerson told the committee that he “routinely” deleted his WhatsApp communications and could not produce them. Although the purpose of the Dec. 1 call was ostensibly business, including potential investments by RDIF, Gerson said that during the call, Dmitriev also discussed a desire to have “better relations with the U.S.” Dmitriev made references to his “boss,” meaning Putin, and told Gerson that Putin had tasked him with developing a “reconciliation plan” for United States-Russia relations. Dmitriev worked up such a plan—which is reproduced in full in the report. It is largely policy oriented, covering issues such as joint counterterrorism efforts, joint U.S.-Russia business opportunities, and resolving the Ukraine crisis.

It’s not a particularly scandalous document, and if that’s all there was to this outreach, it would represent attempted communication through unconventional channels but not much more than that. Gerson gave two copies to Kushner, who gave one copy to Steve Bannon and one to Rex Tillerson. According to Kushner, that was “kind of the last of it.” Dmitriev also sent Nader a copy of the document, and it may have been part of materials provided to the transition team in anticipation of a Jan. 28, 2017, call between Trump and Putin.

What makes this line of communication more interesting is that Dmitriev also pursued other routes to influence the incoming Trump administration, including the now-famous Jan. 11, 2017, meeting with Erik Prince in the Seychelles. And people—namely Prince himself—apparently felt compelled to lie about that meeting. The report notes that “[s]everal aspects of Prince’s activities in this time period align closely with the Dmitriev outreach through Gerson,” including contacts between Bannon, Nader, and Dmitriev with Gerson and Prince around the same time. The report also states that “[t]he Committee’s ability to investigate these events, however, was significantly hampered by a lack of cooperation from Prince.”

Prince provided only one response to the committee’s requests, and his description of the Seychelles meeting was, according to the report “brief and deceptive”:

On or around Jan 11, 2017 I traveled to the Seychelles to meet with some potential customers from the UAE for the logistics business of which I’m Chairman. After the meeting they mentioned a guy I should meet who was also in town to see them, a Kirill Dmitriev from Russia who ran some sort of hedge fund. I met him in the hotel bar and we chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of a normal trade relationship with the USA. I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi Fascism then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic Fascism. The meeting ended after a maximum of 30 minutes. I’ve had no communication or dealings with him or any of his colleagues before or after that encounter last January.

In reality, the meeting was not a chance encounter at all. Nader met with Prince several times in order to persuade Prince to meet with Dmitriev. Nader told Prince that Dmitriev had specifically asked Nader to introduce him to incoming Trump administration officials. Prince said he would think about it and speak to Trump transition team members, which the report implies he did, on Jan. 4. Nader sent Dmitriev’s two-page biography, which Prince opened on a computer while talking with Trump transition officials in Trump Tower and waiting for a meeting with Bannon. The report notes, “Although Prince spent three hours at Trump Tower that day, he said that he could not remember whether he actually met with Bannon.”

On Jan. 7, Prince booked a flight to the Seychelles. The next day, Nader told Dmitriev he had a “pleasant surprise” for him—a meeting with a “special guest” from the “New Team,” referring to Prince. Nader assured Dmitriev that Prince had influence with the incoming administration: “This guy [Prince] is designated by Steve [Bannon] to meet you! I know him and he is very very well connected and trusted by the New Team. His sister is now [Secretary] of Education.” According to Nader, Prince led him to believe Bannon was aware of the Seychelles meeting and that information would be passed on to the Trump transition team. Bannon, however, denied knowledge of the meeting.

The report found that Prince met with Dmitriev twice in the Seychelles: first on Jan. 11 in Nader’s villa at the Four Seasons Resort and then at the restaurant of the Four Seasons. In the first meeting, among other things, Prince told Dmitriev that Bannon was very effective in his role. Prince told Dmitriev about Prince’s own role in providing policy papers to Bannon and that he would report the details of the meeting to Bannon. Upon returning to his hotel room, Prince heard that Russia was sending an aircraft carrier to Libya. He called Nader to ask for another meeting with Dmitriev, telling Nader “he had checked with associates in the United States, and needed to get a message to Dmitriev that Libya was ‘off the table.’” Nader reached out to Dmitriev telling him Prince had “received an urgent message that he needs to convey to you immediately” and then arranged the second meeting:

(U) At this second meeting, Prince conveyed to Dmitriev that the United States could not accept any Russian involvement in Libya because it would make the situation there worse. Despite having claimed to have spoken with associates in the United States and claiming to speak on behalf of the United States’ position on Russia’s involvement in Libya, Prince told the SCO [Special Counsel’s Office] that he was only making the comments as a former naval officer, and not in an official Capacity.

(U) Hours later, Prince sent two text messages to Bannon. However, neither Bannon nor Prince had any messages on their phones prior to March 2017, despite records indicating that they had exchanged multiple messages.

The report recounts that Prince told the Special Counsel’s Office that he reported to Bannon the details of his meeting with Dmitriev, including the message that Russia sought better relations with the incoming administration. Prince met Bannon at Bannon’s home after returning to the United States in mid-January 2017. Prince also believed he shared Dmitriev’s contact information with Bannon. According to Prince, Bannon directed him not to follow up, which Prince interpreted as a lack of interest on Bannon’s part.

Bannon, however, denied any discussion with Prince about these meetings. Bannon, the report says, said he never had a conversation with Prince regarding Dmitriev, RDIF, or any meetings with Russians associated with Putin.

So why did the Trump-connected individuals involved in this story want to keep it a secret? The report doesn’t say. Lacking meaningful testimony from Prince, this subsection leaves the reader with the impression that parts of this particular story remain untold.

The report next devotes 18 pages to a less prominent name: Robert Foresman. Ultimately, Foresman comes off as just another vector through which Russian-government-connected individuals may have sought to influence the transition team, but with a twist: Foresman sought a high-level post in the Trump administration.

This story, too, seems unfinished because members of the Trump transition team gave differing accounts of their interactions with Foresman.

Foresman is an American banking executive with experience in Russia and long-standing ties to well-connected business executives inside Russia, including some individuals with direct ties to Putin. Foresman began reaching out to the Trump campaign in approximately March 2016. Among other attempts to gain access to Trump’s inner circle, Foresman leveraged his relationship with Mark Burnett, the producer of “The Apprentice.” Foresman told the committee that he understood Burnett had spoken “directly” with Trump and suggested to Trump that Foresman would be “a useful person to meet with.”

But Foresman’s various attempts never seemed to work until after the election, when he eventually landed meetings with various members of the transition team after some heavy lobbying by Burnett. On Dec. 6, 2016, Burnett texted Bannon to introduce him to Foresman. Burnett described Foresman as “connected at every level in Russian Government, Church and Business,” adding, “He is ready to serve you. He will leave [his current job] to serve you.” Bannon and Foresman met and, on Dec. 8, Burnett texted Bannon saying, “Glad you met with Bob Foresman. He is a patriot. An evangelical and a genius.” Bannon replied, “He is pretty amazing.”

What was discussed at that meeting is unclear. According to Bannon, it was short and focused primarily on “Christianity in Russia and Eastern Europe, the re-evangelization of Europe.” When it became clear that Foresman was looking for an opportunity to join the administration, Bannon said he “turned him over to [National Security Adviser-designee Michael] Flynn and the guys.” According to Foresman, the meeting was longer and more substantive. He recalled that they talked about foreign affairs, Russia and Ukraine, and Bannon asked Foresman to send him a memo by that evening. Bannon, for his part, denied having tasked Foresman with writing a memo, saying, “No. I’m sure this is Flynn.”

Foresman did, however, submit a memo to Bannon in which he said Russian relations had shifted from “alarming to hopeful” following Trump’s election and that the National Security Council (NSC) should be structured so that Russia was a main focus. Thereafter, he met with Flynn and K.T. McFarland, Flynn’s eventual deputy on the NSC.

Here again, exactly what they discussed is not entirely clear. McFarland said that Foresman spoke primarily about his interest in being ambassador to Russia, but Foresman denied that issue even came up. Although McFarland said she did not remember Flynn being present for most of the meeting, Foresman recalled talking primarily to Flynn. Foresman gave Flynn and McFarland his memo on Russia and possibly also a document related to a Ukrainian peace proposal Foresman had previously worked on in 2016. At the end of the meeting, Foresman mentioned to Flynn that he was headed to Moscow and would be meeting with “some influential people” who were close to Putin. Asked if Flynn had a message to convey from the incoming administration, Flynn apparently replied, “[Y]ou can convey that on behalf of the President-elect and myself, we genuinely hope for improved relations between our two countries.”

Foresman returned to Moscow and met with VEB CEO Sergey Gorkov and Nikolai Tsekhomsky, the first deputy chairman of VEB, on Dec. 12. During the meeting, Foresman “conveyed to Sergey that General Flynn had asked me to convey a message to President Putin.” Gorkov told Foresman that he would pass the message along to Putin.

Foresman also met with several other Kremlin-connected individuals in Moscow regarding his connections to the Trump team. On Dec. 14, he met with American Allen Vine, who led an investment firm owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. (Kerimov is a member of the Russian Federation Council who was sanctioned in April 2018 for engaging in money laundering activity and tax fraud.) Vine was interested in Foresman’s connection with Flynn, and Vine gave him a memo about U.S.-Russia relations that Vine wanted Foresman to pass along to the incoming administration. The memo is reproduced in the report. It was later delivered to Flynn through his assistant.

The report provides much detail about an apparent disagreement about who should be Michael Flynn’s interlocutor in the Russian government, though it is not entirely clear why that is important. The Vine memo indicated that Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide, should be Flynn’s primary interlocutor in the Russian government.

The same day, Dec. 14, Foresman had dinner with Nord Stream CEO Matthias Warnig, with whom he had worked years earlier. Warnig was “very close to President Putin” and insistent that Ushakov should be Flynn’s interlocutor. Foresman assumed that Warnig’s information about Ushakov came from Putin. Foresman passed along Flynn’s message to Putin—that the incoming administration hoped to have improved relations with Russia. Foresman told the committee that Warnig later indicated that he had indeed passed the message along to Putin.

Also on that same day, an aide to Flynn reached out to Foresman—seemingly out of the blue—to arrange a call between the two men the following Friday. Foresman responded, suggesting that the two of them conduct their call over WhatsApp for security reasons, telling the aide, “I, too, was going to request a call with General Flynn as I have an important message to convey to him.” The phone call eventually took place on Dec. 16, but according to Foresman, Flynn had little to say other than to ask that the two stay in touch. According to Foresman, “it was strange, I have to say. It was strange.”

On Jan. 5, 2017, Foresman reached out to Flynn’s assistant to request a meeting with Flynn. In the email, Foresman wrote that he was:

[R]equesting a 15 min[ute] in person meeting ... to brief him on what I was asked to convey by the highest level in Moscow. General Flynn called me when I was in Moscow, as you recall, and we agreed that I should brief him in person . ... I assure you that these will be 15 min[utes] well spent. These are not mundane issues. I am not a foreign policy analyst seeking to share my worldview with the General; I am operating on the ground and have been asked to convey something directly to him, after I conveyed to the relevant party what the General asked me to convey.

In his interview with the committee, Foresman said that the information he was referencing was the information shared with him about Ushakov being the best point of contact for Flynn in the Russian government. He also intended to give Flynn and McFarland a copy of the memo he had adapted from Vine’s. Later that day, Foresman and Flynn met for approximately 45 minutes. Foresman recalls Flynn doing most of the talking, describing his views on strategic global affairs, but Foresman did present his memo to Flynn and made a point to verbally highlight the fact that Flynn should deal with Ushakov if he wanted to have a direct channel to Putin.

Here again, one has the impression that there could be more to this story. While it is possible Foresman was engaging in puffery to inflate his chance at a high-level post, parts of this story don’t hang together well. The report summarizes the committee’s conclusions about Foresman as follows:

(U) While Foresman’s efforts to serve in the Trump administration seemed sincere, it is also clear that his Russian contacts, including some with direct links to Putin, considered him a potential conduit to the Trump Transition and possibly the administration, if he were to secure a position. However, the Committee lacked sufficient information to determine whether the Russian government specifically directed these contacts to use Foresman as such a channel.

The final portion of this section addresses Michael Flynn’s connections to Russia. The committee notes that it sought an in-person interview with Flynn but that he asserted his Fifth Amendment rights. As such, one comes away with the sense that the authors of the report sought to memorialize Flynn’s connections to Russia but, without Flynn’s testimony, they were not able to do much more than that.

It recounts Flynn’s June 2013 visit to Moscow when he was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to meet with then-Major General Igor Sergun, Russia’s chief of military intelligence, or GRU. Then, in August 2015, Flynn met Trump and the two talked for 90 minutes. Thereafter, in an interview with the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, Flynn called for the United States to cooperate with Russia in the Middle East. And on Oct. 5, 2015, Flynn appeared on RT—the Russian propaganda news network—and repeatedly criticized the United States’s approach to dealing with the Islamic States and suggested that Russia and the United States work together to confront the group.

That interview led to the now-infamous dinner in Moscow with Putin and other high-powered Russian figures, as well as Jill Stein, in December 2015. After several pages of redacted text, the report describes the dinner, specifically noting that Flynn sat with 10 people at the head table, which included President Putin and two Russians who were under U.S. sanctions at the time for their role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Flynn was paid $45,386 for speaking at the event, in addition to being given business class travel and accommodations for Flynn and his son at the luxury Metropol hotel.

After several more pages of redacted text, the report turns to other lobbying efforts by Flynn that, among other things, raised questions about his compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. One was an Aug. 9, 2016, contract for $600,000 with a Dutch company “allegedly to run an influence campaign aimed at discrediting Fethullah Gulen.” (Gulen is a Turkish Islamic leader and the head of the Gulen movement, which has been outlawed in Turkey and labeled an “armed terrorist group.” Gulen lives in the United States.) The Flynn Intel Group, Flynn’s lobbying and consulting firm with his son, would earn $530,000 from the contract. Later reports linked the Dutch company to Dmitri “David” Zaikin, a Soviet-born former executive in Russian energy and mining companies.

The report briefly turns to Flynn’s activities during the transition. This portion is heavily redacted, so it is difficult to understand the full picture. What we can discern is that on Dec. 2, 2016, Russian Embassy officer Sergey Kuznetsov emailed Flynn to thank him for responding to a Russian Embassy meeting request and for seeing Ambassador Kislyak in New York. Kuznetsov and Flynn then exchanged emails and Flynn talked to Kislyak on the phone on Dec. 20.

Next, the report addresses another event those following foreign policy at the time will recall vividly—the transition team’s attempt to persuade various foreign governments not to support a U.N. Security Council resolution criticizing Israel’s construction of settlements in Palestinian territories. The report states, “Trump and his Transition Team engaged in a coordinated effort to try and stop the measure, including extensive outreach to the Russian Government. The effort was unsuccessful, but caused confusion among Security Council member nations because they did not know with whom they should be dealing with regard to American diplomacy; a lame-duck administration, or the incoming one.” The report outlines Jared Kushner’s and others’ involvement. Amid redactions, it makes clear that Flynn reached out to Kislyak and spoke multiple times during this period. Ultimately, Fynn was informed by Kislyak that Russia would support the resolution. It passed 14-0 that day, with the United States abstaining. After passage of the resolution, Trump expressed his disapproval, and signaled that his administration would take a different approach to the United Nations.

Finally, the report addresses what members of the transition team did after President Obama signed an executive order, on Dec. 28, 2016, imposing sanctions on nine Russian individuals and entities as a result of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Once news outlets began reporting the sanctions on Dec. 28, Kislyak tried to reach Flynn by text and by calling, but Flynn was on vacation in the Dominican Republic and said he did not receive the messages until 24 hours later. When Flynn and McFarland spoke by phone on Dec. 28, Flynn said that he planned to call Kislyak.

The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement denying Russian involvement in the 2016 election, spreading misinformation about the hacking of election infrastructure, and indicating that Russia planned to respond in-kind to Obama’s actions.

The transition team discussed the sanctions among themselves, with Steve Bannon assessing that the sanctions would prevent the Trump administration from improving relations with Russia. Flynn was not physically present but indicated to McFarland by text that he would speak with Kislyak. McFarland indicated she told both Bannon and Reince Priebus that Flynn was scheduled to talk with Kislyak that night, and that Bannon indicated he was aware that Flynn planned to call Kislyak. But in testimony to the committee, Bannon said he did not recall knowing about Flynn’s plans to call Kislyak:

McFarland had notified several Transition Team members about Flynn’s planned call with Kislyak. She first emailed several Transition Team officials to inform them that “Gen Flynn is talking to [the] Russian ambassador this evening.” She later briefed Trump, along with multiple senior Transition Team officials, including Bannon, Priebus, and Sean Spicer. During the meeting, Trump asked whether Russia interfered with the 2016 election, and McFarland said that it had. In discussing the sanctions, McFarland informed Trump that Russia’s response to the sanctions would be an indicator of the type of relationship Russia wanted to have with the incoming administration. McFarland also recalled that at the end of the meeting, it might have been mentioned that Flynn was going to speak to Kislyak that evening.

Flynn spoke with Kislyak on Dec. 29 and asked that Russia not escalate the situation and instead respond in a reciprocal manner to avoid a “tit for tat.” After the call and after Trump’s briefing had taken place, Flynn called McFarland to tell her that he had talked to the Russian ambassador, informing McFarland that “I think we are going to be ok.”

Early the next morning, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, released a statement indicating Russia would retaliate against Obama’s move. But two hours later, Putin released a statement reversing Lavrov’s statement. Putin’s statement made clear that Russia would not take steps against U.S. interests and that Russia planned to wait until the incoming Trump administration took office to try and restore relations with the United States. Later that day, of course, Trump tweeted his approval of Putin’s decision: “Great move on delay (by V. Putin)-I always knew he was very smart!”

On Dec. 31, Kislyak called Flynn to credit Flynn with avoiding a reciprocal response from Russia. Kislyak said that Flynn’s request that Russia not respond in kind had been passed to senior Russian officials, and they had decided not to take action.

The remainder of the section concerns itself largely with things that have been publicly known for a long time—that Flynn’s “lack of candor” in addressing questions about his communications with Russian officials led to his short tenure as national security adviser as well as his eventual guilty plea in December 2017 to making false statements to the FBI. One detail, for which the report provides additional color, is that former FBI Director James Comey told the committee that there had been a counterintelligence investigation into Flynn that Comey had been close to closing until information about the phone calls to Kislyak came to light:

We had a case open on Mike Flynn starting in the summertime [2016], a counterintelligence case. I was about to close it in late December because we had found nothing, after extensively looking, about any contacts between Flynn and the Russians, except the ones you’ve seen in the media. He went and gave a speech for RT and when he was director of DIA he went and did a meeting at the GRU. Our folks had looked hard and had found nothing. I was about to close the Flynn case when these calls were brought to our attention. This obviously gave us a reason to try to understand, is there something about him that we’re missing.

The rest is well known. On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued an order appointing a special counsel to investigate issues related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and on Aug. 17, Rosenstein sent the special counsel a memo clarifying the scope of the investigation. Rosenstein noted that Mueller had the authority to investigate Flynn. And on Dec. 1, 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to providing false statements to the FBI and to providing false information and omissions on his registration with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign government.

L. Other Incidents and Persons of Interest, pp. 777-810

The final section of the report describes four other incidents and persons of interest: Peter W. Smith, the Alfa Bank server story, changes to the RNC’s platform and Russia’s efforts to support third-party candidates.

Peter W. Smith, whom the report describes as “a now-deceased businessman and Republican operative,” is profiled in the report for his efforts to access and expose emails belonging to Hillary Clinton. The committee notes that it “encountered information” on several other individuals who had sought to obtain Clinton’s emails prior to the 2016 election, including Republican Senate staffer Barbara Ledeen and the son of Michael Flynn, but these individuals are not treated in depth in the report.

In trying to understand Smith’s initiative, ties to the Trump campaign, and potential involvement with Russian election interference, the committee writes that it “was hampered in these efforts by its inability to interview Smith, who committed suicide on May 14, 2017, and Flynn, who was in touch with Smith but asserted his Fifth Amendment rights.”

The report details that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, Smith “told associates that his effort involved meetings with Russian hackers who claimed to have access to the emails.” In addition, the committee “found that Smith’s activities were known to some Campaign officials” and were “connected to the Campaign’s focus on obtaining Clinton’s ‘missing’ emails.” But after a forensic review of Smith’s hard drive, the committee was unable to corroborate Smith’s claims regarding communication with Russian operatives and found no evidence that he had access to any Clinton emails before they were publicly released.

But while the committee was unable to verify Smith’s success, it did establish clearly his efforts to obtain information that would damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy—at times, using attempted coordination with Russian hackers. And it established as well that members of the Trump campaign knew about and supported his initiative. The Peter Smith story is, in short, a clear story of attempted collusion.

In July 2016, Trump began pushing his team, along with “Russia,” to find Clinton’s emails:

Trump repeatedly asked individuals affiliated with the Campaign, including Flynn, to find the emails. Flynn said he could “use his intelligence sources” to obtain them, and Flynn reached out to multiple people based on that directive, including both Smith and Ledeen. Trump also publicized his interest. On July 27, 2016, in reference to deleted Clinton server emails, Trump proclaimed: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you would be mightily rewarded by our press”; approximately five hours later, GRU hackers began spearphishing private email accounts at Clinton’s personal office for the first time.

Smith began his pursuit of Clinton’s emails about a month later. In late August 2016, he sent two emails related to these efforts. One, whose recipients included Trump campaign adviser Sam Clovis, was sent with the subject line “Sec. Clinton’s unsecured private email server.” This email stated, “It is clear that Clinton’s home-based, unprotected server was hacked with ease by both State-related players, and private mercenaries.” The other email was sent a few days later, and described “KSL 2016, LLC,” a business “entity” with a focus on conducting research on issues that were “positive to the Republican nominee” and “negative to the Democratic nominee.” This email bore the subject heading, “2016 Political Reconnaissance.”

The report describes some overlap between Smith’s email crusade and individuals affiliated with Russia at this point. The committee writes that Smith met four times with people who claimed to be interested in selling information about the emails between Aug. 27 and 28. In an email about the meetings, Smith wrote that the parties had “ties and affiliations to Russia” and were concerned about safety. Further, Smith’s business associate John Szobocsan told the committee Smith had reported having a meeting with “nervous acting students he thought were from Russia.” Szobocsan thought these students were “hackers” but also told the committee he was skeptical of Smith’s updates.

In September, Smith sent out a document titled “Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative” that explained his effort, then named “KLS Research, LLC,” and suggested he had obtained two sample Clinton emails. The document provided a list, in the committee’s words, of “individuals or groups purportedly affiliated with the effort, including people employed by or associated with the Trump Campaign.” A screenshot of the record here shows five names: Steve Bannon, the campaign’s CEO; Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager; Sam Clovis, campaign co-chairman; Michael Flynn, campaign adviser; and Lisa Nelson, campaign affiliate. In a later email, Smith also claimed that “The Kushner Group is behind the initiative.”

The committee interviewed Matt Tait, a cybersecurity researcher and Lawfare contributor whom Smith had contacted for help with his initiative. Tait, who first described his role in this episode in a Lawfare post, told the committee that while trying to recruit Tait’s professional assistance, Smith “dropped this bombshell”:

[H]e was in contact with someone who was a dark web specialist, who was in contact with someone who had these emails; that these emails had been hacked from Hillary Clinton. There was this person on the dark web who wanted to expose them, but just wanted money in exchange for doing them. He didn’t want to give them up for free.

The report then states that “Tait made it clear that his view was that if the hackers were likely Russians, they would be acting in the best interests of Russia, and warned: ‘this is a fire, you will get burnt.’”

According to the committee, Smith turned his attention to WikiLeaks releases of Podesta emails in October 2016 and “tried to leverage the WikiLeaks documents for his initiative.” The report explains that Smith “kept Flynn and Clovis in the loop” and maintained correspondence about his efforts with other Trump affiliates:

Some recipients of Smith’s updates appeared to believe Smith had been successful. On October 24, after Smith sent another email about WikiLeaks, he received a response from Charles Johnson threatening that “Steve,” likely a reference to Bannon, would sue him for the documents:

Ultimately, the committee “found no evidence that Smith obtained any of the WikiLeaks materials in advance of their public release or any of the ‘missing’ Clinton emails.” The report nonetheless shows that Smith regularly communicated with Trump campaign officials about his efforts to uncover information that would harm Clinton’s campaign and that he appeared willing to work with “Russian hackers” to achieve this goal.

Next up is the Alpha Bank server story, which is an especially odd one. This section of the report describes “unusual internet activity connecting two servers registered to Alfa Bank, a Russian financial institution, with an email domain associated with the Trump Organization.”

During the 90-day period between June 17, 2016, and September 14, 2016, the committee writes that two servers registered to Alfa Bank conducted 2,817 total Domain Name Service (DNS) lookups of the domain “mail1.trump-email.com.” The report explains:

Generally speaking, a DNS lookup is used by internet-connected devices to translate a human-readable domain into the corresponding Internet Protocol (IP) address that the device uses for communicating. DNS lookups of a particular domain can suggest the existence of corresponding Internet communications to that domain, but they are not conclusive. One possible explanation for this activity was that someone was using the Alfa Bank servers to communicate (or try to communicate) with the Trump Organization.

Researchers have speculated that this activity could reflect correspondence between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. The report states that this “suggestion was denied by both entities, but their alternative explanations were not consistent.”

The committee notes that after speaking with the Trump Organization and consulting with the FBI, which had investigated the strange activity, it “did not find that the DNS activity reflected the existence of substantive or covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel.” But the committee “also could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity.”

The report then explains the findings of Jae Cho, the Trump Organization’s corporate IT director. Basically, the domain “mail1.trump-email.com” had initially been created by Cendyn Hospitality Marketing and used to send out Trump Hotels mass marketing emails. The report notes that “the domain registration was transferred from Cendyn to the Trump Organization … around the time the press began inquiring, although Cho could not identify any specific date with certainty.” Cho told the committee that the domain had not been used to receive email.

The report summarizes Cho’s account as follows:

Cho did not recall conducting a system-wide review of the Trump Organization network to determine if there were any connections from the Trump Organization side with any of the Alfa Bank servers. Instead, he looked up the public IP addresses for two separate Alfa Bank email servers he had identified, which he then provided to Cendyn to check if Cendyn could identify communications involving those servers. In response, Cendyn found six messages to Alfa Bank recipients from clients using one of its email applications, but stated that these communications were not connected to the Trump Organization. Cendyn identified these as emails sent by existing banking or hotel customers of Cendyn through a meeting management application to an Alfa Bank email add ress. Cho did not locate any substantive communications between the Trump Organization and the two Alfa Bank servers and did not pursue further investigation of the DNS activity.

The committee also received unprompted letters from an attorney representing Alfa Bank conveying findings from the bank’s own internal investigation. As written in one of these letters, Mandiant—a cyber incident response firm Alfa Bank hired to look into the DNS activity—had arrived at a “working hypothesis” that “the activity was caused by a marketing or spam campaign directed at Alfa Bank employees by a marketing server affiliated with the Trump organization.”

This subsection of the report concludes with two entirely redacted paragraphs and leaves the reader with nothing but a final sentence: “The Committee has no reason to dispute those determinations.”

The next subsection addresses questions about the changes to the Republican National Committee (RNC) platform regarding Ukraine—a matter that looked ominous but turned out to be relatively innocuous. In July 2016, questions of Russian interference or influence arose after Trump’s team reworded a policy position on arming Ukraine in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention. Trump campaign staffers had intervened to change the language of an amendment on the RNC’s platform from providing Ukraine with “lethal defensive assistance” to providing “appropriate assistance.” The committee found that the changes “were not the result of Russian interference, nor were they a coordinated attempt by the Trump Campaign to ‘weaken’ the platform on Ukraine.”

The change in language occurred the week prior to the 2016 Republican National Convention. According to the report, Trump campaign officials sought to remove “lethal defensive assistance” from the proposed amendment because it went beyond what Trump had publicly stated about Russia and Ukraine. J.D. Gordon, the campaign’s director of national security, told the committee that “Mr. Trump had stated publicly and privately that he didn’t want World War III over Ukraine and he wanted better relations with Russia. So arming Ukraine is inconsistent with that view.”

The campaign officials basically claimed that candidate Trump had never taken an official position about military or humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, and they were working entirely off of rhetoric from Trump’s speeches. But Diana Denman, the Republican delegate who had initially proposed the amendment, gave a different account:

During the July 11 session, Denman raised her hand to ask about the status of her amendment, at which point there was “some discussion and a suggestion that other wording should be put in.” During that discussion, Denman approached Gordon at the side table, who she recalled being on a cellular phone. Denman told the Committee that Gordon told her he had to clear the language with “New York” but that she didn’t believe him. Denman told the Committee that she pressed Gordon on who he was speaking to and he told her three times that he was speaking to “Mr. Trump.”

The report notes that “Gordon disputes this account, and told the Committee that he was ‘talking to his policy colleagues.’” He also asserted that he never spoke to Paul Manafort or Trump while the RNC platform discussions were occurring.

Following the change in the amendment’s language, the campaign received a great deal of criticism in the media. In an interview for Meet the Press on July 31, 2016, Chuck Todd asked Manafort, “[S]o nobody in the Trump Campaign wanted that change in the platform?” to which Manafort responded, “No one, zero.” The committee states that Manafort’s statement was corroborated with emails establishing that only the officials at the RNC meeting themselves had knowledge of the platform change. The report ends by affirming that “the changes to the Denman Amendment were the result of Gordon deriving a foreign policy position from Trump’s limited public remarks, not the result of any foreign interference or undue influence.”

The final subsection addresses Russia’s efforts to support third-party candidates. Donald Trump wasn’t the only candidate the Kremlin took an interest in during the 2016 presidential election. The committee found that Russia supported Green Party politician Jill Stein as well. “Historically,” the report notes, Russia has created discord and exploited divisions “by supporting third party candidates in an attempt to drive national political conversation to potentially more extreme points of view.”

The committee begins by thanking Stein who, like Michael Flynn, attended the RT anniversary dinner in Moscow, for her cooperation with the committee. A footnote reminds the reader that Flynn “declined to speak with the committee on multiple occasions.”

The report explains that RT is a Russian state-owned media outlet serving as the Kremlin’s principal means of disseminating propaganda internationally. In 2016, the committee found that it served as an instrument to promote Russian interference tactics in the U.S. election:

Part of RT’s efforts to impugn the U.S. democratic process involve its support for third-party candidates and pushing messaging that “the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’” The content of RT’s coverage of Stein, and other candidates, is consistent with this messaging.

The committee then traces Stein’s relationship with RT, as well as her correspondence with the Russian government. When asked about the coverage she received from RT, Stein stated that she did not question the media requests because she “was happy to get [her] message out through any media source.” Stein also told the committee she doubted there was “formal Russian support for my candidacy.”

According to the report, Stein met numerous Russian officials at RT events, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Further, the committee writes that Stein unsuccessfully sought meetings through RT with top Russian officials, including Lavrov and Putin. In December 2015, Stein flew to Moscow to attend the RT anniversary gala. The report notes that “Stein’s attendance at this dinner has been widely reported by the press, including by publishing a photograph of Stein sitting next to Putin at the dinner.” Flynn sat at the same table.

Following her return to the United States, the committee concludes that “Stein continued to receive media outreach from, and regularly appear on, RT.” It also notes that despite having communicated with Julian Assange to prepare him for Green Party events, Stein “told the committee that she never gained any non-public knowledge about Wikileaks releases during the 2016 election cycle."

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NOTES

NedNotes (not blog): Transition & Extras; 'Lawfare' Summary of Senate Intel Report (Volume #5)

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