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| credit: B. Englehart |
This week the government admitted in public that there was, in fact, collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian intelligence agents. The experience of impeaching Individual One twice proved one thing: impeachment does not work when a committed cult of personality is willing to sacrifice democracy to protect its anointed. Apparently, Robert Mueller could not access this information at the time, or he simply considered it too unreliable to include it in his investigative report. Mueller’s team said it couldn’t “reliably determine” Paul Manafort’s purpose in sharing confidential polling date with Killimnik, nor assess what Killimnik may have done with it. Robert Mueller was a classic bureaucrat in a tight situation: he made credible efforts to investigate Killer, but stopped short of producing a smoking gun. The belated revelation by the Biden administration establishes a direct link to Russian intelligence that was missing in the first impeachment effort and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation of 2016 election interference afterwards.
In announcing sanctions against Russia for meddling in the 2020 election, including the expulsion of Russian diplomatic officials suspected of spying, the Treasury Department said Konstantine Killimnik, a known Russian agent according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over polling data to Russian intelligence. The GRU, Russian military intelligence, was conducting an agitprop operation during the 2016 election. Polling data would have helped Russian agents target receptive audiences in swing states. A business associate of Manafort’s who worked closely with him, even managing his firm’s office in Kyiv, Kilimnik is mentioned by name more than 150 times in the Mueller report. He was indicted alongside Manafort on obstruction of justice allegations, but was never tried. Killimnik was one of 32 people and entities sanctioned by the U.S. government for attempting to influence the 2020 election. Manafort was later pardoned for his crimes by 'Killer', who remains at large. How do you spell collusion?