For starters, the committee established that the notorious June 2016 meeting hosted at Trump Towers by Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. for the purpose of receiving Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton wasn’t just with any old Russians. It included Russians who had “significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services.” The links between one of them and the Kremlin were, it stated, “far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.” This, of course, was the meeting set up by Trump Jr., who responded to a Russian intermediary’s promise that it would yield information damaging to Clinton with this inspirational, high-minded message: “If it’s what you say it is, I love it.”
Then there are the detailed findings about the close, longtime relationships between Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, and between Manafort and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Putin intimate who, according to the Senate, has acted as “a proxy for the Russian state and intelligence services” dating back to 2004, when Manafort met him. Manafort, convicted by a federal jury of tax and bank fraud, shared confidential Trump campaign information, including polling data and campaign strategies, with Kilimnik. Perhaps Kilimnik simply has a fascination with American political campaigns, and put this information on his night stand next to Theodore White’s classic “The Making of the President 1960,” but one may be forgiven for inferring that there are alternative explanations.