YEAH, BUT HILLARY'S EMAILS! (profanity alert):

Perhaps the biggest finding was buried in a footnote more than 100 pages into the report: "The Committee's efforts focused on investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. However, during the course of the investigation, the Committee identified no reliable evidence that the Ukrainian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. election." [...]

The longtime Republican strategist Roger Stone drafted at least eight tweets supporting Russia for then Republican candidate Donald Trump in July 2016. The report said Stone emailed the drafts to one of Trump's assistants with the subject line, "Tweets Mr. Trump requested last night."

"Many of the draft tweets attacked [then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton] for her adversarial posture toward Russia and mentioned a new peace deal with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, such as 'I want a new detente with Russia under Putin,'" the report said.

Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Russian intelligence operative with close ties to the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, "may be connected" to the GRU's "hack-and-leak operation related to the 2016 U.S. election."

The GRU is Russia's primary military intelligence unit, and the "hack-and-leak" operation the committee mentioned refers to the GRU's efforts to breach the Democratic National Committee's servers in 2016 and disseminate damaging information via WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0.

The report hinted at the possibility that Manafort had knowledge of the GRU's hacking campaign. "Two pieces of information ... raise the possibility of Manafort's potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations," the report said. Several subsequent paragraphs were redacted.

Manafort's involvement in the hack-and-leak operation is "largely unknown," the report said, and the committee did not have "reliable, direct evidence" showing that he and Kilimnik discussed the breach. However, "the content of the majority of the communications between Manafort and Kilimnik is unknown" and there is no "objective record" of the two men's conversations when they met in person.

Manafort was a "grave counterintelligence threat" to the US because of his extensive ties to pro-Russian individuals and entities, the report said.

In addition to working with Kilimnik "on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," the report also highlighted Manafort's involvement in other events central to the Russia probe, like the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. [...]

The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation found "significant evidence to suggest that, in the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks was knowingly collaborating with Russian government officials," the report said. Two bullet points directly following that statement were redacted from the report, as were significant portions of a footnote on the page.

During the 2016 presidential race, while Vladimir Putin attacked the election in part to help Donald Trump, there was a "direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services." This damning statement comes from a long-awaited bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Tuesday morning. The report, 966-pages long, is the final volume resulting from the committee's investigation of Russian intervention in the 2016 campaign. It is full of revelations and findings that make clear that there is no Trump-Russia "hoax" and that the Trump and his campaign aided and abetted Moscow's assault on American democracy and sought to exploit it.

The report also explores the question of whether Russian intelligence developed blackmail material on Trump, revealing new information on this dicey subject but without reaching a conclusion.

A good chunk of the report is dedicated to Paul Manafort, who was a senior Trump campaign official for about five months in 2016. The committee notes that Manafort, who was imprisoned in 2018 for committing fraud and money laundering, posed a "grave counterintelligence threat" due to his Russian connections. The report details his extensive dealings during the campaign with a former business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee describes as a "Russian intelligence officer." (Special Counsel Robert Mueller characterized Kilimnik as an "associate" of Russian intelligence.) The committee puts it bluntly: "Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services." [...]

The report continues: "The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the [Russian intelligence's] hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election." Whoa. This report is saying that Trump's campaign manager was in close contact with a Russian intelligence officer who might have been tied to Putin's covert attack on the 2016 campaign to help elect Trump. Moreover, the report reveals that the committee found "two pieces of information" that "raise the possibility" that Manafort himself was connected "to the hack-and-leak operations." The report's discussion of that information, though, is redacted. Whether this counts as collusion or not, it's a big deal. 

Manafort, according to the committee's investigation, also explored using his access to Trump to help advance Russian interests. He discussed with Kilimnik promoting a pro-Russia "peace plan" for Ukraine that would have entailed creating an autonomous zone in eastern Ukraine, a scheme Manafort knew would offer a "'backdoor' means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine," the report says. Manafort understood that Kilimnik had cleared the plan with "someone in the Russian government." Why was Manafort willing to assist a move seemingly at odds with US interests? "Manafort could benefit financially," the committee explains. 

The picture gets worse for the Trump-Russia truthers. 

Apparently sensing the cataclysmic damage the comments would wreak, Stone--self-styled dirty trickster and unofficial Trump adviser--spoke by phone to the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, directing him to get in touch with Julian Assange, whose organization, WikiLeaks, had obtained Russian-hacked emails from Democratic Party staffers, including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. "Drop the Podesta emails immediately," Stone instructed, seeking to "balance the news cycle" after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Thirty-two minutes later, WikiLeaks followed through.

The episode, one of many eye-popping revelations about the Trumpworld's interactions with Russia catalogued in a Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday, highlights both the degree to which Stone was involved in Moscow's election meddling and his efforts to leverage stolen Democratic emails. Much of the story is already known: the Kremlin sought to spread disinformation and stoke division in the United States to hurt Clinton and help Trump, an effort seemingly aided by some in his orbit. But the Intelligence Committee's report also adds to what was already outlined by special counsel Robert Mueller, finding that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been working with Russian intelligence official Konstantin Kilimnik, who "may have been connected" to the Kremlin's interference; that Trump and members of his campaign spoke with Stone about WikiLeaks and sought advance information about their email dumps, despite suggesting to Mueller they hadn't; that Russia exploited the Trump campaign's inexperience and possibly even the FBI to its advantage; and that the Kremlin has promoted the baseless narrative that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that tampered with the election.

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