A reconstruction of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III’s team shows why it was often a maddeningly difficult task — and why some mysteries were left unanswered.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone leaves federal court in Washington following a hearing on Feb. 21. By Rosalind S. Helderman Rosalind S. Helderman Reporter focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations Email Bio Follow April 21 at 8:03 PM On a cloudy day in early November, the last of conservative writer Jerome Corsi’s six marathon interviews with the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was about to begin.
The Yale-educated former Supreme Court clerk pleaded with Corsi: It was “vitally important” that Corsi provide the “truth only,” Zelinsky said. The 448-page report also revealed the outcome of the long endeavor to determine the relationship between Trump associates and Russia: some unanswered mysteries, a lot of dead ends and, ultimately, a conclusion that the contacts they found did not establish a criminal conspiracy.
A reconstruction of the laborious effort by Mueller’s team to determine whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia shows why it was often a maddeningly difficult task. The inquiry had begun in late July 2016 after the Australian government contacted the FBI about Papadopoulos. Over drinks at a bar in London, the young Trump aide had confided to an Australian diplomat that the Russian government had thousands of Clinton emails that could damage her candidacy.
They started with a potentially neutral witness: the interpreter, interviewing him just four days after the New York Times broke the news of the meeting, according to the report. Mueller’s team interviewed everyone who attended the meeting except Veselnitskaya, who is in Russia, and Trump Jr., who declined to participate voluntarily, they wrote.
At last, prosecutors had access to a key member of Trump’s inner campaign circle who also had deep connections in Russia, including a business relationship with Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Manafort’s cooperation meant prosecutors finally had a firsthand witness who could explain whether there was ever a suggestion of a trade-off: Russian assistance in the campaign in exchange for a Trump administration that supported pro-Russian policies.
In an email to The Washington Post last week, Kilimnik denied he had Russian intelligence ties and said he had not shared the polling information with anyone else. He said he had “absolutely . . . zero” to do with Russian interference. For months, Mueller’s team sought to understand whether Stone shared information about WikiLeaks’ activities with the campaign, uncovering numerous examples of Trump’s deep interest in the Clinton emails.
In September 2017, Stone testified to the House Intelligence Committee that his public hints about WikiLeaks were based on vague tips he’d been given by a New York City radio host and comedian named Randy Credico, whom he described as an “intermediary” and “mutual friend” of Assange. After convening with Gray, a New Jersey attorney who had done legal work for his wife’s cleaning business, Corsi decided he would cooperate with prosecutors. He agreed to turn over his computers and passwords to his social media accounts and to sit for voluntary interviews.
Corsi forwarded Stone’s note to Ted Malloch, an American author living in London who hoped to land a job with Trump and was eager to curry favor with his campaign, according to the draft filing. Corsi has said he was never in direct or indirect contact with Assange. He said he was exaggerating his knowledge to Stone.
Gray said that he believed Corsi was trying to be honest, but he acknowledged his client’s answers were not always clear or consistent. “It’s their biggest nightmare,” Gray said. “The supposed best of the best were just frankly dumbfounded by the whole situation.”Roger Stone walks out of a federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in January after he was indicted in the special counsel’s probe. Over sessions in September and October, Corsi offered information that appeared enticing but sketchy.
Stone told Congress that conversations he’d had with Corsi about the memo was the basis for his tweet, even though the memo was dated Aug. 31, 2016 — 10 days after he posted his message on Twitter about Podesta. In his book, Corsi insisted the prosecutors confused and rattled him with their repetitive questioning. At one point, he said he told the trio: “It frustrates me that I can’t remember . . . Sometimes I can’t tell if I remembered or invented.’”“I told them from the beginning that I couldn’t remember my 2016 conversations with the kind of precision they were going to demand,” he said, adding: “I’m not a human tape recorder.
A dead end in Texas Among Corsi’s claims to prosecutors, according to Corsi’s book: that Stone had given him advance notice on Oct. 7, 2016, that The Post would be publishing a video in which Trump could be heard coarsely bragging about groping women. Stone has denied knowing anything about the tape in advance or playing a role in the timing of the Podesta release.
The couple had lived in Libya before the 2011 fall of ruler Moammar Gaddafi and had served as sources for Corsi as he worked on articles about what he felt were the failures of the Obama administration in that country. “The invasion of terrorists into the United States is real and present,” Moriarty said. “I told him about this and I told him that, now that he knows, he has to pass it along to other government agencies, including the White House, or he will be guilty of felonious acts.”
But the investigation did not establish he coordinated with the Russian effort in 2016. After the report’s release, Page said he was not surprised, calling his Russia interactions a “big nothingburger.” They were hampered by not only his lies, according to the report, but his use of encrypted messaging apps. Mueller ultimately did not find sufficient evidence to prove that Manafort or any other Trump associate acted as an agent of the Russian government.
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