For eight years, an article of faith within Trumpworld and the right-wing media cosmos has been that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax, a canard cooked up by nefarious Deep State actors and bolstered by their co-conspirators in the press and the Democratic Party to sabotage and destroy Donald Trump. Trump himself continues to rail in shorthand about “Russia, Russia, Russia.” He has pointed to this “witch hunt” as evidence of extensive corruption within the intelligence and law enforcement communities of the federal government and called for the criminal prosecution of those whom he accuses of orchestrating this diabolical plot against him.
How then to explain his decision to tap for top national security slots in his cabinet two Republican legislators with access to top-secret information who have previously confirmed that Vladimir Putin in 2016 attacked the US election to help elect Trump president and that Trump failed as an American leader to acknowledge and condemn this devious assault on the republic? One of these lawmakers even oversaw an investigation that concluded the most senior Trump campaign aide in 2016 had colluded with a Russian intelligence officer while the Kremlin was mounting its information warfare against America.
“I am concerned about some of the contacts between Russians and surrogates within the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign,” Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick as UN ambassador, said in 2018.
The pair are Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), whom Trump has picked to be UN ambassador, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Flas), whom Trump has selected to be secretary of state. Each is a veteran member of the intelligence committee of the chamber in which they serve and privy to the most sensitive secrets of US intelligence.
After the 2016 contest, Trump tried to con the public about the Russian attack—which included a hack-and-leak operation that disseminated stolen Democratic emails and materials to harm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and a covert social media scheme to spread messages, memes, and disinformation to sow discord and benefit Trump. The intelligence community and cybersecurity firms had concluded the Kremlin had waged this secret campaign against the United States to boost Trump, but Trump claimed no such thing happened. He dismissed all talk of the multiple contacts between the Trump camp and Russian representatives during the 2016 contest. He also covered up his own secret business dealings with Russian developers and Putin’s office during the campaign, as well as a hush-hush meeting held between his senior campaign advisers and a Moscow intermediary.
Stefanik didn’t buy Trump’s subterfuge. In an interview with the Watertown Daily Times in March 2018, she said, “Russia meddled in our electoral process.” And she noted the Kremlin skullduggery was designed to benefit Trump: “We’ve seen evidence that Russia tried to hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign.” Moreover, she fretted about the curious Trump-Russia contacts: “I am concerned about some of the contacts between Russians and surrogates within the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign.”
A year later, with Trump still pushing his phony “Russia hoax” claim, Stefanik, at a town hall meeting, disagreed with the Trump line that the Moscow assault was no big deal. It was, she said, “much more systemic, much more targeted, with very sophisticated hacking efforts, disinformation efforts targeted to specific campaigns.” Stefanik added that the Trump administration needed to be pressed “to take the threat from Russia very seriously.” She criticized the Trump campaign for holding that covert meeting with the Moscow go-between.
There was no Russia witch-hunt, Stefanik contended. According to her view, Trump was peddling a self-serving and false narrative about an important issue of national security: an attack by a foreign adversary on the United States.
Rubio went much further than this.
As chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Rubio, in August 2020, released a massive 966-page report on the Russian assault. In a press release, he noted, “Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy. We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over one million pages of documents. No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive.” And he stated the committee “found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”
That is, no hoax.
The detailed report confirmed what other investigations had concluded: “Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information [via WikiLeaks] damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.”
Worse for Trump, the report pointed out that he and his campaign had tried to exploit the Russian assault and had aided and abetted it by denying the Russians were engaged in such activity, thus helping Moscow cover up its effort to subvert an American election: “The Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
Rubio’s report was full of damning information for Trump.
A large chunk focused on Paul Manafort, who was a senior Trump campaign official in 2016. The committee noted that Manafort, who was imprisoned in 2018 for committing fraud and money laundering (and pardoned by Trump in 2020), posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his Russian connections. The report detailed his extensive dealings during the campaign with a onetime business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, who the committee described as a “Russian intelligence officer.” The committee put it bluntly: “Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” Throughout the election, according to the report, Manafort “directly and indirectly communicated with Kilimnik,” Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine.
When the report was released, Rubio declared in a press release that the committee had uncovered “absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.” Yet that was misleading. The report stated, “The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the [Russian intelligence service’s] hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” That meant Trump’s campaign manager was in close contact with a Russian intelligence officer possibly tied to Putin’s covert attack on the 2016 campaign. The committee also revealed it had found “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility” that Manafort himself was connected “to the hack-and-leak operations.” Perhaps there was some collusion. But the report’s discussion of that information was redacted.
Rubio’s report was a slam-dunk counter to the Trump-Russia deniers on the right who had strived mightily to turn this serious matter into nothing but a left-wing fantasy, and to Trump himself. It declared that Trump’s campaign was run by a counterintelligence threat who had covertly huddled with a Russian intelligence officer and that Trump and his lieutenants assisted the Kremlin’s attack on the United States by echoing Putin’s denials.
The report was proof Trump had betrayed the nation. This is a truth that he and his enablers within the GOP and the conservative movement have attempted to smother for years. To do so, they concocted the notion of a Deep State conspiracy and relentlessly derided Democrats, liberals, journalists, and anyone else who voiced concern about or interest in Russian interference and Trump’s acquiescence to Moscow.
Now Trump has embraced two senior Republican lawmakers who challenged Trump’s claim of a hoax and who affirmed the reality of the Trump-Russia scandal and Trump’s role in it. Were they part of that Deep State scheme against Trump? Neither have renounced their previous statements. Rubio has not disavowed the report he once proudly hailed. As the denizens of MAGA World—and Trump himself—should see it, Rubio and Stefanik were part of the traitorous cabal that pushed disinformation to demolish Trump. In their eyes, Rubio even produced a nearly 1000-page-long report to advance this treasonous con job.
Their appointments show the absurdity of Trump’s Russia-denying endeavors—though these efforts succeeded. Now Trump has included in his new administrations two prominent Republicans who know that he has been lying all along about Russia. While both Stefanik and Rubio were once critics of Trump, they have, like most within the GOP, bent the knee, and they don’t mind serving a fellow who provided cover for Putin and who cared more for his own political interests than the country’s security. Nevertheless, it would be worthwhile for Democrats to question Stefanik and Rubio on this matter during their Senate confirmation hearings. They ought to be asked about their previous statements and Rubio’s report. This will probably yield a fair amount of squirming. More important, it will serve as a reminder that Trump has gotten away with a foul deed that has profoundly shaped the nation.
