'Alternative' Mueller Report Released, but with Major Redactions
As the 2022 midterms continue to loom just over the horizon, there are many American political experts who believe that a “red wave” is coming for Congress.
Part of the reason for this is the abysmally low approval rating of President Joe Biden, who has spent his first 17 months in office in a rather ineffective legislative slump. His policies are stagnant, his agenda has been quashed, and the White House just can’t seem to get much right in the eyes of the people.
Further compounding the issues of the Democratic administration is the belief that the liberal party has been using the government as their personal weapon against the GOP – something that appeared rather apparent during the “RussiaGate” ruse.
Now, with another important election on the horizon, a newly released version of the infamous “Mueller Report” could get the strange discussion back into the headlines.
The Justice Department has released portions of a previously unseen alternative version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on ties between former President Donald Trump and Russia.
However, the 37-page report prepared at the direction of Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann and released this week under the Freedom of Information Act is heavily redacted. Justice Department officials withheld large swaths of the document on grounds of ongoing investigations, privacy and protecting internal deliberations.
The deletions are typically made by career officials at the Justice Department and the FBI, but the secrecy puts the Biden administration in the curious position of fighting to keep from public view evidence of alleged wrongdoing by top advisers to Trump. It appears that those blacking out the redacted document sought to delete any details not made public in the version of Mueller’s report released in 2019 or in other public documents.
The release had a very specific slant.
“Team M” a group of investigators and prosecutors focused on connections between Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and businessmen and politicians friendly to Russia.
The report details contacts between Manafort, his campaign deputy and longtime business partner Rick Gates and pro-Russian business figures. It argues that Manafort, who worked for Trump’s campaign without pay, expected to improve his financial situation as a result of his ties to a potential Trump administration.
Mueller’s prosecutors contend in the report that Manafort and Gates worked closely during the period with a Russian-Ukrainian political adviser the FBI has contended had close ties to Russian intelligence services, Konstantin Kilimnik.
After the U.S. election, the men allegedly discussed by email the possibility of getting Trump to offer “a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push)” that could launch a peace process in Ukraine with Manafort as a U.S. special representative. Manafort and Kilimnik were later involved in polling about a peace plan that “Manafort conceded constituted backdoor means for Russia to take over eastern Ukraine,” the report says.
The “RussiaGate” investigation has been a sore spot for Republicans ever since it was revealed that the 2016 Clinton campaign was involved in procuring unverifiable information regarding Donald Trump that was later used to enact a FISA warrant and kick off their conspiracy theory about the former NYC business mogul’s purported ties to Russia.
