Prof Hadar Aviram’s close reading of Mueller, 1

[ by Charles Cameron — I’ll leave it to my friend Hadar Aviram to lay out her distillation of the report, starting with Volume I ]

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One of the best uses of Twitter is to provide continuous threads by a single author on a topic of interest.

Hadar Aviram, who teaches law at UC Hastings, wrote up a detailed rundown of the Mueller report yesterday evening, and released it in the form of two Twitter-threads, one for each volume. With her gracious permission, I’m reposting them here on ZP.

Hadar points out that her threads mostly recount the contents of the two volumes, with only one or two of her own comments. Volume I deals with Russia’s election interference and its interactions with the Trump campaign.

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Volume 1:

1. #MuellerReport Volume 1, redux: We now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Russian government procured the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Election, in order to obtain a presidency that was hospitable to their aspirations in the Ukraine.

2. They did so in two ways: deep and sophisticated infiltration of social media since 2014, and hacking the DNCC emails.

3. The Russian hackers impersonated not only right-wing groups, but also progressive groups.

4. Many rallies throughout the US, purportedly organized by “grassroots activists”, were organized by Russians.

5. Among these dozens of rallies, the ones that stand out in particular were the ones supposedly organized by the coal industry.

6. Russian operatives organized self-defense classes for African Americans to fight police, posing as a black rights org called “black fist.”

7. The Trump campaign, including Trump himself, endorsed Russian political operative by retweeting their tweets and cooperating with their rallies. Unclear whether they knew they were interacting with Russians.

8. The Russian military hacked Democrat accounts in several waves, in a concerted and sophisticated effort.

9. This involved planting malware on the servers, as well as the theft of thousands of documents.

10. The GRU disseminated the stolen documents first through two anonymized accounts, DCLeaks and Guccifer, and then through WikiLeaks.

11. The Guccifer account reached out directly to the Trump Campaign offering more information, but no evidence of further communication with the campaign.

12. WikiLeaks were not neutral parties, and their collaboration was fostered by partisanship. Assange explicitly said to WikiLeaks employees that “it would be better for the GOP to win.”

13. The GRU and Wikileaks hid their communications, so the #MuellerReport has only partial information about the transfer, but they did establish when some of the documents were transferred.

14. The day that Trump publicly said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the 30,000 emails” on Clinton’s server, the GRU hacked Clinton’s account.

15. The GRU also directly intervened in the election by targeting election administrators and hacking computer systems, specifically in Illinois and Florida. B/c of redactions, unclear from this version which of these interventions were successful.

16. The part about the Trump Campaign’s interest in the hacking activities is heavily redacted. Some of the redactions involve incidents mentioned by Cohen and Manafort and involving Trump personally, but too much redacted material to get a full picture.

17. Page 54: It seems like Trump and Gates were going to the airport, Trump got a call and then told Gates that more emails were forthcoming.

18. Correspondence between Trump Jr. and Wikileaks shows that they were in communication and that Trump Jr. shared their leaked emails, but falls short of showing Jr. actively asking them to do things.

19. There is evidence of several Trump campaign officials making efforts to recover Clinton’s discarded emails, most of them without success and some pursued “to some degree.”

20. Two of these people, Barbara Ladeen and Peter Smith, were contacted by Michael Flynn and asked to dig for the emails, and Smith even formed a corporation aimed at doing so.

21. Connections btwn Trump campaign & Russians before Nov. 8, 2016: [1] Trump Tower Moscow project negotiations btwn Trump and oligarchs (Crocus Group) begin after Miss Universe pageant in Russia. Last communication on this appears to be Nov. 24, 2014.

22. In 2015, Moscow tower convo is revived with communication between new investment group, and Michael Cohen, through Felix Sater. Throughout 2015 and 2016 Cohen reported to Trump about the progress of the project.

23. Btwn Oct 2015 and Jan 2016, Trump negotiated directly with the Russian Government and the City of Moscow re the tower, personally signing a “letter of intent.” In this context, Sater emails Cohen, telling him that Putin has the power to make Trump POTUS.

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