Republicans knew before impeachment hearings

I wrote yesterday that Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa reacted to Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia report with “Holy mother of duh.” Even so, I thought it would be good to see what Daily Kos and other sources say about what was learned about what happened in the 2016 election.

A few things from a post by Kerry Eleveld:

* The nasty guy campaign worked in close coordination with Russian operatives. Or the campaign became a front for a Russian influence operation. Maybe both.

* Paul Manafort’s central role in the campaign created opportunities for Russian operatives to get info from and exert influence on the campaign.

* Manafort’s repeated lies to the Mueller investigation undermined that work.

* We knew emails were stolen from John Podesta who was working with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Those emails were routed to WikiLeaks, who was collaborating with Russia. Roger Stone played a part in causing those emails to be dumped within an hour of the Access Hollywood tape being released, to get the tapes out of the news.

* Don Jr., the pandemic prince, and Paul Manafort did meet with a Russian spy in a June 2016 meeting in Trump Town with the intention of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t look like they got any dirt at that time.

* Ukraine:

Ukrainian interference in the 2016 was a total fabrication. … So Trump was impeached for trying to strong arm Ukraine into conducting an investigation into Ukrainian election interference that was the sole creation of a Russian Intelligence operation.

And from Mark Sumner:

The Senate report, in fact, proves everything that had been said since before the election—Trump’s campaign directly collaborated with Russia, on multiple occasions and in various ways, to alter the outcome of a U.S. election. It also shows that multiple members of Trump’s campaign lied to investigators about these connections, and that Republican senators have been aware of these facts even as they have scorned the Mueller investigation and defended Trump and his campaign. So what are Republican senators doing about it now? Lying, of course.
...
The report isn’t just damning, it’s damning to helling. It could not be more conclusive and more authoritative in showing that there was genuine coordination between the Trump campaign and Putin’s plans. Trump took everything Putin would give him, and begged for more.
...
So what are Republican senators going to do about a report—their own report—that lays bare Putin’s tawdry leverage over Trump, the openness of Trump’s campaign to foreign influence, and the lies that campaigns staffers told to investigators every step of the way? As Lawfare points out, Republicans have a very simple solution: lying. Over and over, Republican senators have issued statements repeating the idea that the report shows “no collusion,” in direct contradiction of the actual contents.

Republicans in the Senate deserve credit for allowing the investigation to run its course rather than doing a Devin Nunes and popping out a Trump-praising nonsense piece while claiming that everything is good. But they deserve zero credit for running away from their own report or for making claims that the report doesn’t show what it clearly shows.

The nasty guy clearly stole the 2016 election with the help of Russia. That’s illegal. Is anything going to be done about it? Alas, no. Certainly not by the GOP in the Senate. And it doesn’t look like Speaker Pelosi would open fresh impeachment hearings – yeah, I know getting an actual trial and removal before the election won’t happen, but the House could change the story from a the title of a report close to a thousand pages long that few are going to read into a daily explainer of why this is wrong and bad.

Next question: Is anything going to be done to stop it from happening in this year’s election. Heh. This is a sign of how many GOP in the House and Senate and probably a good number of Dems are in Putin’s pocket.

Rick Smith tweeted a thread quoting Olga Lautman. She researches Russia and Ukraine. Here’s a part of that thread.

It's infuriating that the Senate drops a report that verifies everything that's been reported over the last 4 years in the middle of the Democratic National Convention. It verifies that Trump worked w/ the Kremlin to win the election in 2016.
...
Two things worry me about the report: Repubs knew this before impeachment hearings & they refused to have witnesses; also, this time, one of the attacks is going through Ukraine to attack our elections. They're working with Barr & Giuliani to harm Biden.

I know the capabilities of the Kremlin & what they can do but I never thought the GOP would work with them to maintain power.

Putin is actually worse; he seeks ultimate humiliation & destruction of the US b/c he blames us for the break-up of the USSR. He wants to reinstate the USSR & weaken the west.