Russia, Manafort, Trump, and Mueller

When something I believe about the complex state of the world turns out to be false, I am compelled to examine how I made that error in the first place. I find this is especially true in politics or social science since the avenues to truth in those domains are so fraught with cognitive traps. In the case of Trump’s campaign and the 2016 election I built a narrative in my mind based on the following reports:

1. The Russian government attempted to influence the US election in Trump’s favor through the purchase of illegal advertisements, “troll farms,” imitation news websites, false advocacy organizations, hacking of sensitive computer systems, and the timed release of hacked material. Mueller has already indicted the Internet Research Agency for these offenses (https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download)
2. The Russian government did this because Donald Trump was a long-time vocal advocate of Russian interests, excusing their bad behavior, advocating for a US-Russia nuclear alliance, and denigrating anti-Russian world institutions like NATO. Therefore, having President Trump in office was seen by Putin and the Russian government as more favorable to Russia than Hillary Clinton.
3. Paul Manafort has for a large portion of his career helped to elect pro-Russian politicians throughout eastern Europe. Most significantly, this was Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. Manafort did this to advance the Russian foreign policy agenda in exchange for large sums of money. Manafort also had many close contacts inside the Russian government. For example, see this profile of Manafort from the Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/)
4. Paul Manafort then went on to work for the Trump campaign for free, but 2 weeks later we know he asked his friends in Russia how he could use that position to settle his debts. (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/emails-suggest-manafort-sought-approval-from-putin-ally-deripaska/541677/)
5. In previous court filings, Mueller found that Manafort shared internal Trump campaign data with Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is suspected of being a Russian intelligence operative and was subsequently indicted by Mueller for witness tampering in the Paul Manafort case.
   (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/08/manafort-russian-poll-share-konstantin-kilimnik-trump-investigation-2016-election-latest)
6. Someone in the Trump campaign directed changes to the official Republican platform at the 2016 convention changing the party’s policy towards the Russian occupation of Ukraine. (https://www.npr.org/2017/12/04/568310790/2016-rnc-delegate-trump-directed-change-to-party-platform-on-ukraine-support)
7. Numerous high-ranking Trump campaign officials were caught lying about their contacts with Russia officials, including Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, George Papadopoulos, and Roger Stone.

From these reports, I came to believe that Paul Manafort, as a person comfortable working with Russia to influence elections in Eastern Europe and heavily in debt to Oleg Deripaska, agreed to work for free for the Trump campaign in order to provide helpful information to the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. Furthermore, the Russian government tried very hard to make other contacts with the Trump campaign, but were largely unsuccessful. Trump was seen as a relatively pro-Russian candidate and thus also attracted pro-Russian political operatives such as Michael Flynn to his campaign. Because very few other Republicans were willing to work with Trump at that time, they took on influential positions in the campaign.

I never saw any evidence that Trump himself had any contacts inside Russia or sought out Russian help for his campaign. He did have a long-standing personal interest in getting a deal for a Trump tower in Moscow, but he was also already the most pro-Russian candidate and had public statements supporting Russian interests as far back as the 1980s. There was no need for blackmail or bribes to change his behavior.

However, I also believed that Trump, mostly because of personal vanity and a desire to protect the narrative of his “significant electoral victory” sought to hide and minimize Russian election interference. In his own words this is why he fired FBI director James Comey. He also crafted a lie for his son about the meeting in Trump tower with a Russian lawyer. His clear antipathy towards the “Russia story” and penchant for rewarding loyalty from his subordinates led them to lie to the FBI and Congress about otherwise meaningless Russian contacts. Trump also attacked and demeaned the FBI, the Special Counsel’s office, John McCain, and others for continuing the investigate the Russian election interference even before the Trump campaign became a subject of that investigation.

However, despite all these public reports, Mueller’s report concludes that there was no conspiracy between anyone in the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence or the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency hacking group. The attorney general also concludes that Trump did not attempt to obstruct justice in trying to repress the investigation.

So there’s a contradiction here. I have cited a number of reports that Paul Manafort had the motive, means, and opportunity to conspire with pro-Russian forces outside the US to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. There’s even a report that he deliberately shared internal Trump campaign data with pro-Russian operatives in Ukraine. Many of these reports are based on Mueller’s own court filings. If this is true, how did Mueller then conclude that there was no conspiracy between any Trump campaign official and Russian agents? Is the conclusion just narrowly focused on the Russian intelligence service and Internet Research Agency? Were the news reports cited above just wrong? How and why were they incorrect? Am I reading more into the reports than was actually there?

I’m also still left with a lot of unresolved questions about the story. Who in the Trump campaign directed the change to the 2016 Republican party platform with respect to Ukraine? Why was the Special Counsel’s office so aggressive in pursuing Paul Manafort if the crimes they found were not related to Russian interference? They could have handed off the evidence to another department like they did with the Cohen case, but instead chose to pursue it themselves.

I’m left with so many unresolved questions and contradictions that I’m not sure what went wrong in my inference or what to believe. I can think of a few possibilities:

1. The media reports listed above are just incorrect. Much of the reporting about Manafort’s or other campaign official’s contacts with Russian operatives were overblown.
2. The reporting was mostly correct but there was not enough evidence to actually build a case against anyone in the Trump campaign.
3. The scope of the Mueller investigation was much more narrow that I believed. Maybe he only looked into conspiracy between Manafort and the official Russian government or the actual DNC hackers rather than Russian nationals in general.
4. Mueller actually found a lot of evidence but chose not to prosecute based on that evidence because it risks outing counter-intelligence sources that are necessary to protect against foreign interference in the future.