Speaking to MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann explained that up until the recent findings, there was only the information that Paul Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates gave to prosecutors. Russian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik was given internal polling information from the Trump campaign that he handed to Russian intelligence.
“But the big unknown and our report says, we did not know what Konstantin Kilimnik did with that data,” Weissmann explained.
“And the defense was also saying, ‘well, this was just being used in Ukraine. It was for business purposes. That never made a lot of sense to us, but we didn’t have evidence. And today, what is new, Nicolle, is that the Treasury Department, certainly with the approval of the DNI, that is the highest intelligence office in the government, has said that Konstantin Kilimnik gave that material, which he repeatedly got during the 2016 campaign to Russian intelligence. So, you now have a direct link of something that went internal sensitive data that went from the Trump campaign through Paul Manafort to Konstantin Kilimnik to the Russians,” he added.
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace asked what information the United States (US) Treasury Department had before now that prevented them from being able to officially make the declaration.
“Well, the one thing that it’s clear, as you’ve reported, Nicolle, we did not have the piece that is what Kilimnik did with the polling data that we now know from the release today actually went, as Clint said, directly to Russian intelligence,” Weissmann explained.
“The interesting question that I don’t know the answer to is was that information known to the intelligence community at the time of the Mueller investigation.”
“You know, my sort of educated speculation on that would be it seems like it would have to have been known because the Biden administration has only been operational for — I’m in New York, so I’ll say a New York minute. So, it seems unlikely that they really went ahead with that deep investigation and got the information that quickly,” he concluded.