OPINION — At almost every crucial moment in the Mueller report, President Donald J. Trump is recorded having expressed concerns to advisors that reports of Russia’s election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election.
The legitimacy of Trump’s election should be questioned and investigated.
“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” is the first conclusion on page one of the 448-page Mueller report on the first text page.
But no one has yet investigated to see if that Russian interference really led to Trump’s election. In its January 2017 report, the Intelligence Community said it did “not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election.”
The Mueller report said during the 2016 campaign, “Trump expressed skepticism that Russia had hacked the emails at the same time as he and other campaign advisors privately sought information…about any further planned WikiLeaks release…”
In other words, Trump actively used and benefited from Russian hacking of Clinton and Democratic Party emails and the Russian distribution of them along with campaign messages on social media.
“After the election, when questions persisted about possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign, the President-Elect continued to deny any connections to Russia and privately expressed concerns that reports of the Russian election interference might lead the public to question the legitimacy of his election,” according to the Mueller report.”
According to the report, Hope Hicks, for years one of Trump’s closest assistants, said in an interview with Mueller’s team, that Trump, after receiving his first briefing on the Russian activities from chiefs of the Intelligence Community said, “The President-Elect viewed the intelligence community assessment as his ‘Achilles heel’ because even if Russia had no impact on the election, people would think Russia helped him win, taking away from what he had accomplished.”
Did the Russian pre-election hacking and distribution of anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Trump messages through social media make the difference?
Where were the Russian 2016 election efforts directed?
Buried in the Mueller report is mention of an August 2, 2016 dinner between then-Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian former colleague with alleged connections to Moscow intelligence. At that dinner, according to the Mueller report, Manafort disclosed that the Trump “’battleground’ states in the 2016 election were Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.”
Mueller’s report admits investigators never discovered what Kilimnik did with that information along with internal Trump campaign polling data passed on to Kilimnik by Manafort’s campaign assistant, Rick Gates.
However, Trump surprised experts by winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in his upset victory.
Mueller’s report also disclosed that in an email, Guccifer 2.0, an online name for Russian GRU [Army intelligence] cyber warriors, said the Russian campaign “releases were organized around thematic issues, such as specific states (e.g. Florida and Pennsylvania) that were perceived as competitive in the 2016 presidential election.”
Trump won both those states.
“Russian election influence came principally from the Internet Research Agency [IRA],” according to the Mueller report. By mid-2016, IRA was “supporting the Trump campaign and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
Facebook estimated that IRA messaging reached 126 million people, and IRA-controlled Twitter accounts totaled 3,184, with a messaging reach of 1.4 million people, according to the Mueller report, although it did not say in which states the people were located.
IRA promoted “a series of pro-Trump rallies in Florida in August 2016; and a series of pro-Trump rallies in October 2016 in Pennsylvania,” according to the Mueller report.
Trump himself retweeted the IRA-generated tweet publicizing the August 20, 2016 Miami rally that IRA had organized. And a fake IRA Facebook account then posted a message that “Mr. Trump posted about our event in Miami! This is great!”
Analysis of the November election voting showed the number of people across the country who voted in 2016, but not for either Trump or Hillary Clinton or any other presidential candidate topped 2.1 million, according to the United States Election Project. It showed that 138.8 million people voted nationwide in 2016, but only 136.7 million voted for president.
In some of the targeted states mentioned in the Mueller report, the drop off of those voting for president was particularly noticeable.
In Michigan, for example, where Trump won by just 13,100 votes, 87,810 people who voted in 2016 did not vote for president, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s website. That was nearly double the undervotes for president in 2012. Five percent of those who did vote for president in 2016 chose third-party candidates, as opposed to one percent in 2012.
In Wisconsin, where Trump won by only 22,000 votes out of some 3 million cast for president, 23,000 went to write-ins and another 160,000 to third-party candidates.
In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 44,292 votes, the narrowest presidential margin in 176 years. However, of those who voted for president, some 200,000 voted for three other listed candidates and another 50,076 wrote in names of other individuals.
Even in Florida, where Trump won by 112,000 votes out of over 9 million who went to the polls, 289,000 voters turned to third-party candidates and another 90,000 wrote in names of other individuals.
Based on these results, Trump should worry about his legitimacy because as Mueller reported, “A Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hilary Clinton.”
It is time for a non-government entity to analyze, if possible, the actual impact on 2016 voters and non-voters who were targeted by the Russian social media campaign. If such foreign operations worked in 2016, they most certainly will be attempted again in 2020.
Read more from Walter Pincus in The Cipher Brief
