Thread by @moscow_project

Starting now: Moscow Project Director @maxbergmann sits down with House Intelligence Chairman @RepAdamSchiff to discuss the Mueller report, tomorrow's testimony, and how to protect future elections from foreign interference. americanprogress.org/events/2019/07…

@maxbergmann @RepAdamSchiff .@WStachelberg: "The president has lied over and over again in claiming the investigation found no collusion, and tomorrow, the American people will learn what Mueller truly uncovered."

The Russia investigation has uncovered more than 270 contacts and 38 meetings between Trump's team and Kremlin-linked operatives—none of which were reported to the FBI. That includes sharing polling data with an alleged Russian spy. Read the full list: themoscowproject.org/explainers/tru…

.@WStachelberg: "Tomorrow, it will become clearer than ever that the Mueller report did not signal the end of the investigation but only signaled the beginning of the next phase."

.@RepAdamSchiff answers his own prescient opening statement from March 20, 2017: "Is it possible that all of these events and reports are entirely unrelated, and nothing more than an unhappy coincidence?"
The answer, very clearly: "No."
c-span.org/video/?c466218…

.@RepAdamSchiff: "One of the challenges of representing the seriousness of what the Trump campaign did ... is that we have learned about it in drips and drabs. If we hadn't known about that Trump Tower meeting until the Mueller report, you can just imagine the explosion."

.@MaxBergmann notes that the Russian online disinformation campaign was roughly the same size as the Clinton campaign's. We went into how that campaign worked in detail on @AssetPodcast: theassetpodcast.org/episode/runnin…

.@RepAdamSchiff points out that Trump would not have "trumpeted WikiLeaks's disclosure if he did not believe it was effective for his campaign." In fact, he cited it 164 times in the last month of the election—more than five times per day. thinkprogress.org/trump-mentione…

.@RepAdamSchiff: "The awful fortuity of 2016 is that, at a time when the Russians decided to maximally involve themselves in our election, John McCain was not the nominee of the GOP. It was Donald Trump ... and he welcomed it, and he built it into his campaign strategy."

@RepAdamSchiff .@RepAdamSchiff: "Without that critical context" that Russia was behind the hacking, "the press amplified what Russia was doing even as Donald Trump amplified it."

.@RepAdamSchiff: "Of course there was awareness in the Trump campaign" that Russia was interfering, including due to warnings from the FBI—and from the Russians themselves. Here's our breakdown of what the Trump campaign knew and when they knew it: themoscowproject.org/dispatch/what-…

.@RepAdamSchiff: "The idea that they were some innocent rubes falls completely flat" in the face of the Trump team's indignant denials of even the idea that they would have met with Russians during the campaign.

.@MaxBergmann highlights one of the biggest questions surrounding the Mueller report: Why wasn't Donald Trump Jr. called to testify?

.@RepAdamSchiff: "This case in some ways represents my life coming full circle" after having prosecuted a Russian spy in the 1980s. Read all about that case here: politico.com/magazine/story…

.@RepAdamSchiff describes how the case taught him what Russians look for when cultivating an asset. We explored how that works on @AssetPodcast: theassetpodcast.org/episode/cultiv…

.@RepAdamSchiff: "The status of the counterintelligence investigation is one of the big unanswered questions publicly. Privately we've been getting information about that ... The Mueller report is a criminal report," which doesn't say anything about the counterintel findings.

.@RepAdamSchiff points to Mike Flynn as an example of somebody who was compromised, because the Russians knew he was lying about his calls with Sergey Kislyak. Listen to this week's episode of @AssetPodcast to learn more: theassetpodcast.org/episode/payoff/

.@RepAdamSchiff says that Trump was compromised due to the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations during the campaign—especially after the Russian government lied about it on his behalf.

.@RepAdamSchiff: "We don't know whether Trump plans to continue Trump Tower Moscow after leaving office. He may think: 'Well, I may lose re-election; why shouldn't I keep my options open?' It's hard to think of something more compromising than a deal worth $100s of millions."

.@MaxBergmann: Was there an investigation into whether Russia helped fund Trump's campaign?
@RepAdamSchiff: "The short answer is we don't know ... which is why we've placed such a high priority on following the money."

.@RepAdamSchiff notes that Mueller clearly saw his mandate when it came to the election as very narrow: investigating the Russian efforts to influence the election and whether Trump or people associated with him were criminally involved with that effort.

.@RepAdamSchiff on the administration's obstruction efforts: "The goal, I think, of the Trump administration and Organization, even advancing what I think they know are spurious arguments, is just to draw this out as long as they can."

.@Maxbergmann notes that Mueller details at length Trump's efforts to limit the investigation by firing Jeff Sessions and replacing him with a loyalist—but doesn't mention that Trump effectively did so after the 2018 midterms by replacing him with Barr.

.@RepAdamSchiff: "If the country has a better understanding of the facts" of how Trump and his team worked with Russia, then sought to obstruct the investigation, after tomorrow's hearing, "I will consider it a success."

.@RepAdamSchiff: "For many Americans, just learning what is in the report will be a revelation."

.@MAxBergmann brings up this morning's reports that Trump is consulting with Devin Nunes about who should be his next Director of National Intelligence: politico.com/story/2019/07/…

And here's our Nunes File from last August, running down the many, many ways Nunes has run interference on Trump's behalf: themoscowproject.org/explainers/the…

.@RepAdamSchiff notes the similarity between the recent "deepfake" edited video of Nancy Pelosi and hoax videos claiming that Clinton was in failing health in 2016—a conspiracy theory the Trump campaign colluded with WikiLeaks to push. themoscowproject.org/dispatch/roger…

.@RepAdamSchiff compares the Trump administration's efforts to hold the president above the law to Andrew Jackson's famous decree about an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

.@RepAdamSchiff says that the Russians "actually don't need to change the vote count" to undermine our democracy; "they just need to create a doubt among our people as to whether we can rely on the vote count."