Thread by @SethAbramson

I'm still reading the SSCI Report.

I'll say the number of methods Trump used to hide calls is incredible:

🔹 Blocked Numbers
🔹 Multiple Phones
🔹 Trunk Lines
🔹 Borrowed Phones
🔹 Secretary Summaries
🔹 Restricted Record-keeping
🔹 Conference-call Drop-ins
🔹 Lies to Congress

PS/ People who claimed to have had virtually no contact with one another or not been part of the campaign were in fact having dozens of phone calls and meetings with campaign staff and using encrypted messaging services to communicate. All these people knew they were doing wrong.

PS2/ I will also tell you that the SSCI Report effectively confirms that Stone got Manafort hired while Stone was working with the Israelis, and that the Israelis immediately approached Trump's campaign after Manafort was hired because Stone was directing Trump-Israeli collusion.

PS3/ It's also now clear that the one time Stone told the truth was in 2015—when he left Trump's campaign and implied he did so so he'd have more latitude to operate via dirty tricks outside the limelight. That's exactly what he did—and exactly what Donald Trump wanted him to do.

PS4/ So much focus has been put on Roger Stone's contacts with the Russians that his contacts with the Israelis have been almost wholly ignored—even though the Israelis had so many go-betweens with the Russians that dealing with the Israelis got you to the Russians *right quick*.

PS5/ Trump and his crew of criminals almost always work through intermediaries. They largely eschew dealing directly with other major criminals—lackeys pass messages to other lackeys. My recent thread about "quadrilateral collusion" is becoming more relevant by the day, it seems.

PS6/ Gates and others confirm that just before the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin agents, the Trump campaign was *obsessed* with finding out *who was funding the Clinton Foundation*.

The document the Kremlin agents brought to Trump Tower? It related to exactly that.

PS7/ The SSCI Report confirms Trump regularly attended "family meetings" that included the men from his campaign that attended the June 2016 Trump-Russia meeting. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the chance they withheld from him that meeting is zero. Not "low"—*zero*.

PS8/ Trump was discussing at "family meetings" his desire for Clinton Foundation dirt. Kremlin agents arrived at his house and met with men who regularly attended his family meetings...and provided them Clinton Foundation dirt. The men say they hid this from Trump. They're liars.

PS9/ Trump's own attorney confirms that they're liars. And of course what this means is that Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort and *Donald Trump himself* can all be charged with federal felonies for lying to law enforcement to hide collusion. So this *matters*.

PS10/ Respectfully, if you think Roger Stone spoke to *Trump's secretary Rhona Graff* for *8 minutes* on June 30th, 2016, the day of a "Guccifer 2.0" (Russian GRU intel agency) drop—and wasn't in fact talking to *Trump* as Trump *held Graff's phone*— you're stupid as hell, sorry.

NOTE/ I urge anyone who doubts this analysis to pick up a phone, start a stopwatch, wait 8 minutes, and imagine being the entitled-jerkoff best friend of the GOP nominee for President of the United States and spending those minutes talking to his secretary. Sorry, never happened.

PS11/ The GOP-led Senate intel committee assessed that Trump "likely" spoke to Stone about WikiLeaks, meaning either the Republicans on the SSCI believe that Donald Trump has serious memory issues, or they believe he likely committed a federal felony. There's no in-between, here.

PS12/ A key item to remember: the GOP-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence clearly thinks Steve Bannon committed federal felonies by lying to federal investigators about Stone. Now Bannon's under federal indictment—and will be pressured to cut a deal. So will Barr stop it?

PS13/ Check out p. 229 of the SSCI Report to see a Trump campaign staffer asking Trump policy director John Mashburn if receiving stolen property is illegal if the property is available online. Mashburn's reply? "I don't see a problem." He analogizes Russian hackers to WikiLeaks.

PS14/ GATES: RNC "indicated [it] knew the timing of the upcoming [WikiLeaks] releases [in advance]."

WTF???

SSCI: "We did not examine the RNC's activity...on this topic."

WTF???

So we're left not knowing if the RNC colluded with a Kremlin cutout as well as the Trump campaign?

PS15/ SSCI: "Kushner never mentioned [cooperation between the RNC and the Trump campaign] in any interviews with the committee"—though Gates testified that there was such cooperation.

No wonder Kushner hid this information from Congress—Gates indicates it would be incriminating!