Manafort “was secretly communicating with a Russian intelligence officer…while the Russian intelligence operation to assist Trump was ongoing,” the report said. In a statement his current campaign called the allegations of cooperation with Russia a “hoax” and said the Senate report did not prove any collusion. But Mueller was running a criminal investigation, which concluded that despite numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia a case of criminal conspiracy could not be made. The Senate report went further in outlining the national security risks. “The special counsel’s inability to ‘establish’ a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia does not convey the breadth and complexity of the threat presented by their actions,” the Senate report says.

Source: Manila Times August 19, 2020 16:20 UTC