As alluded to in the previous post,  when the Mueller report is examined in detail, the question of what value is to be placed on it and the investigation upon which it is based is problematical, to say the least. As I have stated up front, knowing the background of Mueller and his team members, I never had much confidence that the report would be a complete answer to all the questions which were the cause of its creation. Nothing at all from the time of its release in March has caused me to change my mind one jot. Quite the opposite.

Every day, it seems, matters arise which tear into the credibility of the report and its authors, whoever they may be. There are so many investigative journalists and citizen journalists looking at this whole investigation that the credibility of the whole Mueller report is in danger of destruction based on its content and not just on the persons creating it. John Solomon from The Hill news outlet has an article showing an example of the problems with the report.

From some of the earliest pages in Volume 1 of the Report (and a downloadable version is available from this site), we have an assessment of Konstantin Kilimnik as “having ties to Russian Intelligence”:-

and it goes on in the report to mention Kilimnik repeatedly, and as always with his constant connections to one of the persons charged by Mueller, Paul Manafort, taints that connection by his alleged “ties to Russian Intelligence”.  

In the article by John Solomon of The Hill, this is shown to be not only a false, if not fraudulent characterisation of Kilimnik, but that this falsity was known to the Mueller team. Kilimnik was – for years – an intelligence source for the US government.

“hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters…

He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show.

The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded.”

All this and more was in the hands of Mueller and the FBI itself and it is a matter for conjecture as to why none of this was ever mentioned in the Report. It is just added to an increasing number of cases where the report edits or leaves out information that might be relevant to an assessment of credibility or even relevant to question of culpability of a subject. Kilimnik worked for the the administration of former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, who is another villain in the piece, but this was well known to the FBI and US government.

(Former U.S. Embassy political officer ) Kasanof described Kilimnik as one of the few reliable insiders the U.S. Embassy had informing on Yanukovych. Kilimnik began his relationship as an informant with the U.S. deputy chief of mission in 2012-13, before being handed off to the embassy’s political office, the records suggest.…

“Three sources with direct knowledge of the inner workings of Mueller’s office confirmed to me that the special prosecutor’s team had all of the FBI interviews with State officials, as well as Kilimnik’s intelligence reports to the U.S. Embassy, well before they portrayed him as a Russian sympathizer tied to Moscow intelligence or charged Kilimnik with participating with Manafort in a scheme to obstruct the Russia investigation.”

Kilimnik is also shown as presenting Manafort with a supposed peace plan for the Ukraine (in Mueller Report pp139/140)

However, Solomon points out that State Department emails “showed Kilimnik first delivered a version of his peace plan in May 2016 to the Obama administration during a visit to Washington”.

(Kasanof) thanked Kilimnik for the detailed plan and added, “I passed the info to my bosses, who are chewing it over.” Kasanof told the FBI that he believed he sent Kilimnik’s peace plan to two senior State officials, including Victoria Nuland, Obama’s assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs.

So Kilimnik’s delivery of the peace plan to the Trump campaign in August 2016 was flagged by Mueller as potentially nefarious, but its earlier delivery to the Obama administration wasn’t mentioned.

The Mueller report often seems to leave more questions than it answers and one recurring theme is the presentation of certain matters as facts without showing Obama or Clinton campaign involvement/ knowledge. The question of ignoring exculpatory evidence will be examined as time goes on.

Mueller lawyers did charge Kilimnik with Obstruction of Justice and witness tampering over allegedly trying to get 2 witnesses to lie about lobbying, but the telephone calls from which we have the “evidence” don’t, on their face, show knowledge of falsity by Kilimnik. While the phraseology is suspicious, Manafort pleaded guilty to a raft of charges of which this was but one, and Kilimnik always remained in Europe beyond the reach of the US and thus his charges and their factual basis have not been tested in any US court.

This example of the questions arising by what Mueller himself described in his press statement of May 29 as being his “testimony”, isn’t such as would quieten congressional (or public) demands that he give evidence on oath to Congressional (or other) enquiries.

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