determine the full extent of Russia’s weaponization of social media. This includes mapping the network of covert personas and accounts that Russia deployed; determining how Russia amplified accounts and propaganda, including through paid advertising; and understanding fully how Russian disinformation spread within and across platforms.
To answer these questions, the Committee must develop a more comprehensive picture of what happened on those platforms, but also how Russian disinformation spread to other social media platforms. The Committee also has a responsibility to investigate how Russian disinformation spread to press reporting and public debate; whether and how the presidential campaigns used or were harmed by this covert influence operation; and, where relevant, propose policy and legislative changes that can help guard against future foreign government weaponization of technology platforms.
- Financial leverage. Donald Trump’s finances historically have been opaque, but there have long been credible allegations as to the use of Trump properties to launder money by Russian oligarchs, criminals, and regime cronies. There also remain critical unanswered questions about the source of President Trump’s personal and corporate financing. For example, Deutsche Bank, which was fined $630 million in 2017 over its involvement in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme, consistently has been the source of financing for President Trump, his businesses, and his family. We have only begun to explore the relationship between President Trump and Deutsche Bank, and between the bank and Russia. Moreover, as the Committee has learned, candidate Trump’s private business was actively negotiating a business deal in Moscow with a sanctioned Russian bank during the election period. We must also seek to determine: Did the Russian government, through business figures close to the Kremlin, seek to court Donald Trump and launder funds through the Trump Organization; and did candidate Trump’s financial exposure via Deutsche Bank or other private loans constitute a point of leverage that Russia may have exploited and may still be using?
Money-laundering and foreign payments. The Special Counsel’s Office has secured indictments against or guilty pleas from Paul Manafort, candidate Trump’s campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, candidate Trump’s deputy campaign chairman. Numerous criminal offenses have been charged by the grand jury, including money-laundering. As the indictments and guilty pleas allege, Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates funneled “millions of dollars in payments into foreign nominee companies and bank accounts, opened by them and their accomplices in nominee names and in various foreign countries, including Cyprus, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and the Seychelles. Manafort and Gates hid the existence of the foreign companies and bank accounts, falsely and repeatedly reporting to their tax preparers and to the United States that they had no foreign bank accounts.”
Mr. Manafort also continued to communicate during his tenure on President Trump’s campaign with a former Russian associate, who the Special Counsel described in court as “a long-time Russian colleague…who is currently based in Russia and assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service.” The Committee’s investigation must seek to determine whether Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates’s money-laundering activities, tied to pro-Russian interests, constituted a point of leverage that Russia sought to benefit from or
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