National security reporter Garrett Graff has written a lengthy essay for Wired that runs down the major holes that remain in the narrative that special counsel Robert Mueller has told so far in his court filings.
In his essay, Graff notes that Mueller has shown he has extensive documentation of both the Trump campaign and Trump associates reaching out to Russian nations and agents during the 2016 presidential election.
What he hasn't divulged, however, has been the contents of those communications.
Given this, Graff writes that there are at least five burning questions about Trump-Russia mysteries that have remained unsolved throughout Mueller's court filings so far. In order, they are:
- How did Donald Trump and the Trump Organization react to the progress of the Trump Tower Moscow project?
- Who directed Michael Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak?
- Why did Manafort turn over polling data to Konstantin Kilimink?
- What are Konstantin Kilimnik’s ties to Russian intelligence?
- Why did Russian hackers only target Hillary Clinton's campaign email system "for the first time" after Trump publicly asked Russia to find her "missing emails?"
This last question is particularly crucial, argues Graff, because it could show that Trump was knowingly sending a signal to Russian intelligence services to commence hacking the Clinton campaign's emails.
"Mueller doesn’t note in the document that this was the same day Trump invited Russia to hack Clinton’s email, but in writing about the day Mueller adds two seemingly unnecessary details: First, that the GRU did it 'after hours,' which, accounting for the time difference, would mean after Trump’s campaign trail comments," Graff writes. "And second, that the attack on Clinton’s email directly was “for the first time,” a fact that Mueller would have to prove in a trial, meaning he has evidence that makes him confident the action was new in Russia’s strategy."
