A national security analyst explained on CNN Thursday how special counsel Robert Mueller's report may be "weaponized" by the Kremlin — and by President Donald Trump.
"This report is a gift to the government of Russia," Obama-era National Security Council member Sam Vinograd said. "This is a very proud moment for Vladimir Putin."
The public already knows, Vinograd added, that Putin "likes to use controversial and inflammatory issues as a weapon."
"He'll weaponize this report to continue to sow divisions, spread confusion and undermine the credibility of our institutions," she said.
Furthermore, "we have every reason to assume that President Trump used this document as a green light to continue doing what he was doing on the campaign."
"He's claiming that because there are no further criminal indictments against him or members of his team, he didn't do anything wrong," Vinograd added. "So we should expect him to continue this behavior going forward in the 2020 campaign cycle."
Mueller's report "lays out in excruciating detail a multipronged, sustained and systematic attack against the United States using all kinds of tools — President Trump was just one of them."
"From an intelligence operations standpoint," she concluded, "Vladimir Putin launched a very successful operation that is still ongoing."
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