Senate Intelligence panel's fifth volume of Russia investigation report

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort passed internal Trump campaign information to a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election, a new bipartisan Senate report concludes.

The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally behind the hack and leak operation that published stolen Democratic Party emails, and that WikiLeaks — the website that published them — played a key role and "very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort."

The Trump campaign sought to take advantage of those leaks by asking for advance notice of the WikiLeaks disclosures, crafting public relations strategies around them, and even encouraging "further theft of information and continued leaks."

Among the key findings:

That then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort was working with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, and sought to share internal campaign information with Kilimnik. The committee says it obtained "some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected" to Russia's 2016 hacking operation and concludes Manafort's role on the campaign "represented a grave counterintelligence threat."

That Trump and senior campaign officials sought to obtain advance information on WikiLeaks' email dumps through Roger Stone, and that Trump spoke to Stone about WikiLeaks, despite telling the special counsel in written answers he had "no recollections" that they had spoken about it.