The point is very clear. But let me clarify it: there was an effort by state actors to manipulate and aid a specific party in a way that is fully illegal.
It very likely did. The Muller report showed that it did, at least in all likelihood and given the evidence available. The report just stopped short of taking the next step, calling it proven and going forward with whatever the next step would have been.
It did so because of the very high bar Muller set himself given that the accused was the sitting president, that the DoJ under Barr claimed wrongly that the president is immune (=he were a king), and that he wanted the democratic system to act on the findings in the report.
>Volume I of the report concludes that the investigation did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities"
The (more recent) Republican Led Senate Intelligence Committee did find significant co-ordination - at best unwitting
To quote The Intercept:
In fact, the Senate report dismisses many of the most outrageous accusations involving Trump and Russia even as it provides overwhelming and damning evidence of Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win and the Trump campaign’s eagerness to embrace the Russian intervention.
But the Senate report goes much further than election interference and provides the first detailed examination of the broader and complex network of relationships between Trump, his ever-shifting circle of personal and business associates, and a series of Russian oligarchs and other Russian and Ukrainian figures with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
> it provides overwhelming and damning evidence of Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win and the Trump campaign’s eagerness to embrace the Russian intervention.
Micheal Flynn did not go to prison. Flynn pled guilty when threatened with the prospect of his son being charged and railroaded as well. Once he retained new legal council, he withdrew his guilty plea. The DoJ dropped the prosecution after exculpatory evidence came out that was being withheld by the FBI. Judge Sullivan decided to keep the case going instead of throwing it out- and eventually Trump pardoned Flynn.
Micheal Flynn was being charged for lying to FBI investigators about sanctions, when the transcripts of the calls were finally released by the FBI, it turns out he didn't even bring up sanctions with Kisylak at all. The FBI also withheld the original 302 from the interview with Flynn, and Peter Strzok, who was later fired for bias, had re-written the second 302 that was used to imply that Flynn had lied to investigators.
What's not proven, but suspected, is that the entire call to Kislyak was orchestrated by the Obama admin. Expelling the Russian diplomats/spies when Flynn was already under surveillance prompted the calls between Kislyak and Flynn. Flynn was in a foreign country when this happened, and given his place in the upcoming administration as well as his role under Obama's admin, it was a near guarantee that he would be in contact with Kislyak. He called Kislyak on an unsecured line while in a foreign country. Flynn would have known absolutely that the call was being surveilled, but he didn't believe he was doing anything untoward. What he didn't know was that the FBI would use this as a point to attack him. Comey even jokes about how sending agents to interview a WH staff member alone without legal counsel would never have been acceptable, but that Trump's young and inexperienced administration didn't realize it in time.
But that's all conjecture. What is not conjecture is fact that Flynn did not lie to the FBI, and should not have been charged as such.
> Micheal Flynn was being charged for lying to FBI investigators about sanctions, when the transcripts of the calls were finally released by the FBI, it turns out he didn't even bring up sanctions with Kisylak at all.
This is untrue. Specifically, "lying about sanctions" wasn't what he was charged with. He was charged with lying about asking Kisylak to refrain from escalating the situation, and a large part of his call was about sanctions and the Russian response to them.
Here's the Statement of Offense[1], and the direct quote is:
FLYNN falsely stated he did not ask Russia's ambassador to the United States to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions the United States has imposed on Russia.
In the transcripts of the call[2] he says:
But I ask Russia to do is to not, if anything, I know you have to have some sort of action, to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. Do you follow me?
and later:
I know, I -believe me, I do appreciate it, I very much appreciate it. But I really don't want us to get into a situation where we're going, you know~ where we do this and then you do something bigger, and then you know, everybody's got to go back and forth and everybody's got to be the tough guy here, you know?
and
And please make sure that its uh - the idea is, be -if you~ if you have to do something, do something on a reciprocal basis, meaning you know, on a sort of an even basis. Then that, then that is a good message and we'll understand that message. And, and then, we know that we're not going to escalate this thing, where we~ where because if we put out-ifwe send out 30 guys and you send out 60, you know, or you shut down every Embassy, r mean we have to get this to a -lefs, let's keep this at a level that uh is, is even-keeled, okay?
So it's pretty clear his original statement of offense is correct - he did talk Kisylak and ask him not to escalate, and then lied to the FBI about it.
