Special counsel Robert Mueller has been very busy lately investigating the Trump administration, and on Tuesday night his office revealed that yet another President Trump official “has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016,” according to ThinkProgress.org.
Rick Gates, a former associate of President Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is cooperating with the special counsel but was found guilty of directly communicating with a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the GRU (the Russian foreign military intelligence agency). His contact with the official reportedly occurred in September and October of 2016.
The Intelligence Officer that was in contact with Gates is allegedly responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee emails, that were later published to WikiLeaks. From those posts, Trump’s campaign then used the hacked emails to his advantage during his campaign in 2016 — but later argued they had, “absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.”
The alleged officer has yet to be revealed but according to Business Insider: “The identity of the individual is unclear, but the description bears similarities to Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.”
While the outcome of this investigation was a guilty verdict for Gates, the impact of the information he uncovered from his ties with Russia has yet to be revealed. Mueller’s team will reportedly be investigating those ties and the fate of how ethical and fair the 2016 Presidential election was, hangs in the balance.