For over two years MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was the mainstream media’s queen of promoting the conspiracy of Russian collusion, connecting countless dots with no real connection. Like any true conspiracy theorist, she hasn’t revised any of her beliefs since the Mueller report imploded the core of her thesis.
While the likes of Maddow will never adjust their beliefs to evidence, it is amusing to revisit just how wrong many of her “bombshells” were. One man she devoted a large chunk of her show to on June 8th of last year was Konstantin Kilimnik, a man she saw as central to Paul Manafort’s guilt. “Today the case marked United States of America versus Paul J. Manafort Jr., became United States of America versus Paul J. Manafort Jr. and Konstantin Kilimnik” she opined, trying to connect the two as proof of Russian collusion.
She further explained that “now that Manafort is charged in a joint indictment alongside Russian citizen Konstantin Kilimnik, this prosecution and the investigation that goes along with it could no longer be stopped simply by Trump pardoning Manafort. To stop this part of the investigation, Trump would also have to pardon Konstantin Kilimnik, Russian citizen, a Russian intelligence operative. And I know Trump`s willing to push the envelope, but that seems unlikely.”
Now Kilimnik’s name it popping up again – but not in the way that Maddow and company would expect. According to The Hill’s John Solomon:
In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.
But hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.
Kilimnik’s past State Department ties are not mentioned in Mueller’s report despite the fact that he was a “sensitive” intelligence source for them since 2013.
Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either. He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show. The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded.Alan Purcell, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, told FBI agents that State officials, including senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, deemed Kilimnik to be such a valuable asset that they kept his name out of cables for fear he would be compromised by leaks to WikiLeaks.
Some of the information that Kilimnik provided the State Department included intel on Ukraine’s opposition bloc.
Kilimnik began his relationship as an informant with the U.S. deputy chief of mission in 2012–13, before being handed off to the embassy’s political office.State officials told the FBI that although Kilimnik had Ukrainian and Russian residences, he did not appear to hold any allegiance to Moscow and was critical of Russia’s invasion of the Crimean territory of Ukraine.
So why did none of this information make it into the Mueller report? Because it would’ve been impossible to portray Kilimnik as a Russian agent had the truth been included.
