Top democrat lays out mountain of evidence tying Trump campaign to Russia

Democrat Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, opened Monday's congressional hearing on ties between Russia and the Trump campaign with a marathon statement.

Schiff took 15 minutes to make his statement, triple the usual time given, and proceeded to lay out a plethora of evidence related to President Trump's and his advisers' ties to Russia.

Schiff pointed to a number of incidents, spanning from the early days of Trump's presidential campaign to present day, to make his case:

• Spearphishing operations by Russian operatives that were launched in 2015 in an attempt to hack into the computers of Democratic and Republican organizations in Washington
• Targeted leaks of stolen data - dumped through platforms like DC Leaks and WikiLeaks - in order to weaken the Clinton campaign, while leaving the Trump campaign unscathed
• In July 2016, Carter Page, one of Trump's former national security advisers, traveled to Moscow after being approved to do so by the Trump campaign. While there, Page gave a speech in which he was critical of the US and its efforts to fight corruption and promote democracy
• Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled the explosive Trump-Russia dossier, mentioned that Russian sources had informed him of a meeting between Page and Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russian state-owned corporation Rosneft. Sechin is reportedly a former KGB agent and a close confidant of Putin's
• Christopher Steele said his sources told him Page was offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19% share of Rosneft. Reuters later reported that 19.5% of Rosneft was sold, while broker fees and purchasers were unknown
• Steele also said his sources told him the Trump campaign was offered damaging information on Clinton in exchange for Russia-friendly policies. Those policies included refraining from criticizing Russia's aggression toward Ukraine, as well as attacking NATO allies for not paying their dues
• Those policies, "even as recently as the President's meeting last week with Angela Merkel, have now presciently come to pass," Schiff said. The Republican party's platform was also altered prior to the convention, and a section that supported the provision of "lethal defensive weapons" to Ukraine was removed
• The Republican delegate who originally offered the provision said that it was removed at the insistence of the Trump campaign
• Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, worked with and was on the payroll of Pro-Russian Ukrainian interests
• According to Steele, Manafort chose Page as the liaison between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
• Manafort and Page both attended the Republican National Convention, along with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Kislyak met with Page, as well as Trump advisers JD Gordon and Walid Phares
• Kislyak also met with Trump campaign surrogate and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions later denied, during his Senate confirmation hearing, having met with any Russian officials
• After the RNC concluded in July, the first stolen Clinton emails were leaked on WikiLeaks. The hacker Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for the hacks, but cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike, Mandiant, and ThreatConnect reviewed the information and concluded that it was the work of Russian intelligence operatives
• The US intelligence apparatus later confirmed that the information was obtained and used by Russian intelligence, while Guccifer 2.0 acted as a front for the operation
• Later in July, Trump openly praised the hacking of Clinton's emails and invited Russia to further expose his opponent's emails, saying that they would be rewarded by the media for doing so
• In the beginning of August, Trump adviser Roger Stone says during a speech that he "has communicated with Assange," and that more leaks will be coming, including an October surprise
• In mid-August, Stone was in contact with Guccifer 2.0 and wrote an article for Breitbart in which he denied Guccifer's links to Russian intelligence
• Later that month, Stone tweeted that Podesta's emails would be hacked and leaked
• Stone also tweeted, "I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #Lockherup." "Payload coming," he noted. Podesta's hacked emails were published two days later
• After winning the election, Donald Trump appointed Michael Flynn as his national security adviser. Flynn was paid by RT, a Kremlin propaganda medium, and other Russian entities in the past
• In December, Flynn had a covert conversation with Kislyak during which they discussed the sanctions former President Obama had slapped on Russia that day for its meddling in the US election. Two officials said that Flynn had implied the Trump administration would be lifting those sanctions
• Flynn misrepresented the phone call, and Vice President Mike Pence, who did not know about the details of the call, publicly defended Flynn. Trump was aware of the phone call and did not fire Flynn until two weeks later, when the American public found out after the media reported on it

After detailing the litany of connections between Trump and Russia, Schiff admited that the connections could be circimstaintial.

"But it is possible, maybe more than possible, that [the events outlined above] are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated, and that the Russians used the same techniques to corrupt US persons that they have employed in Europe and elsewhere," said Schiff.

"We simply don't know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out," concluded Schiff.

Here's Schiff's full remarks, as transcribed by Time.

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