Scott Dworkin’s Research Report Exposed Trump’s Russian Business Ties Before Dossier
Democratic Coalition co-founder Scott Dworkin believes his report became one of cornerstone pieces of information about Trump’s connections to Russian election interference, relied upon by the Obama White House before they obtained a copy of Chrisopher Steele’s dossier delivered via diplomatic channels to GOP Senator John McCain.
I interviewed Dworkin about the pair of bombshell post-election reports he unearthed, showing that Donald Trump’s ties to Russia date back over 30-years, and parts of which I covered before and after the 2016 election in both the Huffington Post and Occupy Democrats.. (see reports embedded below)
This week, Joe Biden broke his silence on the Obama Administration’s handling of the Trump-Russia election intrigue with a lengthy article in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Dworkin delivered his first report about Donald Trump’s Russian ties just days after the 2016 election, from which he believes that former Vice President Joe Biden cited as a reference during his recent public appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Biden’s candid commentary to the Council is destined to be remembered as the first draft of history for his role in the 2016 election, as Politico reports:
He expressed regret, in hindsight, given the intelligence he says came in after Election Day. “Had we known what we knew three weeks later, we may have done something more,” Biden, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, said.
Former VP Biden also placed particular emphasis on his meeting with Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, when he infamously refused to backup the American intelligence agencies, as a key inflection point in Russia’s campaign to interfere in the 2016 campaign.
Scott Dworkin told me about his post-election reports detailing Donald Trump’s numerous Russian business ties and Kremlin links, he was not equivocal.
Q: What information do you believe swayed Biden after the election?
Scott Dworkin: The research we did at The Coalition, and also early reports from the joint intelligence assessment eventually released to the public in January 2017.
Q: Why do you believe that your report on Trump’s Russia ties swayed the Vice President?
SD: Following the election there were multiple reports published by us at The Democratic Coalition that uncovered major business ties between Donald Trump and Russia.
Involving millions in transactions.
These transactions included everything from selling his cologne there, and Trump Vodka, to the sales trips they would make to Russia, etc. We also uncovered hundreds of videos and pictures of Trump, his family & his team doing business in Russia over the past 30 years.
Q: Why did your information on three decades of Trump’s ties to Russia matter so much?
SD: If you recall, after Trump’s infamous press conference in Florida, where he publicly asked Putin for help obtaining stolen emails from Hillary Clinton, he spent the entire rest of the campaign denying all ties to Russia.
Even Fusion GPS cited those very same Russian business ties as the basis for their deeper dive into Trump’s affairs, culminating in their commissioning of the ‘Trump Russia dossier.’
As an outside group, the Democratic Coalition knew absolutely nothing of their investigation, but reached the same conclusions from the same data.
Q: Was there anything else special about your report that hadn’t come to the attention of the White House or VP Biden previously?
SD: My report simplified the connections and connected the dots in a way that wasn’t happening from other sources which tend to overwhelm with details.
Had we known how extensively the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, the election probably would have led to a different outcome.
There were so many different scandals swirling around Trump at one time, it was hard to focus on just one.
And with the release of the Access Hollywood tape, it made it impossible for the Russia scandal to be at the forefront.
Former Vice President Biden also told the Council on Foreign Relations that it was his meeting with GOP Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell — who specifically refused to warn the American people about Russian election interference — that he viewed as the tipping point in the GOP’s plan to put party over country. Politico wrote:
Joe Biden said Tuesday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stopped the Obama administration from speaking out about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign by refusing to sign on to a bipartisan statement of condemnation.
That moment, the former Democratic vice president said, made him think “the die had been cast … this was all about the political play.”
Biden was probably shocked because the USA’s post-World War II political norms — of which he was a firm adherent — were elaborated by a former Republican Senator, Arthur Vandenberg, whose “Speech Heard Round the World” marked the death of American isolationism.
Vandenberg later famously declared in 1947 that we must stop “partisan politics at the water’s edge.”
I asked Scott Dworkin why the Republican Senate leader’s decision to break with America’s intelligence agencies happened. He said:
“Mitch McConnell did nothing but allow Russian interference to happen. Republicans in Congress didn’t tell the American people about the Russian interference, because they thought it would hurt Trump. And they are right. It would have.”
“He would have lost the election. They’re still letting Russia interfere in our democracy today,” says Dworkin.
Since releasing his reports, Scott Dworkin has gone on to become one of the most widely shared Twitter users in all of American politics, a regular MSNBC contributor and launched many viral hashtags including #TrumpLeaks, #TrumpRussia and #25thAmendmentNow.
The Democratic Coalition — the group Dworkin co-founded with Nate Lerner, and Chaired by Jon Cooper— established chairs in all 50 states and 3 US districts, fighting in 4 special elections, had over 900 million Facebook impressions, and created an in real life action network of 60,000 citizens across the country.
The Dworkin Report dated 11/10/2016:
The Unabridged Dworkin Report dated 11/14/2016:
