This piece highlights one of the flaws of the Mueller report – the way in which it presents ambiguous “results” – not as open questions, but as “exonerative” conclusions. For instance, in the section on Kalimnik, the report states “The office did not establish a connection between Manafort’s shared polling data and Russia’s interference in the election…” clearly implying that no connection existed.
But it was equally true that Mueller was unable to establish that there was no connection between the Manafort data exchange, and targetting of groups by the Russian disinformation campaign – that the polling data was not passed up the chain of command of Russian intelligence, and/or was used by IRS.
As the saying goes, absense of evidence is not evidence of absense, and this particularly true where crimes and coverups are concerned. But throughout the Mueller report, the inability to prove a connection is presented as proof that there was no connection.