Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign manager of 2016 Trump campaign, said Sunday that investigators for the special counsel Robert Mueller “jumped to the conclusion” there was collusion with Russia.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Gates — who pleaded guilty in February 2018 to charges relating to lucrative political consulting work he did in Ukraine — criticized the interrogation he got by Mueller investigators and said they were cherry-picking testimony to put in the final report.
“Let’s make sure we have all of the facts before jumping to conclusions which is exactly what they did with the Mueller investigation and the idea that there was Russia collusion with the Trump campaign,” he said.
“When they went through the more than almost a thousand hours in various interviews with me, they would ask very specific questions yes or no and then a round of speculative questions. ‘Is this a possibility? Could that have happened?’” he added.
“All of those questions, I think, are designed to gain information they don’t know is proved… they would cherry pick some of that information and put it into the final Mueller report … I really am disappointed to see that was the approach and process.”
He said the campaign data he shared with a Russian operative was mischaracterized, and that it was simply “top line” information on poll numbers between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
“There has been a lot of misinformation over the last three years about [campaign data],” he said. “Just to be clear, for the first time hearing it from me, that campaign data, in most cases was dated and it was called top line data. That is simply that it has Trump 50% and Clinton 48%. There was no specific detail data about any of those polls. …. That information was given to Konstantin [Kilimnikj] to provide to people in Ukraine… and I took him at his word for that.”
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