Pennsylvania turns up several times in the redacted Mueller report

Tucked in the 448-page redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election are several references to Pennsylvania, a state critical to President Donald Trump’s victory.

Among them is this nugget on Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman and chief strategist, describing polling and strategy during an Aug. 2, 2016, conversation with his longtime business partner Konstantin Kilimnik. Prosecutors described Kilimnik as having ties to Russian intelligence.

“Manafort briefed Kilimnik on the state of the Trump Campaign and Manafort’s plan to win the election. That briefing encompassed the Campaign’s messaging and its internal polling data. According to Gates, it also included discussion of “battleground” states, which Manafort identified as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. Manafort did not refer explicitly to “battleground” states in his telling of the August 2 discussion.”

Rick Gates, a business associate of Manafort, cooperated with the Mueller probe and testified against Manafort, who was convicted last year on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, and separately pleaded guilty to additional felonies, including conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The report says that wasn’t the only instance of Manafort sharing internal polling data, and that “the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.”

Investigators couldn’t assess what Kilimnik did with the data. They also didn’t identify a connection between the shared polling data and Russia’s interference efforts.

The report detailed interference efforts in Pennsylvania by the Internet Research Agency, which investigators say “conducted social media operations targeted at large U.S. audiences with the goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system.”

The group also organized political rallies leading up to the 2016 election, including Oct. 2 rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia advertised as “Miners for Trump” events. An image from social media posts advertising the rallies showed a coal miner, with the words: “How many PA workers lost their jobs due to Obama’s destructive policies? Help Mr. Trump fix it!”

Those rallies were described in Mueller’s February 2018 indictment of 13 Russians involved in the social media interference efforts. Similar events were planned in New York and Florida.

Whether any of the events actually took place is unclear. Permits were not requested for rallies in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

But the Russian trolls were active on social media, according to the report. The IRA-controlled social media accounts made over 80,000 posts before being deactivated in August 2017, reaching “at least 29 million U.S persons.”

Washington correspondent Laura Olson can be reached at 202-780-9540 or lolson@mcall.com