While the final Mueller report appeared to effectively exonerate President Trump of actively seeking out Russian help to influence the 2016 Presidential election in his favor, the head of the Special Council believes that the foreign country did engage in what he calls a “systematic effort to interfere in our election.” Despite being unable to prove Trump’s involvement in the meddling, the report claims that Russia did make a sizeable effort to influence the outcome of the election in the Republican’s favor. One of the two major points of the report alleges that a “government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign” to undermine the Hillary Clinton campaign in an effort to bolster Trump’s chances of winning.

But according to a RealClear Investigations article published by Aaron Mate, the “Russian troll farm” claim was not actually supported by any real evidence in the report.

Federal judge has issued a significant rebuke of a core Mueller claim. Mueller claims that the IRA — a Russian troll farm — was the 2nd of “two principal interference operations” by Russian gov’t. But as judge notes, Mueller’s implied link between IRA & Russian gov’t was false: pic.twitter.com/UyzApdP5BH — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 9, 2019

According to the report, the unclear language used to describe “key events” in the report indicates “Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain” if the Russians actually “stole” Democratic documents that were leaked to the public in an attempt to weaken Clinton.

It also suggests that the report’s timeline of events put Julian Assange’s Wikileaks announcement of the defamatory documents before he had actually had any interaction with the source who provided them. How could he have announced the impending leak of information he didn’t have, or even knew existed?

This is a major blow not just to Mueller but to the entire “Russian Active Measures” talking point. As the judge acknowledges, the IRA (which, btw, put out juvenile clickbait mostly unrelated to the election) is a private entity & Mueller never establishes a Kremlin connection. pic.twitter.com/WT2n5nZ5Fy — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 9, 2019

Arguably the most important claim this article makes states that the report “falls far short” of providing any evidence that the social media influence of the Russian campaign was “even more than minimally related” to the final outcome of the 2016 election.

“Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.”

The central theme of this piece seems to be that despite making very serious claims about Russian involvement, Mueller and his team appeared to avoid conducting interviews (with the likes of Assange) that would have generated more factual results. Instead, the interference was linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) which Mate claims published “juvenile clickbait mostly unrelated to the election.”

I point out this disconnect in my latest piece: Mueller says the social media operation was the 2nd major component of a “sweeping and systematic” Russian gov’t interference campaign — yet he never actually shows how it’s connected to the Russian gov’t. https://t.co/04tKUmNw4Q pic.twitter.com/dR9qZCFdXt — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 9, 2019

The piece concludes by admitting that while none of the evidence above necessarily makes the claims of “sweeping and systematic” interference false, it is hard to argue that the Mueller report made a good case for its existence, or even who was really behind it.