The Biden administration slapped Konstantin Kilimnik, an assistant of Paul Manafort and alleged Russian spy, with sanctions on Thursday as it escalated economic measures against Moscow.
In announcing the move, the Treasury Department suggested that Kilimnik gave internal Trump campaign polling data to Russian intelligence during the 2016 election.
“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” the release reads.
That goes significantly further than any previous assessment of the fate of internal Trump campaign polling data that Paul Manafort notoriously shared with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign. A report from the Senate Intelligence Committee released in August 2020 declined to draw a conclusion on what Kilimnik ultimately did with the polling data, but said that its own investigation was operating with limited information…