Wisconsin Mentioned 2 Times In Mueller Report

WISCONSIN -- Robert Mueller's sweeping, 22-month investigation ended with the special counsel finding neither President Donald Trump nor members of his campaign plotted or coordinated with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, authorities said.

But Wisconsin did manage to come up twice in the exhaustive 448-page report - once that had to do with Wisconsin's status as a "battleground state" and a with ties to the Russian Intelligence system. The other was Reince Priebus' advice to Trump.

According to a CBS 58 report, the Trump campaign listed Wisconsin as one of four U.S. "battleground states" in an election briefing with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is linked with Russian Intelligence.

According to multiple reports, Kilimnik, a political consultant and a native of the Ukraine, was indicted by Mueller's grand jury in June 2018, on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice in a case against former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

The other Wisconsin tie in the Muller report is when former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told Trump: "don't talk about Russia, whatever you do" before the president met with former FBI director James Comey.

Russians Tried Hacking Wisconsin Systems In 2016

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported that Wisconsin's voter registration system was, in fact, not targeted Russian hackers during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, which was narrowly won by Republican Donald Trump.

According to a WISN 12 report, the state Elections Commission had been informed by the Department of Homeland Security that Russian Hackers attempted to exploit apparent vulnerabilities in the state's IT security systems to access the databases. They were not successful, Department of Homeland Security officials said.

In getting back to state officials, the Department of Homeland Security said an entirely different system had been targeted by hackers - but stopped short of continuing its claim that the Russians were up to no good. "Based on our external analysis, the WI IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission," Juan Figueroa, with Homeland Security's Office of Infrastructure Protection stated in an email published in a WISN report.

Michael Hass, Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator, had maintained that Russians were not involved in any pre-election shenanigans.

"The scanning had no impact on Wisconsin's system or the election," Hass said in a statement. "Internet security provided by the state successfully protected our systems. Homeland Security specifically confirmed there was no breach or compromise of our data."

According to a Chicago Tribune report published in late June, Hass said the DHS could have provided more detail and reported more quickly the apparent threats to elections systems at the local level. Wisconsin ended up being one of 21 U.S. states that were reportedly targeted by Russian hackers. The DHS announced news of the potential data breaches at a June 21 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, but didn't include Wisconsin as one of the affected states.

There is no telling what impact Russian hackers may have had in the outcome of the November 2016 presidential election in other states. Republican Donald Trump won the Wisconsin's ten electoral votes by a razor-thin margin.

Trump won Wisconsin over Democrat Hillary Clinton by a margin of 47.2 percent to 46.5 percent. The total number of votes separating the two was a mere 22,748 votes. According to a USA Today report, the disclosure came a day after Gov. Scott Walker used his veto pen to cut six jobs from the state Elections Commission.