At least 9 in Trump’s orbit had contact with Russians
WASHINGTON — After questions emerged about whether campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page had ties to Russia, President Donald Trump called him a “very low-level member” of a committee and said that “I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him.”
When it was revealed that his son met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, the president told reporters that “zero happened from the meeting” and that “the press made a very big deal over something that really a lot of people would do.”
And, last week, with the revelation that adviser George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his efforts to arrange meetings between Moscow and the Trump campaign, the president derided him as a “low-level volunteer.”
While Trump has sought to dismiss these Russia ties as insignificant, or characterized the people involved in them as peripheral figures, it has now become clear that special counsel Robert Mueller views at least some of them as important pieces of his sprawling investigation of Russian meddling in last year’s presidential campaign.
Documents released last week as part of Papadopoulos’ guilty plea show that Mueller’s team is deeply interested in the Trump campaign’s operations, including possible links to Moscow, at even the lowest levels. And Mueller’s interest in Russian contacts may extend to Trump’s business, as well, with the special counsel’s office recently asking for records related to a failed 2015 proposal for a Moscow Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the request.
A key question in the investigation — and one that hangs over Trump’s presidency — is whether these instances add up to a concerted Russian government effort to probe and infiltrate the Trump campaign, or whether they were isolated coincidences and, therefore, inconsequential. Ultimately, Mueller must decide
whether anyone in Trump’s orbit coordinated with the Russians, and, if so, if such actions were illegal or just unseemly. Collusion itself is not a crime.
The new court filings, along with recent interviews and other documents reviewed by The Washington Post, reveal more details than were previously known about the extent to which Trump’s campaign became a magnet for people who believed U.S. policy toward Russia should be retooled — and for Russians who agreed.
In all, documents and interviews show there are at least nine Trump associates who had contacts with Russians during the campaign or presidential transition. Some are well-known, and others, such as Papadopoulos, have been more on the periphery.
Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had extensive ties to Russian business interests, remained in close touch with a Russian colleague, and discussed holding private campaign briefings for a Russian businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A top Trump Organization attorney, Michael Cohen, corresponded through intermediaries with Moscow property developers about trying to build a Trump Tower there.
Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian attorney at Trump Tower in New York came after promises that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton they wanted to share with the Trump campaign. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also at that meeting, as well as a December encounter with Russia’s ambassador in which Kushner suggested setting up a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin.
Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to work with Russians to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. Page traveled to Moscow during the campaign. Another foreign policy adviser, J.D. Gordon, met with the Russian ambassador on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
The Russian ambassador also met twice with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, now Trump’s attorney general, and discussed sanctions with Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, during the presidential transition — a conversation that later led to Flynn’s resignation.
Russian government officials have rejected the notion that any contacts with Trump’s campaign or business were directed by the government or part of any effort to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.
Trump in the past denied that he or his associates communicated with Russia during the campaign. Now, he and his allies are seeking to minimize the importance of the contacts that have emerged.
“I think the American public can fully appreciate that those are isolated, obviously disconnected events, quite small in number for a presidential campaign,” said Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer. “Nothing about the actual facts published to date suggests that the president while he was a candidate ever met a Russian, ever spoke to a Russian, or colluded with anybody.”
Experts who have studied Russian tactics see something different: a picture emerging of a concerted and multifaceted Kremlin effort to infiltrate Trump’s campaign.
“You’ve got some consistency here in terms of the Russian tradecraft … The general pattern of Russians appearing to try to find soft spots, to find the soft underbelly of the campaign to make contact,” said Steve Hall, who retired from the CIA in 2015 after 30 years running and managing Russia operations. “I just think there’s way too much smoke out there for there to be absolutely no fire.”
Even if there was fire from the Russian side, it remains unclear how those within the Trump campaign reacted. In the case of Papadopoulos, new court filings show he shared his contacts with the Russians in at least one meeting with Trump and Sessions and other times with Trump’s campaign manager and lower level staffers. At times, according to emails described to The Post ,he was rebuffed. But in one August 2016 email exchange cited by prosecutors, national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis encouraged Papadopoulos to meet with Russian officials, writing, “Make the trip, if it is feasible.”
The release of the Papadopoulos guilty plea came amid a dramatic week in Washington that underscored the potential peril for Trump and his inner circle and revealed more details of Russia’s apparent efforts to meddle in the U.S. election in multiple ways.
Facebook and other social media companies provided more details about how their platforms were manipulated through what outside researchers have said was a sophisticated campaign to mimic American political conversation with the intention of shaping the behavior of U.S. voters — and in some cases by remotely organizing political rallies in American cities.