Trump team’s contacts with Russia come under scrutiny

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions talked with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice during the U.S. presidential campaign, leading the former senator to recuse himself Thursday from an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A look at the known contacts between Trump associates and Russia:

The Justice Department acknowledged Thursday that the attorney general twice spoke with the Russian envoy when Sessions was a senator and involved in Donald Trump’s campaign. Those discussions with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, first reported in The Washington Post, seem to contradict Sessions’ sworn statements during his confirmation hearings when asked what he would do if “anyone affiliated” with the campaign had been in contact with Russia. Sessions said Thursday that he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.”

Trump’s national security adviser resigned Feb. 13 after reports he misled White House officials about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. — which Trump was told about soon after he took office. Flynn eventually lost the president’s trust after he said at first that he didn’t discuss sanctions with the Russian envoy during the transition, but later admitted he may have done so. Separately, in 2015, Flynn gave a paid speech in Moscow and sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a dinner. Flynn received a Ukrainian peace plan involving the Russian Crimea dispute before he resigned. That plan was cobbled together by pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko and two men with ties to Trump’s namesake company — longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump Organization business adviser Felix Sater. Sater, a Russian-born former Mafia informant, was named by Trump as an adviser to the Trump Organization as recently as 2010 even though Sater had been convicted in a stock fraud scheme.

Trump’s ex-campaign chairman resigned in August after The Associated Press disclosed his firm’s covert lobbying efforts on behalf of the former pro-Russian ruling political party in the Ukraine. Those efforts, which occurred before Manafort joined the Trump camp, included attempts to get positive news coverage of Ukrainian officials and efforts to undercut sympathy for Yulia Tymoshenko, an imprisoned rival of then-Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych. More recently, The New York Times reported Manafort and other members of Trump’s campaign had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials; Manafort said he had “never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers.”

He said during the election he did not have any deals in Russia, even though he held the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. He has been contradictory when describing his relationship with Putin, insisting during the campaign he had “no relationship with” the Russian leader and no recollection of ever meeting him. But several times in prior years, he has said the opposite. Trump has had conversations with Putin since the election.