Kilimnik was reported by CNN, The New York Times and The Atlantic to be "Person A" listed in court documents filed by the Special Counsel against Manafort.
[5][6] United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 accused Kilimnik of being one of the proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Joe Biden to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration" to benefit the 2020 Trump presidential campaign.
[14] According to anonymous sources, when applying for his position with the IRI, he responded to the question about how he learned English by stating that the "Russian military intelligence" taught him and he became known among Moscow political operatives as "Kostya, the guy from the GRU".
Kilimnik himself told The New York Times in April 2018 that he had been dismissed for having freelanced as an interpreter for Manafort, which was effectively confirmed by a spokesman for the IRI who said such an action ran counter to the organization's code of ethics.
[17] From 2011 to 2013, with liaison to Viktor Yanukovych's chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin, Kilimnik, Manafort, Alan Friedman, Eckart Sager, who was a one time CNN producer, and Rick Gates advised on an international public relations strategy.
A journalist in Ukraine, Oleg Voloshyn, has disputed this assertion stating that he and Manafort wrote the op-ed and that he e-mailed the rough draft to Kilimnik.
[4] In 2018, CNBC reported Kilimnik to be variously "described as a fixer, translator or office manager to President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
[4] Court filings in late March 2018 allege that Gates knew that Kilimnik was a former officer with the Russian military intelligence service.
[38] The encounter which, according to prosecutor Andrew Weissmann goes "very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating," included a handoff by Manafort of internal polling data from Trump's presidential campaign to Kilimnik.
[39] According to Mueller's court filings, Kilimnik was still working with Russian intelligence when, during September and October 2016, he was known to be communicating with the Trump campaign.
[13] In July 2016, Manafort told Kilimnik to offer Deripaska private information in exchange for resolving multimillion-dollar disputes about the venture.
[21] The New York Times reported on 31 August 2018 that an unnamed Russian political operative and a Ukrainian businessman had illegally purchased four tickets to the inauguration of Donald Trump on behalf of Kilimnik.
The transaction was facilitated by Sam Patten, an American lobbyist who had related work with Paul Manafort and pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent.
[41] In January 2019, Manafort's lawyers submitted a filing to the court, in response to the Special Counsel's accusation that he had lied to investigators while supposedly co-operating with them.
[21] Kilimnik, Andrii Derkach, who is a member of the Russian intelligence community and very close to Rudy Giuliani, and Andrii Telizhenko, who is part of "Derkach's inner circle"[b] and a close associate of Rudy Giuliani, supported Michael Caputo, who was producer, and Sergey Petrushin, who is a Russian co-producer that lives in Miami and a close associate of Caputo for over 25 years, making the documentary film The Ukraine Hoax: Impeachment, Biden Cash, and Mass Murder with guest host Michael Caputo which aired on the One America News Network (OANN) on 21 January 2020 only two weeks before the Senate's acquittal of Donald Trump after his first impeachment trial.
[3] The committee acquired sufficient evidence to assert that Kilminik may have been involved directly in the plot, not only to hack the Democrats computers, but to pass on the information to WikiLeaks.
[57] The Associated Press reported it was the first occasion the United States government had concluded a strong connection existed between the campaign of Donald Trump and Russian intelligence.