Links between Trump associates and Russian officials

Starting in 2015, several allied foreign intelligence agencies began reporting secret contacts between Trump campaigners and known or suspected Russian agents in multiple European cities.

Records of the inquiry did not implicate anyone associated with the committee, but upon becoming attorney general William Barr revived the effort, including by appointing a federal prosecutor and about six others in February 2020.

[6][5] The New York Times also reported that British and Dutch agencies had evidence of meetings between "Russian officials – and others close to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin – and associates of President-elect Trump".

[7] Because they are not allowed to surveil the private communications of American citizens without a warrant, the "FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of these contacts between Trump's team and Moscow.

[28] The Wall Street Journal reported that United States intelligence agencies monitoring Russian espionage found Kremlin officials discussing Trump's associates in the spring of 2015.

[3] Clapper had stopped receiving briefings on January 20 and was "not aware of the counterintelligence investigation Director Comey first referred to during his testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence on the 20th of March".

[52] On November 17, 2022, Republican political operative Jesse Benton was convicted by a federal jury for a 2016 scheme to funnel Russian money to the Donald Trump campaign.

[53][54][55] In March 2023, The Guardian reported that since October 2022, prosecutors in the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York were investigating alleged Russian financial ties to Trump Media & Technology Group.

[63][64] On March 2, 2017, The New York Times reported that Flynn and Kushner met with Kislyak in December 2016 to establish a secret line of communication (backchannel) between the Trump administration and the Russian government.

[66][67] On September 13, The Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn promoted a Russian-backed, multibillion-dollar Middle Eastern nuclear plant project while working in the White House.

[68] The project involved building 40 nuclear reactors across the Middle East, with security provided by Rosoboron, a Russian state-owned arms exporter that is under American sanctions.

[69] On September 15, BuzzFeed reported that Flynn, Kushner, and Bannon secretly met with King Abdullah II of Jordan on January 5, 2017, to press for the nuclear power plant project.

[77] In July 2017, Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump campaign member who was appointed White House Communications Director, was involved in discussions about joint investments between his firm and a sanctioned Russian government fund.

Senator, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an early and prominent supporter of Trump's campaign, spoke twice with Russian ambassador Kislyak before the election – once in July 2016 and once in September 2016.

[97] On September 18, 2017, CNN reported that the FBI wiretapped Manafort from 2014 until an unspecified date in 2016 and again from the fall of 2016 until early 2017, pursuant to two separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders.

"[98] In October 2017, Manafort was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on twelve criminal charges including conspiracy, money laundering, failure to register as an agent of a foreign power, and false statements.

[104] Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that while supposedly co-operating Manafort had repeatedly lied about a variety of matters, breaching the terms of his plea agreement.

[108] Records reviewed by The New York Times showed that Gates held meetings in Moscow with associates of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and "His name appears on documents linked to shell companies that Mr. Manafort's firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe.

[108][109][110] In October 2017, Gates was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on twelve criminal charges including conspiracy, money laundering, failure to register as an agent of a foreign power, and false statements.

[102] The following day, Gates pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and conspiracy to defraud the United States and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation.

Podobnyy and one of the other men were protected by diplomatic immunity from prosecution; a third man, who was spying for Russia under non-diplomatic cover, pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent and was sentenced to prison.

[113] Page has been the subject of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, the first in 2014, at least two years earlier than was indicated in the stories concerning his role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

[72] Roger Stone, a former adviser to Donald Trump and self-proclaimed political "dirty trickster", said in March 2017 that during August 2016, he had been in contact with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker persona who publicly claimed responsibility for at least one hack of the DNC, believed to be operated by Russian intelligence.

[139][142] On January 25, 2019, Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in connection with Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements.

[150] On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after being promised information about Hillary Clinton.

[160][161][162] On April 3, 2017, The Washington Post reported that around January 11, 2017, nine days before Donald Trump's inauguration, Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security company, secretly met with an unidentified Russian who was close to Vladimir Putin, in the Seychelles.

Nader reportedly told Trump Jr. the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE were eager to help his father win the election, and Zamel pitched a social media manipulation campaign.

[171] The Senate Intelligence Committee described its concerns with secret meetings: Finally, the Committee's bipartisan Report shows that almost immediately following Election Day in 2016, the Trump transition responded to Russia's election interference not by supporting punitive action, but rather by holding a series of secretive meetings and communications with Russian representatives that served to undercut the outgoing administration's efforts to hold Russia accountable.

[177] CNN reported on March 23, 2017, that the FBI was examining "human intelligence, travel, business and phone records and accounts of in-person meetings" indicating that Trump associates may have coordinated with "suspected Russian operatives" to release damaging information about the Hillary Clinton campaign.

And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele's reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.