Trump appeared untroubled by a foreign adversary’s attack on the U.S. political system — and his aides seemed eager to accept the assistance.
President Trump has been hesitant to condemn Russia’s attack on the American political system and instead has denounced the work of federal investigators. By Rosalind S. Helderman and Rosalind S. Helderman Reporter focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations Email Bio Follow Tom Hamburger Tom Hamburger Investigative reporter focused on the intersection of money and politics in Washington Email Bio Follow March 23 at 6:00 AM Special counsel Robert S.
When the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks published documents that the Democratic National Committee said had been stolen by Russian operatives, Trump’s campaign quickly used the information to its advantage. Rather than condemn the Kremlin, Trump famously asked Russia to steal more. One of the areas they were examining: the handoff by Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of 2016 polling data to a Russian employee who allegedly has ties to Russian intelligence. Another: longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone’s alleged efforts to gather information about the material WikiLeaks held at the direction of an unidentified senior Trump campaign official, according to his January indictment.
Connections between Trump’s world and the Kremlin may be unsavory and disturbing, he said. “But when you are doing a criminal investigation, the only collusion that counts is a conspiracy to violate the laws of the United States.” McCarthy said. “If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.” In all, Russian citizens interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and presidential transition, public records and interviews show.One of the first to be approached was a low-level Trump foreign-policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, who was told by a London-based professor in April 2016 that the Russians held damaging information about Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, according to court filings.
Manafort, who had deep connections in Ukraine and Russia because of a decade spent as a political consultant in Kiev, communicated with the Russian throughout the six months he worked for Trump. The Russian was a Manafort employee who Mueller’s prosecutors have said had ties to Russian intelligence, according to court papers.
Meanwhile, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen was aggressively seeking the consummation of a long-held Trump dream of building a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen pursued the idea well into the 2016 campaign, and, at one point, spoke directly to a Kremlin aide to ask for government assistance in advancing the lucrative project, prosecutors revealed in November.
Weeks later, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with a Russian lawyer in New York’s Trump Tower after Trump Jr. was told she had incriminating information on Clinton that was being offered as part of the Russian government’s support for the GOP candidate. Publicly, Trump’s campaign cast doubt on assertions — made first by Democrats and later by U.S. government officials — that the material was stolen and distributed as part of a Russian plot.
Stone has pleaded not guilty. He and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied that they communicated about the group’s plans.
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