[ad_1]
Special advocate Robert Mueller is preparing to speed up his investigation into a possible collusion between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Russians who sought to ingest him in the 2016 elections, according to a person familiar with the situation. ;investigation.
Mueller and his team of prosecutors and investigators have an eye toward the production of findings – and possible indictments – related to collusion by falling, said the person, who asked not to be identified. He will be able to give his full attention to the matter as he resolves other issues, including deciding quickly if Trump seeks to obstruct justice.
Photographer: Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images
Mueller's office declined to comment on his plans.
Suspicious contacts between at least 13 people associated with Trump's presidential campaign and the Russians fueled the collusion debate.
Some of these meetings have been known for months: the Russian ambassador whose conversations forced the Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from overseeing the Russian investigation and led Michael Flynn to plead guilty to perjury. The Russians who organized a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at the Trump Tower in July 2016 after dazzling the promise of political dirt to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Other meetings continue to emerge, including a conversation between a Russian and Trump's veteran adviser, Roger Stone, at a Florida coffee shop.
& # 39; Hazard warning lights & # 39;
Signs of suspected Russian contacts appeared at the end of 2015, especially among US allies who were monitoring the Russians, according to a former official who spoke under cover of anonymity .
In the spring of 2016, frequent contacts triggered an alarm bell among US intelligence officials, according to James Clapper, then director of national intelligence. The Russian FBI investigation officially started in July.
"The dashboard lights were on for all of us because of the meetings," said Clapper in an interview this month. "We may not have been very familiar with the content of these meetings, but it was certainly very curious to know why so many meetings with the Russians."
On three occasions, the Russians offered the Clinton Democrats people associated with Trump's election campaign – all this before it was publicly known that the Russians had hacked into the Democratic National Committee and the president of the Clinton campaign .
Mueller interviewed or sought information on many people known to have met Russians during the campaign. But it is not publicly known whether the barrage of Russian contacts has been instigated or coordinated by the Kremlin. Trump, for his part, repeatedly denied such a plot, tweeting on June 15, "WITCH HUNT! There was no Russian collusion."
Here are the players and their known interactions, with links to previous news:
Michael Cohen
Trump's lawyer and personal repairer began working on a Trump Tower project in Moscow in September 2015 with Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate developer who was a criminal and had previously collected information for the government American. Cohen said that the Trump Organization signed a non-binding letter of intent in October 2015 with I.C. Investment Expert Company.
The project finally fizzled out. Mr Cohen said he had stopped working on it in January 2016, when he reached out to a Kremlin spokesman to ask for help for the project. Yahoo News reported that in May, Sater and Cohen were still talking about the tower, including a possible trip to Russia for a meeting with government officials. Just before and after the inauguration of Trump, Cohen met with the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg and Andrew Intrater, who is investing money for Vekselberg. Shortly after, Columbus Nova, a private equity firm of Intrater, awarded Cohen a $ 1 million consulting contract.
Russian oligarch linked to Trump's lawyer in Stormy Bombshell
Michael Flynn
The retired lieutenant-general of the army attended a dinner in December 2015 in Russia where he sat at a table with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Several months later, Flynn started working as an informal adviser to the Trump campaign and in August attended Trump's first intelligence briefing with the FBI. After the election, he was appointed Trump National Security Advisor. During the presidential transition, he had many contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during which they discussed US sanctions. Flynn resigned as a national security adviser after he knew he had lied about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak. He was then charged by Mueller for making false statements to the investigators and agreed to become a cooperating witness.
Flynn's Side Deals, Link to Trump Aides Offers Clues for Mueller
George Papadopoulos
Shortly after being appointed foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign in March 2016, Papadopoulos met a London professor who he believed had links to the Russian government. This month, Papadopoulos suggested that he could help organize a meeting between Trump and Putin, an offer that was rejected by Sessions, which led the Trump campaign's foreign policy team . In April, the professor told Papadopoulos that Russian officials had "dirty" Clinton in the form of thousands of e-mails. Papadopoulos was also in touch with a Russian who said he represented the Foreign Ministry. Papadopoulos was arrested in July 2017 and in October pleaded guilty to misleading the investigators.
Trump says he has little memory of meeting with Papadopoulos
Jared Kushner
The president's son-in-law briefly met Kislyak at an event held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in April 2016 in what he described as an exchange of jokes. In December, after the elections, Kushner met again with Kislyak and the Russian banker Sergey Gorkov, close to Putin.
Kushner refuses improper contacts with Russia while he meets senators
Michael Caputo
The Republican political strategist – who lived for a while in Moscow and worked for the late President Boris Yeltsin's campaign – worked briefly as an advisor to the Trump campaign. He was contacted by a Russian business partner who asked him to help facilitate a meeting between the Trump campaign and a Russian national who identified himself as Henry Greenberg. Caputo headed him to veteran Republican Stone, with whom Caputo has worked for decades.
Caputo says that he has never heard of Russia's collusion
Roger Stone
Longtime political advisor Trump confirmed for the first time this month he was met at a Florida cafe in May 2016 with Greenberg, who claimed to have information that would be "beneficial" to Donald Trump's campaign, but that asked for $ 2 million in exchange. Stone – who said that he had forgotten the 20-minute meeting while he had not leaked it during talks with a congressional committee – said that he had rejected the agreement. Stone says he thought the meeting was part of an FBI plot to trap him in the light of indications that Greenberg had worked in the past as an informant for the office.
Stone also told people during the campaign that he was in contact with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who published e-mails from the Democratic National Committee allegedly stolen by Russian agents. Stone has since denied having communicated directly with Assange. Stone also traded private messages on Twitter with an online character called Guccifer 2.0, supposedly linked to the Russian government.
Mueller turns to Roger Stone, long-time Trump advisor
Paul Manafort
As president of the Trump campaign, Manafort was in contact with Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the FBI described as having links with the Russian secret service. In July 2016, Manafort offered to give a campaign brief to another partner, Oleg Deripaska, who is closely linked to the Kremlin. Manafort was charged in October with a series of financial crimes and failing to register as an agent of Ukraine. His bail was revoked and he was jailed after prosecutors claimed that he had tried to touch the witnesses.
Judge Manafort rejects the offer of a charge of money laundering
Donald Trump Jr.
The president's son helped organize the meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist. Kushner and Manafort were also present. While the Russians charged it as a chance to share detrimental information about Clinton, participants said nothing of value was offered.
Trump Jr. has accepted the meeting at the request of a pop star in Russia whose family has connections with Putin and knows the Trump family for several years. The meeting also sparked controversy over the role of President Trump in drafting a statement that falsely described the topic of the meeting as the adoption of Russian children.
In addition, Alexander Torshin, the vice governor of the Russian central bank, said he had shared a table with Trump Jr. at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in May. Torshin, former senator of Putin's party, United Russia Directed dirty money streams for gangsters in Moscow, according to investigators in Spain.
Trump Jr. refuses to talk to his father, says the Democrat
Carter Page
After being appointed foreign policy advisor to the campaign in March 2016, Page went to Moscow in July for a speech and meetings. Mr Page said that he met briefly Arkady Dvorkovich, then Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. Mr Page also said he met Dvorkovich at a dinner in December after he was no longer affiliated with the Trump campaign. Page is also meeting in July with Andrey Baranov, the head of investor relations for the Russian energy company Rosneft. And Page met Kislyak briefly at the Republican convention in July. US intelligence agencies said Page was a target of Russian intelligence services as early as 2013.
The page tells Russia that it is Trump's biggest embarrassment
Jeff Sessions
The Attorney General, who played a leading role in the Trump campaign in the Senate, had conversations with Ambassador Kislyak at the Republican Congress and in September in his Senate office. The Washington Post reported that the US secret service intercepted Kislyak by telling Russian officials that they were discussing campaign issues. The session was challenged from the Russian investigation – a move for which Trump repeatedly rebuked him because Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then appointed Mueller as a special counsel.
Trump Lament Sample Sessions Like GOP Ally Undercuts Spying Claim
J.D. Gordon
As a foreign policy advisor for the campaign, Gordon met Kislyak briefly at the Republican convention. Page contacted Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman, and others on the campaign in July to congratulate them for a change in the Republican Party platform that has softened the party's support for Ukraine in his conflict with Russia. Gordon also said that Page went around him to get permission to make a trip to Russia.
Trump campaign foreign policy team under Mueller microscope
Rick Gates
In September and October, Gates communicated directly with Kilimnik, according to documents filed by the courts. Gates was a henchman at Manafort and worked as a campaign aide until he was fired by Trump in August. Even after being fired, Gates remained involved in the campaign through the Republican National Committee, and he worked on the presidential transition. Gates pleaded guilty in February of conspiring with Manafort to defraud the United States in charges that are not directly related to the Russian investigation.
Gates guilty plea reinforces US hand against Manafort
Erik Prince
The founder of Blackwater, a provider of private security forces in troubled areas such as Iraq, has served as an informal adviser to the Trump transition team. His sister, Betsy DeVos, is now Secretary of Education. After the election of Trump but before the inauguration, Prince met Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a wealth fund controlled by the Russian government close to Putin, during a visit to Seychelles .
The prince told congressional investigators that he was meeting with the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates to discuss topics such as Middle East tensions and the extraction of bauxite, when the prince's brother told him suggested going to chat with "this Russian". reported that the meeting was organized in part to explore the possibility of a return channel for discussions between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the meeting, he said. has not identified.
Seychelles' meeting with Erik Prince's russian calls for fresh scrutiny
– With the help of Billy House and Steven T. Dennis
Source link
