How Key Trump Associates Have Been Linked to Russia

Karen Yourish

One Trump campaign adviser pleaded guilty for lying about
his Russian contacts and several others are under scrutiny.

One Trump campaign adviser pleaded guilty for lying about Russian contacts.

Several other Trump associates are under scrutiny. Three have been accused of misleading officials about their contacts with Russians. One of them had to resign.

Jared Kushner

Jeff Sessions

Michael T. Flynn

Son-in-law and senior adviser

Attorney general

Former national security adviser

They also include Trump’s eldest son and his longtime personal lawyer.

Donald Trump Jr.

Michael D. Cohen

Eldest son

Trump’s personal lawyer

Others advised Mr. Trump during his campaign.

Paul Manafort

Carter Page

Roger J. Stone Jr.

Former campaign manager

Campaign adviser

Campaign adviser

George Papadopoulos

Jared Kushner

Jeff Sessions

Michael T. Flynn

Donald Trump Jr.

Michael D. Cohen

Paul Manafort

Campaign adviser

Son-in-law and
 

senior adviser

Attorney general

Former national
 

security adviser

Eldest son

Trump’s
personal lawyer

Former campaign
manager

How they are linked

Met with professor with ties to the Russian government who said Moscow had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Discussed secret back channel with Russian ambassador. Met with head of state-owned bank.

Spoke twice with ambassador and discussed Ukraine.

Discussed sanctions with ambassador; paid $45,000 by state-owned media for speech.

Met with a Russian lawyer he believed would offer him damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Has personal and business ties to Ukraine; proposed a peace plan between the country and Russia.

Worked for pro-Russian Ukrainians and with a Russian billionaire.

How they misled officials

Pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.

Did not immediately report contacts when getting security clearance.

Did not report conversations during his confirmation hearing.

Misled the F.B.I. and and the vice president; omitted payments in financial disclosure.

Papadopoulos met with Russian
to discuss “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about contact with a professor with ties to Kremlin officials, prosecutors said. Mr. Papadopoulos said he knew the professor had “substantial connections to Russian government officials,” according to court documents.

Mr. Papadopoulos told the authorities that his contacts with the professor occurred before he became an adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign. In fact, he met the professor days after joining the campaign.

The professor introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to a woman identified as a relative of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and to someone in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials, court records showed.

Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer he believed would
offer him damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump Jr., President Trump’s eldest son, who currently runs the Trump Organization with his brother, met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, in June 2016.

The younger Mr. Trump took the meeting to hear about possibly damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, which he was told over email was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s campaign.

Kushner discussed a secret back
channel with the Russian ambassador.

Jared Kushner

met with

didn’t immediately

disclose meetings on

Kislyak

Gorkov

F.B.I. questionnaire

Jared Kushner

met with

didn’t immediately

disclose meetings on

Kislyak

Gorkov

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser, participated in a meeting at Trump Tower in December with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, during which they discussed opening a secret communications channel, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.

Other connections

At the request of Mr. Kislyak, Mr. Kushner also met with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school and now the head of Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned bank that was under sanctions by President Barack Obama. Mr. Kushner was also present at a meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr. with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer.

Senate investigation

Investigators on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in March that they planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings, which he did not immediately disclose on an F.B.I. questionnaire when getting a security clearance. His lawyer said the form was submitted in error prematurely.

Sessions didn’t disclose
conversations and recused himself.

Jeff Sessions

met with

didn’t disclose

meetings at

Kislyak

Senate hearing

Jeff Sessions

met with

didn’t disclose

meetings at

Kislyak

Senate hearing

Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, spoke twice with Mr. Kislyak while advising the Trump campaign on national security.

He recused himself from any Russia investigations led by the Justice Department after he failed to disclose his contact with Mr. Kislyak during his attorney general confirmation hearing in the Senate. Mr. Sessions later said that did not view the contact as tied to his campaign role.

In a separate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Sessions said that he recused himself not because of wrongdoing, but in accordance with Justice Department regulations regarding his involvement with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

Flynn misled officials about
contacts and was forced to resign.

Michael Flynn

paid by

lobbied for

met with

misled

State media

Turkey

Kislyak

F.B.I.

Mike Pence

Michael Flynn

paid by

lobbied for

met with

misled

Turkey

Kislyak

F.B.I.

Pence

Connection to the Russian ambassador

American officials say Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, was in contact with Mr. Kislyak during the campaign and the transition.

Right before Mr. Obama imposed new sanctions on Russia in December, Mr. Flynn spoke with Mr. Kislyak and urged Russia not to retaliate. He was later interviewed by the F.B.I. about the conversation, and officials said investigators believed he was not entirely forthcoming.

Mr. Flynn misled the Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about the conversations and was forced to resign after it became public.

Other foreign links

Mr. Flynn was paid $45,000 in 2015 by the Russian state media company RT to give a speech at a gala in Moscow. He was also paid $22,500 by two other Russian businesses that same year.

He did not include “payments from Russian-linked entities” on a financial disclosure form.

He filed papers in March 2017 acknowledging that he worked as a foreign agent, receiving $500,000 to represent the interests of Turkey in the fall of 2016.

Latest developments

A Senate committee subpoenaed him for personal documents related to the Russian investigation, but he refused to comply. On Wednesday, Mr. Flynn handed over some documents in response to additional subpoenas issued by the committee aimed at his business records. Last week, a House committee also issued him a subpoena.

The F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Flynn is expected to be at the center of high-profile testimony by Mr. Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Before abruptly firing Mr. Comey last month, Mr. Trump personally pressured him to back away from the investigation, according to memos written by Mr. Comey, resulting in accusations that Mr. Trump may have obstructed justice.

Trump’s lawyer was also subpoenaed.

Michael D. Cohen has also been under scrutiny in the F.B.I. investigation. The lawyer, who began working for the Trump Organization in 2007, has ties to Ukraine and helped propose a peace plan between Ukraine and Russia to Mr. Trump.

An unverified intelligence dossier, funded by opponents of Mr. Trump, claims Mr. Cohen discussed Russia’s hacking of Democratic targets with a Russian representative in Prague. He says the assertions are not true.

He was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the House Intelligence Committee after refusing to comply with initial requests.

Others have also been under scrutiny.

At least three associates who advised Mr. Trump during his campaign are under F.B.I. scrutiny and were asked by a Senate committee to hand over documents related to the investigations:

Paul D. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, has significant deep business ties to Ukraine and Russia. According to Ukrainian officials, he tried to hide payments for his work with pro-Russian Ukrainians. He also worked with a Russian billionaire to promote President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, according to a report by the Associated Press. Mr. Manafort was also present at a meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr. with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer. He has reportedly provided some documents requested by the Senate committee.

The Justice Department obtained a secret court-ordered wiretap last summer of Carter Page, an early foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, on suspicion that he was acting as a Russian agent. Russian spies attempted to recruit him in 2013, but the F.B.I. concluded that Mr. Page did not know he was in contact with a spy. Mr. Page has said that a House committee has prevented him from testifying, but the panel’s top Democrat dismissed the accusations.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a prominent informal adviser to Mr. Trump, has said that he knew in advance about the release of a trove of material on the Clintons by Wikileaks shortly before the election, because he had been in communication with Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder. Later he clarified that his communication was through an intermediary and was “perfectly legal.” He also exchanged direct messages on Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, a online figure linked to Russian intelligence, though the timing was sometime after the hack of the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Stone has provided the Senate committee with some documents.