In
the most abstract sense, there is nothing noteworthy about a government
official meeting with an ambassador from a foreign country. When such an
interaction becomes important is when that official is an ally of a
presidential campaign that’s got a complex set of possibly inappropriate
relationships with other representatives of that ambassador’s country — and
when that official while under oath says he did not have communications
with representatives of that country.
What
we’re going to endeavor to do here is to parse out that complex set of
relationships, using the information we have at hand. In this case, as you’ve
hopefully ascertained, the country at issue is Russia and the campaign is that
of President Trump. The official, of course, is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And the ambassador is, at
this point, the linchpin of a lot of the interactions between Trump and the
rest of his team.
We’ll
consider three Russian entities.
- Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Russia’s man in Washington.
- The Russian government. Kislyak is part of this government, of course,
but we’ll use this as a shorthand for interactions with President Vladimir
Putin or other government agencies (who may or may not be known). Included
here is RT, the Russia-backed and -based television network.
- Russian business interests. This encompasses everything from Rosneft, the
Russian oil giant, to sketchy Russian oligarchs.
As
for the American side, let’s start at the top and move outward through Trump’s
network.
Donald
Trump, president. Trump’s
connections to Russian business interests are murky, thanks to his decision not
to release his tax returns during the campaign. We know that the Miss Universe
pageant was hosted in Moscow when Trump owned it and that he earned millions of dollars for doing so. We know, too, that
he’s repeatedly explored real estate deals in the country. It’s not clear
whether Trump has met Kislyak, though the ambassador attended a foreign policy speech Trump gave last
spring and the reception that preceded it. We know now that Trump has been in
communication with Putin - but he also claimed to have been in contact with
representatives of the Russian president (and Putin himself) before the campaign.
Jeff
Sessions, attorney general. Sessions’s relationship with Kislyak is
well-established by now. This is a good point at which to note, though, that
the existence of that relationship does not in any way imply wrongdoing by
Sessions. It’s just part of the network we’re establishing.
Jared
Kushner, adviser. Trump’s
son-in-law (Ivanka’s husband) also met with Kislyak during the period between
Election Day and the inauguration, according to the New York Times. Kushner also has some loose connections to
Russian business interests, according to the Times, including an investment from tech investor Yuri Milner
in a real estate investment company and a friendship with the wife of oligarch
Roman Abramovich. (She was invited to the inauguration as Ivanka Trump’s guest.)
Michael
Flynn, former national security adviser. Flynn had a number of contacts with
Kislyak after Election Day, including attending that meeting between the
ambassador and Kushner. (Flynn was forced to resign his position after it was revealed that his comments about the content of
those meetings to Vice President Pence were falsehoods.) After resigning from
the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, Flynn was invited to give a paid
speech at a celebration of RT. He did so and joined Putin’s table for a related
banquet.
Donald
Trump Jr., son. The
younger Trump visited France last October to speak to an obscure Russian group. In 2008, Don Jr., who
works for the Trump Organization, famously told a real estate conference that “Russians
make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets” and
that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Paul
Manafort, former campaign manager. Manafort’s links to Russian interests
are well established. New revelations that emerged during the
campaign prompted Trump to demand Manafort’s resignation. Manafort is one of
the Trump campaign staffers who reportedly made contact with Russian interests
during the campaign.
Rex
Tillerson, secretary of state. Before he was confirmed to serve as the
head of the State Department, even Republicans questioned Tillerson’s relationship to Putin. As
the head of ExxonMobil, Tillerson helped negotiate a massive agreement between
the Russian government and ExxonMobil-Rosneft, a partnership between the two companies.
Tillerson was subsequently awarded the “Order of Friendship” by Putin.
Wilbur
Ross, secretary of commerce. Ross’s connections to Russian business
interests are less obvious than Tillerson’s. During the Clinton administration,
Ross served on the board of the U.S.-Russia
Investment Fund,
an effort to bolster businesses in post-Cold-War Russia. During his
confirmation, questions arose about his ownership of a bank on Cyprus that, in
the words of McClatchy’s Kevin Hall, “caters to wealthy Russians.”
Roger
Stone, longtime adviser. Stone’s connection to Russia is murky. During the
campaign, he drew attention for seeming to have inside knowledge on the WikiLeaks document releases — releases that have been
linked to Russian interests by the government. More directly, the Times reports that Stone is possibly under
investigation by the U.S. government for his links to Russia.
Carter
Page, former adviser. Page
is included in that alleged investigation as well, but his links to Russia are
more clear. Page pretty clearly met with Kislyak last year during the
Republican convention in Cleveland, as he admitted to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Thursday
night. He also has repeatedly addressed Russian business groups in that
country, including twice in 2016. Over a decade ago, he worked in Russia as an
investment banker.
J.D.
Gordon, former adviser. Page is far in the outer orbit of Trump’s circle,
serving briefly as part of Trump’s national security advisory team. He’s joined
there by Gordon, a onetime Pentagon spokesman who also served as an adviser to
the campaign. Gordon, like Page, reportedly spoke with Kislyak in Cleveland.
This
document should be considered a work in progress. As more information is
released, it (and the graphic) will be updated. Again, none of the
relationships above are intended to show misbehavior by those involved. The
broad question at stake is the extent to which Russia sought to interfere in the
2016 election and, if it did, the extent to which it may have leveraged
relationships with Trump’s team to that end. That much-bigger question is much
harder to evaluate.
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