How Seven Trump Associates Have Been Linked to Russia

By JASMINE C. LEE and ALICIA PARLAPIANO JUNE 7, 2017

Several associates of President Trump are
under scrutiny for their Russian connections.

Current administration

Resigned

Personal lawyer

Campaign advisers

Jared Kushner

Jeff Sessions

Michael T. Flynn

Michael D. Cohen

Paul Manafort

Carter Page

Roger Stone Jr.

Son-in-law and
senior adviser

Attorney general

Former national
security adviser

Trump’s
personal lawyer

Former campaign
manager

Campaign adviser

Campaign adviser

How they are linked

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.

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.

Was wiretapped on suspicion he was acting as a Russian agent. Russian spies tried to recruit him in 2013.

Had contact on Twitter with a Russia-linked online figure.

How they misled officials

Did not immediately report contacts when getting security clearance.

Did not report conversations during confirmation hearing.

Misled F.B.I. and Pence, omitted payments in financial disclosure.

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, 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 withSergey 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.

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, 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.

Two Democratic senators asked James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to open a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Sessions perjured himself at the hearing.

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

Connection to the Russian ambassador

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

Right before President 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 resignafter 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 herefused 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 paymentsfor his work with pro-Russian Ukrainians. He also worked with a Russian billionaire to promote President Vladimir Putin’s government, according to a report by the Associated Press. Mr. Manafort 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 Stone Jr., a prominent informal adviser to Mr. Trump, has said that he knew in advance about the release of Russia-hacked documents by Wikileaks shortly before the election, because he had been in "perfectly legal" communication with Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder. 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.

NYT