The (In)Complete (and growing) List of Trump’s Russia Ties
March 13, 2017
(LAST UPDATE: 9/05/18)
I‘ve stated more times than I dare count that I abhor Conspiracy Theories. Claims that “9/11 was an inside job” belong in the same rubbish bin as Sasquatch and Elvis sightings. But the evidence of links between the Trump campaign/White House and Russia (for whatever reason) are documented fact (often by photograph and peoples’ own admission) and continue to grow so fast, it is getting
“I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away.” – Donald Trump press conference, January 11, 2017.
I keep hearing from so many Trumptonians who get a huge asinine belly laugh from any suggestion that Russia may be meddling in our Democracy (“My PopTart is stale! Blame Russia! Har! Har!”) Unless someone truly adores Russia and/or Putin, I can’t fathom for the life of me why anyone would rush to defend him/them, belittling any suggestion that Russia is anything but an innocent victim being targeted for character assassination by our “evil” Media. The closest I can fathom is some revulsion that… if true… it somehow benefits Hillary and/or could somehow miraculously make her president. I understand why you despise Hillary (okay, maybe not to your insane degree, but I did
I’m just curious what part of “the Russian thing” don’t they believe? Trump’s inexplicable fanboy love of Putin (even
Or what about appointing a lobbyist for the Russian government… Paul Manafort (whose campaign experience were the failed Ford & Dole campaigns) and is suspected of laundering tens of millions in Russian crime money… to run his presidential campaign?
And the list goes on (continued below.)
The List
Beside Russian “Medal of Friendship” winner Rex Tillerson mentioned above, we have:
Starting from the very beginning, as noted above, Trump’s second campaign manager Paul Manafort (hired after Corey Lewandowski was fired upon revelations of spousal abuse) was forced to resign when it was discovered that he lied about having worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the Russian government in Ukraine and was paid millions of dollars at a time the United States was vociferously condemning Russia’s attempts to annex Ukraine. After his resignation, it was discovered that Manafort has also met with Konstantin Kilimnik,
(UPDATE 3/22/17: As early as 2005, Manafort was already offering his services on how he could “greatly benefit the Putin Government”. AP reports the Russian government paid Manafort
(UPDATE 6/28/17: Why choose someone like Manafort (a lobbyists for Russia deep in debt) to run your campaign for president? Perhaps because of his connections to vast sums of Russian money? Like his business ties to Russian oligarchs such as Dmytro Firtash, a major Party of Regions backer who in 2008 partnered with Manafort in an $850 million plan to redevelop the famous Drake hotel in New York City? “Firtash, who acknowledged to the U.S. ambassador that he got his start in business with the permission of a Russian crime lord […] is under federal indictment in the Northern District of Illinois for bribery. He is [presently] under arrest in Austria pending his extradition to the U.S..” – NBC News)
A Washington Post investigation revealed that
In 2008, John McCain declared, “We’re all Georgians now” after Russia invaded the former Soviet nation of Georgia. In 2014, the GOP took the side of Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea, even calling for the U.S. to arm the
And just who might have made such a suggestion to Russia? Trump’s first (and ever so brief) National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn, who twice denied any communication with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, actually met with the ambassador

Flynn & Stein at Putin’s table at RT Anniversary Dinner 2015
(Update 3/17: State owned RT paid Flynn $33,750 to fly to Russia to attend this dinner. This does not include airfare for him and his son and accommodations at
(Update 7/11/17: GOP operative Peter W. Smith contacted Trump campaign advisor [and future National Security Advisor] Michael Flynn on
And Flynn didn’t meet the Russian ambassador alone. Traveling WITH Flynn to Trump Tower was Trump’s son-in-law and now “political adviser” Jared Kushner (
More recently, we have the case of former Senator turned Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who volunteered during his confirmation hearing that he had not spoken to anyone in the Russian Government while he was associated with the Trump campaign. In fact, Sessions HAD indeed met with the Russian ambassador twice during that time. He first stated that his meeting Ambassador Kislyak was so brief and inconsequential, it simply slipped his mind
Another Russian connection: Why did Trump try to appoint American oil industry consultant, real estate mogul and former reality TV star Carter Page from Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office to be a National Security Consultant to his campaign? Page not only criticized U.S. and NATO policy towards Russia, he did so from Moscow. The “Dixie Chicks” gotta be feeling the sting of that one.
In one of the more bizarre (and IMHO, significant) Trump/Russia connections was Trump’s sale of
(Addendum: Not only can Rybolovlev’s plane be seen at the same airport as Trump’s at multiple events, his yacht was also spotted docked near Trump’s biggest financial supporter and Breitbart News moneyman, Robert Mercer.)
Ever hear of Wilbur Ross before he was appointed to run of the Department of Commerce? Ross is a billionaire investor with close ties to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. Ross was the Vice-Chairman of
While no reported human or financial tie to Russia (yet), Trump’s Svengali, Steve Bannon, former head of Alt-Right racist conspiracy rag “Breitbart.com” who became Trump’s campaign manager and is now his Chief Political Strategist, is
Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman with Mafia connections and served time in jail for stabbing a man in the face with the stem of a margarita glass, approached Trump with a plan to license his name to build skyscrapers (including “
(Update 9/12/17: More on the man Trump claimed to barely know here.)
Also part of the Trump/Sater scam, Tevfik Arif, another Russian real-estate mogul who served
Yet another Russian born real-estate mogul and business partner of Donald Trump is Alex Shnaider who partnered with Trump to build “Trump International Hotel and Tower” in Toronto. It may or may not be significant that Shnaider’s
You may remember that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus… though not tied to Russia himself, did violate ethics rules by personally requesting the FBI “knock down” any reports linking anyone in the Trump Administration to Russia. The FBI refused and the ethical breach was deemed nothing more than a “momentary” embarrassment for the Trump White House (on par with
Former British MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele was forced into hiding recently after publishing a dossier detailing a number of Trump/Russia ties as compiled by the
Among things Steele points out: It was barely 3 weeks after Paul Manafort took over running the Trump campaign in March of 2016 that Trump
(UPDATE #1: Not even 12 hours and we have our first update. Remember Trump’s pledge that the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines would be made exclusively using “American-made steel”? Well, scratch that. We have our first exemption and I’ll give you one guess who it benefits: 40% of the steel will now come from a Russian owned steel subsidiary operating in Canada.
(UPDATE #2 – After refusing to resign, Trump fires Federal Prosecutor Preet Bharara,
(UPDATE #2b – Deutsche Bank is under investigation as the largest known Russian money launderer obscuring the source of
(UPDATE #3 – 3/20/17: Secretary of State Tillerson announces he will be skipping an announced NATO summit to visit Moscow instead.)
(UPDATE #4 – 3/21/17: There is no question Russia was actively supporting Trump via a sophisticated online “bot” based propaganda campaign.)
…whether or not the Trump campaign actively participated is still being investigated.
(UPDATE #5 – 3/27/17: It was revealed today that not only did Trump’s son-in-law and close WH adviser Jared Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Kislyak twice with Michael Flynn, he… along with another unnamed “top WH adviser”… also
(UPDATE 5b – 6/27/17: The Rachel Maddow Show reports that “VEB”, the bank Kushner met with, ISN’T A BANK. They have “No banking license”, “No cash”, and their entire board is made up of Russian government officials. The head of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, is not a banker but was trained at a “school” that trained KGB agents.)
(UPDATE #6 – 3/28/17: A USA Today investigation into the origins of Trump’s wealth find ties to at least TEN wealthy Russian businessmen with ties to the Russian
(UPDATE #7 – 4/4/17: Buzzfeed reports that the man Trump appointed as his “Foreign Policy adviser & Counter-terrorism expert”, Carter Page, was recruited as a Russian spy in 2013 (NYT report.) Their confirming source? Carter Page. More detail here.)
(UPDATE #7b – 4/4/17: In the above revelation about Carter Page, we also learn that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner… whom Trump seems to have tasked with EVERYTHING from building his border wall to achieving peace in the Middle East… met with one of the spies who recruited Page… Evgeny Buryakov, an employee of
(UPDATE #8 – 4/4/17: The Washington Post has revealed that the UAE (United Arab Emirates) arranged a meeting in Seychelles between Erik Prince… founder/owner of “Blackwater“, the largest private mercenary army in the word that rose to infamy during the Bush Administration for corruption, violence and violations of International law… and an unidentified Russian “close to President Vladimir Putin”, to discuss the lifting of sanctions last January. Prince is an avid supporter of Trump, raised
(UPDATE #9 – 4/11/17: More on Carter Page. It was leaked to the Washington Post today that he was the subject of a FISA Warrant requested by the FBI for suspected communication with the Russians during the presidential campaign. This is significant for several reasons: 1) This is the first report that a member of the Trump campaign themselves were the subject of an investigation and not merely “overheard” as we listened in on the Russians, 2) because FISA warrants are not easy to get and, 3) as the WaPo points out, is “the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents.”
(UPDATE #10a – 4/13/17: “UK Intelligence” (GCHQ) reports that they first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents. This is the earliest recorded report of interactions between the Trump Campaign and people working on behalf of the Russian government… before the Primaries even began.)
(UPDATE #10b – 4/14/17: So concerned was the director of GCHQ, that he *personally* contacted the head of the CIA… John Brennan… in the Summer of 2016. And so concerned was Brennan, that he contacts “eight top members of Congress” to report those findings.)
(UPDATE #11 – 4/25/17: Evidence emerging that Russia may be using the same hackers/strategy to hack the computers of French presidential
(UPDATE #12a – 4/26/17: As noted in #11, Russian meddling extends well beyond the election of Trump and promoting Le Pen in France. There is also suspicion Russia aided “Brexit“, Great Britain’s vote to leave the European Union [also a goal of Le Pen], and
(UPDATE #12b – 4/26/17: [ibid 12a link] Politico now reports that the more than half-million dollars paid to former
(UPDATE #13 – 5/7/17: While not directly connected to the 2016 race, Trump’s son Eric told a WBUR reporter in 2014 that Russia was behind
(UPDATE #14 – 5/5/17: The Washington Post and The AP report that the Trump Transition Team themselves warned Mike Flynn that the U.S. government may be monitoring his contacts with Russia. THEY KNEW yet they hired him anyway. The Obama Administration was so concerned about the Trump Campaign’s coziness with Russia that they waited until
(UPDATE #15 – 5/10/17: Donald Trump fires FBI Director James Comey one day after former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had been investigating connections between the Trump Campaign, Trump’s business interests, and Russia, and one week after Comey testified he had inadvertently “overstated” the number of emails Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor Huma Abadeen has forwarded to her husband Anthony Weiner in his infamous October 28th announcement he was reopening the investigation into her emails. Comey was not told in advance he was to be fired, only learning of his dismissal *while he was delivering a speech before FBI employees*.
(UPDATE #16 – 5/16/17: In the midst of his controversial firing of FBI Director Comey, Trump invites Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Kislyak to the Oval Office where he (inadvertently?) revealed Top Secret “

(UPDATE #17 – 5/18/17: Reuters reports finding evidence of 18 additional instances of contacts between Russia and the Trump Campaign, including Putin’s “fixer”, a former Soviet “lawyer” named Medvedchuk.)
(UPDATE #18 – 5/24/17: The lawyer Trump hired, Marc E. Kasowitz, to defend him against allegations of collusion with Russia is also the lead attorney in a federal civil lawsuit against “OJSC Sberbank”, which is majority-owned by the Russian government. Kasowitz is Trump’s longtime lawyer, who defended him in a failed libel case against the NYTimes, and against women claiming Trump sexually assaulted him (which was eventually settled), as well as assisting in the “Trump University” fraud case [ibid] which was also settled without admitting guilt.)
(UPDATE #19 – 5/25/17: The NYTimes is reporting that in the Summer of 2016, American spies investigating possible Russian interference in our election caught Russian officials “discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers
(UPDATE #20 – 6/08/17: Former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony under oath corroborates most all reporting to date regarding Russian interference in the November 2016 election. Comey agrees to only testify regarding possible Trump Campaign connections in closed/private session.)
(UPDATE #21 – 6/15/17: Following their joint testimony before the Senate two weeks earlier, Trump asked the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, and to
(UPDATE #22 – 6/20/17: Bloomberg is reporting that Felix Sater, a Russian Mobster who swindled millions from investors, became
(Update #22b – 1/10/18: The released FusionGPS Testimony confirms (pg. 68) that Sater was “connected to the same Russian crime family that was at issue in the Prevezon case” (
UPDATE #23 – 7/8/17: Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort all met with Natallia Veselnitskaya, a Russian “adoption” lawyer with ties to the Kremlin, during campaign at Trump Tower in
UPDATE #23b – 7/10/17: “Uday Bevis Donald Trump Jr, after claiming last March he never participated in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals, now admits he met with Veselnitskaya but claims it was to discuss “Adoption”.
UPDATE #23c – 7/10/17: The likely REAL purpose of the meeting with Veselnitskaya? She is “best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers.” The law… passed under Bush and continued under Obama… infuriates Putin and wants it repealed. Russia’s response to the law was to halt Russian/American adoptions. But to lift that, we would have to repeal the Magnitsky Act.
UPDATE #23d – 7/14/17: The number of people on the Russia-side of the table in the meeting between Donald Trump Jr and Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya has grown to FOUR FIVE, including (
UPDATE #23e – 7/18/17: Newly revealed eighth person present as the secret meeting between Trump Jr and former Russian Prosecutor Veselnitskaya was notorious Russian money launderer “Ike Kaveladze” (like Samachomov,
Addendum: In 2008, Veselnitskya defended a man named Denis Katsyv, owner of “Prevezon Holdings” (see: #29) who was accused of laundering $230 Million dollars in Russia and ended up paying “Millions” in fines. So the presence of Kaveladze… with his own history on money laundering… at this meeting raises even more questions.

The Fredo 8
UPDATE #24 – 7/13/17: May 2015, the NSA notices a spike in Russian chatter regarding Trump just before he announces his candidacy. May 2016, U.S. surveillance suggests Russian funds flowing to Trump campaign.
UPDATE #25 – 7/19/17: Trump’s scheduled private meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Hamburg was scheduled for only 20 minutes but ended up lasting over an hour. Today we learn that later during dinner (with a hundred other people present), Trump sat next to Putin and had a SECOND private chant with him that last *another* hour. Trump did not invite his own translator, relying on Putin’s own translator. When news of the second private meeting was revealed, ONLY THE RUSSIANS spoke to the Press to describe the meeting and what was discussed.
UPDATE #26 – 7/25/17: My thanks to “The Rachel Maddow Show” for pointing out on their 7/24/17 episode that back in October… before the election… “CrowdStrike” (the same Internet Security organization that first detected the source of the hacking of the DNC) detected an unusual link between a computer server belonging to the Trump campaign and computer servers belonging to yet another Russian bank… “Alfa Bank”:
(After suspecting a bot attack on the Trump servers due to the amount of traffic) The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation… conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.
…When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses.
…Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups (from the Trump server) involved the two Alfa Bank servers. “It’s pretty clear that it’s not an open mail server,” Camp told me. “These organizations are communicating in a way designed to block other people out.”
According to “CrowdStrike”, this was a near “dedicated connection”… a “hotline”… between the two computer servers. As
UPDATE #27 – 7/27/17: In an update on 6/28/17 (above), I noted a link between Manfort’s Lobbying firm and “a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmytro Firtash in a plan to redevelop the famous Drake Hotel in New York.” Firtash “got his start in business with the permission of a notorious Russian crime lord.” That crime lord appears to be Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who was paid $7.35 million toward management fees for Manafort and his partners in connection with an investment fund, according to a court filing in the Cayman Islands. Deripaska once was denied entry to the United States because of alleged mafia ties.” Firtash himself was indicted by the Justice Department in 2014 over bribery allegations in India and is now living in exile in Austria.
Manafort’s company (of which Manafort has limited liability) is in debt to “pro-Russia interests” for as much as “$17 Million dollars.”
UPDATE #28 – 7/27/17: Trump nominates “Brian Benczkowski” to be the new head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Benczkowski’s lawfirm, “
Benczkowski was a top aide to Jeff Sessions, both when Sessions was a senator and led Trump’s Justice Department transition team before returning to “
UPDATE #29 – 7/27/17: In May, the Sessions Justice Department abruptly
UPDATE #30 – 7/31/17: As mentioned in my recent update to Trump’s Russian Money Laundering Ties, New Republic investigative journalist Craig Unger documented Trump’s history of doing business with Russian criminals (both in government and the Russian Mob… which is redundant) going back decades (
UPDATE #31 – 8/1/17: The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump himself personally drafted his son’s statement regarding his meeting with Veselnitskaya, personally deciding to claim the meeting was regarding “adoption” instead of obtaining “dirt” on Clinton. This raises “Obstruction of justice” concerns (first raised by his firing of Comey), choosing to deliberately mislead the public (once again) suggests “Consciousness of guilt.”
UPDATE #31b – 8/2/17: The New York Times is reporting Trump talked to Putin at the G20 “for nearly an hour” (Trump claimed “like 15 minutes”) regarding his son the day before Don Jr’s statement. During an interview, Trump *volunteered* that he (too) talked to Putin about “adoption” (to bolster his son’s claim?) and even referenced his son’s meeting despite not even being asked.
UPDATE #32 – 8/29/17: The number of Russian-linked banks connected to Trump grows to 4. Sberbank (
Cohen emailed Sater back, announcing he arranged for Trump’s daughter Ivanka to travel to Moscow to discuss the project and perhaps meet with Putin himself, even arranging for him to allow her to sit in Putin’s personal chair. Ivanka dismissed the idea that she was anything but a tourist while in Moscow, but conceded she “may” have sat in Putin’s chair. And how many “tourists” are invited to sit in the Russian presidents chair inside the Kremlin? Seriously. This also quashes any idea Cohen wasn’t an enthusiastic supporter of Sater’s plan and didn’t discuss it with members of the Trump family.

UPDATE #32b – 8/29/17: The Washington Post reports that Cohen emailed one of Putin’s top aides, Dmitry Peskov, hoping (or so it appears) he could get Putin’s assistance in helping move the project along, telling him, “Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of
UPDATE #32c – 8/29/17: WaPo also reports that on the day of the third GOP Primary debate, Trump himself signed a letter of intent to pursue the “Trump Tower Moscow” deal. ABC News reports the proposed tower would have been “the tallest building in the world” had it of been built. At the time of the signing, Trump assured ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that his business had “no relationship to Russia whatsoever.” [ibid]
UPDATE #33 – 9/08/17: Donald Trump Jr testified for the second time before the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and this time revealed three additional previously undisclosed contacts (in addition to his meeting at Trump Tower) between him and yet another Russian citizen, Russian
UPDATE #33b – 9/13/17: Video of Trump at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant praising the Agalarov’s as “one of the great families in Russia”.
UPDATE #34 – 9/21/17: The scrutiny of former campaign manager Paul Manafort has massively intensified in recent weeks, including reports of someone he did not know before the campaign (update: Manafort worked out of Trump Tower and was the business partner of
Previously, Manafort’s connection to a Kremlin-connected billionaire Russian mobster named Oleg Deripaska (Update #27 above) was noted. Now we know Manafort contacted Deripaska less than two weeks before the RNC Convention (where Trump would accept his Party’s nomination for president) and offered (in an email) to provide him with private briefings on the race. Manafort’s spokesman says this was simply him attempting to contact Deripaska “to collect a debt” (by using the offer of giving away secret campaign information, or the promise of “access” to the potential next president of the United States… as a lure?)
UPDATE #35 – 9/23/17: Manafort may have actually “encouraged” Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential race. This might be connected to the recent revelation by Facebook that a Russian “Troll Farm” backed by the Kremlin
UPDATE #35b – “BTA Bank“, the largest bank in Kazakhstan, was awash in scandal in 2009 when it was discovered that the banks’ chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov, secretly directed between
UPDATE #36 – 8/16/17: Trump WH started pushing the claim “Hillary colluded with Ukraine” TWO DAYS BEFORE Russian hackers released a “hacked” email suggesting Hillary colluded with Ukraine. How did the Trump White House know what was coming?
UPDATE #37 – 8/24/17: Rinat Akhmetshin (see #23d above), deputy head of Russian intelligence, who was invited by Veselnitskaya to meet with Don Jr in
UPDATE #38 – 10/13/17: CBS News reports that the lawyer representing Russian real estate mogul Aras Agalarov (see Update #33) released a statement from his client noting that a newly released email from Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya (dated
UPDATE #39 – 10/30/17: The Mueller Investigation hands down its first indictments in the Russia Investigation against former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Deputy Campaign Manager and Manafort business advisor Rick Gates, and Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Gates was charged in connection to Manafort’s “money laundering” activity, and Papadopoulos was charged with (and plead Guilty to) “making false statements to the FBI” about his contacts with foreigners claiming to have “
UPDATE #39b – 11/1/17: The indictment against Manafort singles out a number of suspicious purchases by Manafort
Notable transactions in Manafort Indictment. Direct money transfers (between 2008-2013) from his account in the
Russian-owned Bank of Cyprus to the accounts of:
“Yiakora Ventures Limited” for “Home Improvement”: $1,195,814
“Yiakora Ventures Limited” & “Global Highway Ltd” for “Antique Rugs”: $934,350
“Yiakora Ventures Limited”, “Global Highway Ltd”, “Leviathon Advisors Ltd”, “Lucicle Consultants Limited” & “Global Endeavor Inc” for:
“Men’s Clothing”: $849,215
“Landscaping”: $655,500Total listed in indictment (all paid for by direct wire transfer from the
“Bank of Cypress” to the same holding companies):“Home Improvement”: $5,434,793
“Home Automation, Lighting & Home Entertainment”: $1,319,281
“Antique Rugs”: $934,350
“(Purchases related to Antique Rug vendor”): $100,000
“Men’s Clothing”: $849,215
“Landscaping”: $655,500
“Antique’s Dealer”: $623,910
“Clothing (Beverly Hills)”: $520,440
“Investment Co”: $500,000
“Florida Contractor”: $432,487
“Landscaper (Hamptons)”: $164,740
“Payments related to 3 Range Rovers”: $163,705
“Contractor in Virginia”: $125,650
“Home Audio/Video Installation”: $112,825
“Purchase of Mercedes Benz”: $62,750
“Purchase of Range Rover”: $47,000
“Property Management Co in South Carolina”: $46,000
“Florida Art Gallery”: $31,900
“Housekeeping in NY”: $20,000Total: $12,144,546
On their own, these purchases appear benign… exactly how money laundering works. But nearly all of these purchases were
And if that isn’t suspicious enough, as mentioned earlier, Wilbur Ross… Trump’s Secretary of Commerce… was the
The fact all of these transactions took place years before Manafort joined the Trump campaign (as Trump pointed out) is irrelevant (other than wondering why a Russian lobbyist and apparent money launderer for the Russian government with NO experience running a political campaign would be put in charge of running the national campaign of the GOP presidential nominee of whom he had never met.) It’s enough dirt to threaten him with
UPDATE #40 – 11/3/17: New York Times reports that Carter Page, Trump’s Foreign Policy Adviser, according to emails released by the House Intelligence Committee, notified the Trump campaign of his trip to Moscow in
UPDATE #41 – 11/7/17: 13.4 Million (financial) records leaked from 19 off-shore tax havens, dubbed “The Paradise Papers” revealed that
UPDATE #42 – 11/13/17: The Washington Post published a list of 30 Trump campaign staffers known to have been in contact with Russian officials. I’m proud to say nearly all of them are present in our own list which is FAR more extensive than the WaPo listing. Among those they included that I missed:
o J.D. Gordon, Trump’s national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, is the one who urged Trump to walk back the
o Sam Clovis, who most recently withdrew his name as Trump’s nominee for “Chief Scientist” at the
UPDATE #43 – 11/28/17: In “Update #8” above, the Washington Post reported that Erik Prince of “Blackwater” fame (and brother of
UPDATE #44 – 12/1/17: Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact(s) with Russian officials while part of the Trump transition team. According to ABC News, the same day President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia
UPDATE #45 – 12/05/17: The New York Times revealed evidence that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was secretly co-writing (anonymously) an Op/Ed defending his work as a lobbyist for the Russian government in Ukraine. This would be an explicit violation of the
UPDATE #46 – 12/18/17: NBC News reports that in mid-2016, after the Primaries had concluded and each Party’s nominee has been decided,
UPDATE #47 – 1/10/18: Last January, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen told Yahoo News that he had “no Russian/Kremlin connections”, but Miami reporter
UPDATE #48 – 1/17/18: Glenn Simpson, the owner of “Fusion GPS” (the company that was hired by one of Trump’s GOP Primary rivals… unnamed, but which candidate had the deepest pockets and hated Trump enough to fund an investigation into Trump’s connections to the Russian criminal underworld, and would then hand off that investigation to the Clinton Campaign they later openly supported?
UPDATE #49 – 1/18/18: The “House Intelligence Committee” released the transcript of their own interview of Glenn Simpson last November, where he testified on suspicious Russian
UPDATE #50 – 1/19/18: We finally have some info on “Alexander Torshin“, listed above as one of the Russian businessmen linked to Trump. Did a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funnel money to the Trump campaign by way of the National Rifle Association? According to an investigation by “McClatchy DC”: Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, donated perhaps tens of millions of dollars to the NRA (the exact amount is unknown, but an amount believed to be between $20Million and $55Million), which then turned around and spent that money in support of Donald Trump. Total NRA spending on Trump’s behalf may be as high as $70 Million.
UPDATE #51 – 2/27/18: After 15 months and STILL unable to qualify for “Top Secret” security clearance, Kushner finally has his temporary security clearance bestowed upon him by Trump yanked by
UPDATE #52 – 3/5/18: Going back to THE VERY FIRST member of the Trump Campaign mentioned in this index, Rex Tillerson, the “New Yorker” magazine reporter Jane Mayer has learned that Russia nixed Trump’s consideration of Mitt Romney to be
UPDATE #53 – 3/6/18: George Nader, adviser to the United Arab Emirates’ Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan whom met with Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev in that mysterious January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles (
UPDATE #54 – 3/15/18: Not new information, just an update. Trump’s connection to (later-sanctioned) Russian-owned Sberbank (
What IS new is that SP Mueller has just subpoenaed The Trump Organization for any documents related to the “Trump Tower Moscow” project.
UPDATE #55 – 6/29/18: An ABC News report reveals that the Mueller investigation is looking into the unusual number of

Akhmetshin & Veselnitskaya at inaugural ball

Alexey & Polina Repik at inaugural ball

Repik takes selfie at Trump speech

Repik with Putin (Kremlin publicity photo)

Boris Titov with Putin (Kremlin publicity photo)
UPDATE #56 – 9/04/18: A bit of an indirect link, Patten was an unregistered lobbyist on behalf a Russian-linked Ukrainian firm and co-ran a lobbying firm with Manafort’s business partner Konstantine Kilimnik, who used Manafort to
So our list of members of the Trump campaign who were in contact with Russia is now:
- Trump
- SoS Rex Tillerson
- Campaign Manager Paul Manafort
- NatSec Advisor General Mike Flynn
- Son-in-Law Jared Kushner
- Attorney General Senator Jeff Sessions
- National Security Consultant Carter Page
- Peter W. Smith – GOP operative actively contacting Russia looking for Clinton emails.
- Trump’s $100 Million dollar sweetheart deal selling a $40 Million dollar mansion to a Russian fertilizer billionaire who never even visited it only to later have it bulldozed for
a $40 million dollar loss. - Sec of Commerce Wilbur Ross
- Breitbart CEO turned Campaign Director turned Chief Strategist Steve Bannon
- (Now former) Chief of Staff Reince Priebus trying to bully the FBI into silencing reports linking Trump to Russia
- Blackwater’s Erik Prince
- Trump’s personal lawyer Marc E. Kasowitz
- Donald Trump Jr.
- Trump Campaign computer servers linked to “Alfa Bank”.
- Trump’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s criminal division, Brian Benczkowski
- Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen
- Scott Balber, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, hired to represent Russian real estate mogul Aras Agalarov, accused of soliciting “dirt on Hillary Clinton” to Don Jr.
- Rick Gates, Deputy Campaign Manager and Paul Manafort’s “business adviser”
- George Papadopoulos, Trump campaign “foreign policy adviser.”
- J.D. Gordon – Trump’s national-security policy rep for the RNC Convention
…more?
The Rachel Maddow Show produced this list (11/29/17) of Russians who were in contact with people connected to the Trump campaign/administration (including Trump himself):
2. Sergey Gorkov (4)
3. Felix Sater (5)
4. Sergei Gordeev (6)
6. Oleg Deripaska (9)
8. Natalia Veselnitskaya (12, 13)
9. Rinat Akhmetshin (14)
10. Ike Kaveladze (15)
11. Emin Agalarov (16)
13. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich (19, 18)
15. Igor Sechin (21) (disputed by Carter Page)
16. Joseph Mifsud (22)
17. Ivan Timofeev (23)
19. Kirill Dmitriev (25)
(Note: This is NOT “every Russian connected to the Trump Administration, JUST the few linked to his Transition Team.)
I intend/expect to update this list frequently so bookmark it and return often. And if you know of any Trump/Russia contacts/associations I may have missed, I encourage you to please list them in the Comments.

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March 13, 2017
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Admin Mugsy ·
14 Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Election, mystery, myth busting, National Security, Politics, Right-Wing Hypocrisy, Scandals
14 Responses
We can now include former CIA Chief John Brennan among those who was so bothered by contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign that he proposed opening an investigation and told the Russians to “knock it off”. Brennan stopped just short of accusing the Trump campaign of having colluded with Russia during the election:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/us/politics/john-brennan-russia-trump-campaign-cia.html
A German Twitter-tracking website, “Hamilton 68”, is monitoring the tweets of 600 known Russian bot/troll linked Twitter accounts and tracking what they (and their readers) are tweeting/retweeting. No surprise, they are uniformly pro-Trump and trying to discredit his critics. Most popular hashtag used by the Russian bots? #MAGA of course.
http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/
Senator Lindsey Graham, in an interview on “Meet The Press” today, reveals that Trump now admits/concedes that “the Russians DID hack the DNC and stole emails.” Not only is that proof of meddling, but it’s also a crime Trump isn’t investigating/prosecuting.
More info on Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian lobbyist who has been working to repeal “The Magnitsky Act” and was among the group that met with Manafort, Kushner & Don Jr:
“Some of my clients are national governments or high-ranking officials in those governments,” Akhmetshin said in an affidavit in August 2012. “My government clients have highly sensitive discussions in my e-mails concerning the location or relocation of American military bases in areas within the former Soviet Union.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/rinat-akmetshin-russia-gun-for-hire-washington-lobbying-magnitsky-browder/27863265.html
Every day I think I can’t be more stunned/horrified by this Administration.
Then we learn things like this: Trump repeatedly “secretly” meets with Russian officials (though NOT secret in Russia), including inviting a Russian official *banned* from entering the country, TO THE WHITE HOUSE.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russia-spy-chiefs-met-in-u-s-with-trump-officials-last-week-1150948419558
National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said Saturday that evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election was “now really incontrovertible”.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-essential-washington-updates-trump-s-top-security-advisor-says-1518880769-htmlstory.html
Trump’s response is to claim the timing of when that meddling began “totally exonerates” him. Not one word of concern about this attack on our democracy or taking any steps to prevent it from happening again. No, his only concern is to proclaim vindication.
Robert Mueller files an additional 32 indictments against Manafort & Gates in the state of Virginia (on top of the 12 counts already filed in DC last October). Different regions have jurisdiction over different crimes (“failing to file as a foreign agent” in DC. “Tax fraud” in Virginia) so all charges could not be filed in the same court. The added indictments put increased pressure on Manafort & Gates to cooperate with the Special Prosecutor. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/22/588091558/mueller-brings-more-charges-against-manafort-gates (additional info: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-manafort-money-machine-a-decade-of-influence-peddling-lavish-spending-and-alleged-fraud/2018/02/23/08fb82fc-18b6-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_story.html?utm_term=.c3c53622bbff)
House Republicans shutdown the House Intelligence Commitee’s Russia investigation for “lack of evidence” (despite the Muller investigation is still ongoing and witnesses remaining to be interviewed). Trump fires Secretary of State Tillerson after he publicly concedes Russia was behind the attempted assassination of a former Russian double-agent in the UK (Skripal) and his daughter. Skirpal is linked to British Agent Chris Steele and the “Steele Dossier”. *Somebody* wants this investigation shutdown and Putin’s accusers silenced. I’ll give you one guess who.
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-poison-spy-steele-dossier-836768
Trump once declared that if Mueller investigated Trump’s business, that would be crossing “a red line” (but never explaining what he meant by that.) Mueller has now subpoenaed Trump’s business interests regarding his attempts to construct “Trump Tower Moscow”. This is the first direct investigation of Trump himself and not just those connected to him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/trump-organization-subpoena-mueller-russia.html
Back in February, Trump’s deputy campaign manager (and Manafort’s business partner) Rick Gates plead guilty to “money laundering, federal conspiracy and making false statements to the FBI” regarding contacting “Russian officials” during the campaign.
Today (3/28), that “Russian official” (“Person A”) with whom Gates was “directly communicating” in September and October prior to the election was revealed to be Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s Kiev-based former translator for the GRU (Russian Intelligence, formerly the KGB.) Kilimnik denies he is connected to the GRU.
The contacts were revealed by Dutch Attorney Alex Van Der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about knowing about Gate’s contacts with “Person A”, stating that Gates admitted (bragged) to him that “Person A” was a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU. And that agent is now known to be Kilimnik… meaning Gates has contradicted Kilimnik’s claim of not working for Russian Intelligence, and confirms those contacts were still taking place in 2016 just prior to the election.
Other than being the son-in-law of a prominent Russian Ukrainian banker (“German Khan”, #11 on Forbes’ list of wealthiest Russian billionaires), and being fluent in Russian, Dutch, English and French, Van Der Zwaan’s connection to Gates… or why he would lie to the FBI… is still unclear (though I expect it will almost certainly lead to more Russian money laundering.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/28/mueller-just-drew-the-most-direct-line-to-date-between-the-trump-campaign-and-russia/?utm_term=.d2bca7a2e410
In an interview with NBC News last Friday (4/27), Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya admitted she worked for the Russian government (something she previously denied.) Trump at a rally the next day seemed to validate the possibility during an attempt to criticize the interview, suggesting The Kremlin (whom she supposedly had no connection to) “called her” and requested she (falsely) claim to have a connection to them because Trump was supposedly “hurting them so bad” and needed to create chaos in the U.S..
I’ve said all along the goal of Russia has ALWAYS been to “create chaos in the U.S.” with their meddling in the election and getting someone like Trump elected president.
See the NBC interview here: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russian-lawyer-had-deep-ties-to-kremlin-emails-show-1221158979861
How bout a January 2019 update on this article…any plans?
I’ve pretty much suspended most of my work updating the site due to other priorities. I’m afraid I’ve fallen a bit too far behind to provide any more updates at this time, but I’m fairly confident not much has changed since the last update.
A couple of quick belated updates:
Manafort shared internal polling data with Russian business partner Kilimnik.
Manafort received more than $17 Million dollars from the Russian-backed “Party of Regions.”
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