Here we look at the links, known and alleged, between Donald Trump’s associates and allies and Moscow-
Jeff Sessions
The US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, met Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice last year, encounters that the attorney general did not disclose when asked under oath at his Senate confirmation hearing in January about possible contacts between Trump’s presidential campaign and Moscow.
Justice department officials told the Washington Post Sessions met Kislyak once in September 2016, when US intelligence officials were investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, and once in the summer of that year.
Michael Flynn
Flynn, who resigned on 13 February after barely three weeks as national security adviser, reportedly spoke five times with Sergey Kislyak, Moscow’s man in Washington, on 29 December 2016. This was the same day Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia for attempting to influence the presidential election last November through cyber-attacks.
When details of the contacts emerged in early January, incoming vice-president Mike Pence denied in a TV interview that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions. Flynn reportedly assured Pence of this but on 26 January the then-acting US attorney general, Sally Yates, told the White House Flynn was lying about the nature of the calls and flagged him as a blackmail risk.
Flynn then revised his account to claim he “couldn’t be certain” sanctions were not covered before apologising to Pence for misleading him. Other media reports then emerged claiming the US army was investigating whether Flynn took money from the Russian government during a trip to Moscow in 2015. The retired lieutenant-general eventually resigned despite apparently retaining Trump’s “full confidence” only hours beforehand.
Paul Manafort and other aides
Paul Manafort, a former chairman of the Trump campaign, is the only named individual among an unspecified number of Trump associates alleged to have been in regular contact with Russian intelligence officials in 2016.
A New York Times report cited four current and former US intelligence officials who were involved in investigating whether there were links between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to influence the election. These officials conceded they had “so far” seen no evidence of such collusion despite the frequency of the contacts, did not explain what the contacts had been about nor how many people participated on each side.
Carter Page and Michael Cohen
Pre-election contact between the Trump campaign and Moscow was alleged in reports compiled last year and passed to the FBI by a former MI6 officer, Christopher Steele. The files also purported to show the Kremlin held “compromising” material relating to Trump’s conduct during a visit to Moscow in 2013.
The key instances alleged in the dossier were a pair of meetings held with Russian officials in July 2016 by the businessman Carter Page, who Trump formerly described as a foreign policy adviser. Igor Divyekin, a senior member of the presidential administration, is said to have outlined intelligence held on Hillary Clinton with Page, along with hinting at a file on Trump. Page, who called the reports “complete garbage”, is also said to have discussed sanctions imposed on Russia for its involvement in the 2014 crisis in Ukraine with Igor Sechin, a close ally of Putin and head of the Rosneft state-owned oil company.
Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, is also said to have met Russian officials in August 2016 to discuss the fallout from Manafort’s resignation and also emerging media speculation about Page’s activities in Moscow. Cohen has strenuously denied these allegations.
Rex Tillerson
Trump’s pick for secretary of state forged close ties with Russia during more than 40 years working for ExxonMobil. He was the oil and gas corporation’s head of operations there before serving as its chairman and chief executive from 2006 until his surprise nomination.
Tillerson joined forces with Rosneft on several major projects, which came to be hindered by economic sanctions against Russia. He said the policy was harmful after the US and EU placed sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and military action in Ukraine. Despite this, Tillerson denied knowledge of any lobbying by ExxonMobil against sanctions at his congressional confirmation hearing in January.
