- Since May 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating Russian government interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
- There are at least 101 known points of contact between people associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government-linked individuals or entities from November of 2015 all the way up to January of 2017.
- Here is the full timeline of all the Trump campaign and transition team's communications with Russia.
So far, the special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian election interference and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia has indicted 34 people and three Russian companies, convicted one person in court, and flipped five cooperating witnesses — three of which are from the Trump campaign.
As it currently stands, there are now more than 101 known points of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian-government linked people or entities, including 23 meetings or calls.
Sixteen Trump campaign officials are known to have had direct contact with a Russian government official or a Russian-linked operative, and at least an additional nine campaign officials were aware of these contacts.
Trump campaign officials had meetings, calls, and digital correspondence with high-level Russian government officials, billionaires linked to Putin, an accused Russian spy, and hackers enlisted by Russian intelligence to meddle in the 2016 elections.
Here is a timeline of the Trump campaign's known contacts with Russia, compiled with the help of resources from the Moscow Project and the Washington Post:
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November 2015: Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen reaches out to Russian weight-lifter Dmitry Klokov in an attempt to secure a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump, reportedly first put Cohen and Klokov in contact, according to emails Buzzfeed News reviewed.
In one email, Klokov claimed "he could arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Putin to help pave the way for the tower."
Cohen then refused the offer, telling Klokov there was an existing agreement to build a Trump Tower between Russia and the Trump Organization.
The nature of Klokov's relationship to Putin is unclear, but he and Cohen exchanged several emails in the fall of 2015.
In December 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty in the special counsel probe for lying about the timing during which the Trump Organization pursued the Trump Tower deal to the House Intelligence Committee in his 2017 congressional testimony.
Mueller's sentencing memo said that"in or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a "trusted person" in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign "political synergy" and "synergy on a government level," with the Russian national believed to be Klokov.
Source: BuzzFeed, Business Insider
January 2016: Cohen reaches out to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov asking about the Trump Tower deal.
The Kremlin has since confirmed that they received Cohen's email, but did not reply. Cohen then called Peskov's assistant on or around Jan. 20, describing to her his position at the Trump Organization and how the Kremlin could help arrange the Trump Tower deal.
Cohen "requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the proposed tower and financing the construction," prosecutors say.
The Trump Tower deal is coming under renewed scrutiny in light of a recent bombshell Buzzfeed News report claiming that Trump personally directed Cohen to lie about the deal in his September 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Sources: Washington Post, US Department of Justice, Buzzfeed News
March 14, 2016: Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos first meets with Joseph Mifsud in Italy.
Papadopoulos, 29, joined the Trump campaign as an unpaid adviser in March 2016.
But from his low-level position, Papadopoulos took on an outsize role in trying to facilitate communications and set up meetings between the Trump campaign and Russia.
One of his main contacts was Joseph Mifsud, the director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, a for-profit college program that was later shut down. Mifsud boasted of having "substantial connections to Russian officials," according to court documents.
Despite having scant credentials or expertise on Russia, Mifsud became active in elite Russian political circles after one of his interns, a 24-year-old Russian woman, introduced him to several high-level diplomats and scholars, The New York Times reported.
Mifsud even gained admission into the prestigious Valdai Discussion Club, a group of foreign policy scholars who host an annual meeting with Putin.
Sources: The New York Times, Lawfare, Washington Post
See the rest of the story at Business Insider