Damning
reports emerge of Trump campaign's frequent talks with Russian
intelligence
Campaign
aides said to have been in regular contact, despite repeated
insistence there had been no pre-election talks between Trump team
and Russia
Julian Borger in
Washington
Wednesday 15
February 2017 05.00 GMT
The Russian
influence scandal engulfing the White House deepened dramatically on
Tuesday night with reports that some of Donald Trump’s campaign
aides had frequent contact with Russian intelligence officials over
the course of last year.
A report in the New
York Times came nearly 24 hours after the national security adviser,
Michael Flynn, was forced to resign over conversations with the
Russian ambassador to Washington and misleading statements about them
to the press and vice-president Mike Pence.
The New York Times
report cites four current and former US intelligence officials who
are unnamed and who conceded they had “so far” seen no evidence
in the intercepted phone communications that Trump campaign officials
had cooperated with Russian intelligence in Moscow’s efforts to
skew the election in Trump’s favour. The officials do not explain
what, in that case, the contacts were about.
A CNN report said
“high-level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald
Trump were in constant communication during the campaign with
Russians known to US intelligence”.
Despite the
uncertainties, the reports are threatening to the Trump
administration on a number of levels.
They flatly
contradict White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, who on Tuesday
repeated his earlier assertions that there had been no pre-election
contacts between the Trump team and Russian officials. Last month,
Trump himself also denied any such contacts.
They pile further
pressure on the Republican congressional leadership to launch
committee hearings on Russian election interference that were
promised, but have so far failed to materialise.
They are a further
sign that intelligence officials are willing to leak extensively
against the Trump administration, making it extremely risky for the
White House to try to shut down investigations into collusion with
Moscow that are reportedly being carried out by several intelligence
agencies.
They add
circumstantial weight to the reports on the Trump campaign’s
Kremlin links compiled last year and passed to the FBI by a former
MI6 officer, Christopher Steele. His reports alleged active,
sustained and covert collusion to subvert the election which, if
confirmed, could constitute treason.
The only Trump
associate named in the New York Times report as having participated
in the contacts was Paul Manafort, who was the Trump campaign manager
for several months last summer. He had previously worked as an
adviser to the former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was
backed by Moscow, and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs.
Top Trump aide
Kellyanne Conway and former campaign manager Paul Manafort at a
roundtable discussion on security at Trump Tower. Photograph: Carlo
Allegri/Reuters
Manafort has
repeatedly denied any contacts with Russian officials. He told the
New York Times on Tuesday: “I have never knowingly spoken to
Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with
anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin
administration or any other issues under investigation today.”
“It’s not like
these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence
officer,’” he added.
Manafort did not
immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment.
Manafort left the
Trump campaign in August, after allegations about his activities in
Ukraine first surfaced. At about the same time the campaign also
distanced itself from a US businessman, Carter Page, who Trump had
previously described as an adviser, after Page was reported to have
had contacts with Vladimir Putin’s top lieutenants. Page called the
reports “complete garbage”.
The new reports of
the Trump campaign’s contacts with Moscow rekindled bitterness
among former campaign aides to Hillary Clinton, over a pre-election
announcement by FBI director, James Comey, that new material was
being studied in an investigation of her use of a private internet
server for her emails.
That investigation
came to nothing, but Clinton officials were convinced the bad
publicity, just 11 days before the election, cost her crucial votes.
By contrast, they point out, the Republican Comey said nothing about
investigations underway at the same time into Trump’s Russian
links.
“I’d like the
FBI to explain why they sent a letter about Clinton but not this,”
Clinton’s former campaign manager, Robby Mook, said in a tweet on
Tuesday night.
Her former
spokesman, Brian Fallon, tweeted: “Everything we suspected during
the campaign is proving true. This is a colossal scandal.”
Trump
Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence
By MICHAEL S.
SCHMIDT, MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZOFEB. 14, 2017
WASHINGTON — Phone
records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s
2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated
contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year
before the election, according to four current and former American
officials.
American law
enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications
around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was
trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the
Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The
intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign
was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to
influence the election.
The officials
interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no
evidence of such cooperation.
But the intercepts
alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part
because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump
was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V.
Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event
that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary
Clinton’s emails and would make them public.
The officials said
the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign
officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian
side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of
the intelligence services, they said. All of the current and former
officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing
investigation is classified.
The officials said
that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort,
who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year
and had worked as a political consultant in Ukraine. The officials
declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls.
The call logs and
intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information
that the F.B.I. is sifting through as it investigates the links
between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well
as the hacking of the D.N.C., according to federal law enforcement
officials. As part of its inquiry, the F.B.I. has obtained banking
and travel records and conducted interviews, the officials said.
Mr. Manafort, who
has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the officials’
accounts in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,”
he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never
knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never
been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the
Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.”
He added, “It’s
not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian
intelligence officer.’”
Several of Mr.
Trump’s associates, like Mr. Manafort, have done business in
Russia. And it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in
contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly,
in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are
deeply embedded in society. Law enforcement officials did not say to
what extent the contacts might have been about business.
The officials would
not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls,
the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated,
and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians.
It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with
Mr. Trump himself.
A report from
American intelligence agencies that was made public in January
concluded that the Russian government had intervened in the election
in part to help Mr. Trump, but did not address whether any members of
the Trump campaign had participated in the effort.
The intercepted
calls are different from the wiretapped conversations last year
between Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security
adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United
States. In those calls, which led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation on
Monday night, the two men discussed sanctions that the Obama
administration imposed on Russia in December.
But the cases are
part of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ routine
electronic surveillance of the communications of foreign officials.
The F.B.I. declined
to comment. The White House also declined to comment Tuesday night,
but earlier in the day, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, stood by
Mr. Trump’s previous comments that nobody from his campaign had
contact with Russian officials before the election.
“There’s nothing
that would conclude me that anything different has changed with
respect to that time period,” Mr. Spicer said in response to a
question.
Two days after the
election in November, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy Russian foreign
minister, said “there were contacts” during the campaign between
Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s team.
“Obviously, we
know most of the people from his entourage,” Mr. Ryabkov told
Russia’s Interfax news agency.
The Trump transition
team denied Mr. Ryabkov’s statement. “This is not accurate,”
Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said at the time.
The National
Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign
intelligence services, initially captured the calls between Mr.
Trump’s associates and the Russians as part of routine foreign
surveillance. After that, the F.B.I. asked the N.S.A. to collect as
much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the
phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted
communications that had not been analyzed.
The F.B.I. has
closely examined at least three other people close to Mr. Trump,
although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are
Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the
campaign; Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative; and Mr.
Flynn.
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As part of the
inquiry, the F.B.I. is also trying to assess the credibility of the
information contained in a dossier that was given to the bureau last
year by a former British intelligence operative. The dossier
contained a raft of allegations of a broad conspiracy between Mr.
Trump, his associates and the Russian government. It also included
unsubstantiated claims that the Russians had embarrassing videos that
could be used to blackmail Mr. Trump.
The F.B.I. has spent
several months investigating the leads in the dossier, but has yet to
confirm any of its most explosive claims.
Senior F.B.I.
officials believe that the former British intelligence officer who
compiled the dossier, Christopher Steele, has a credible track
record, and he briefed investigators last year about how he obtained
the information. One American law enforcement official said that
F.B.I. agents had made contact with some of Mr. Steele’s sources.
The agency’s
investigation of Mr. Manafort began last spring as an outgrowth of a
criminal investigation into his work for a pro-Russian political
party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F.
Yanukovych. It has focused on why he was in such close contact with
Russian and Ukrainian intelligence officials.
The bureau did not
have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr.
Manafort’s communications, but it had the N.S.A. scrutinize the
communications of Ukrainian officials he had met.
The F.B.I.
investigation is proceeding at the same time that separate
investigations into Russian interference in the election are gaining
momentum on Capitol Hill. Those investigations, by the House and
Senate Intelligence Committees, are examining not only the Russian
hacking but also any contacts that Mr. Trump’s team had with
Russian officials during the campaign.
On Tuesday, top
Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the
investigation, and that he should be called to testify before
Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the
Intelligence Committee, said the news about Mr. Flynn underscored
“how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people
more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of
what, and when.”
Mr. Warner said Mr.
Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee “from continuing
to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may
have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials
prior to the election.”
Correction: February
14, 2017
An earlier version
of this article misstated the number of people (in addition to Paul
Manafort) whom the F.B.I. has examined. It is at least three, not at
least four.
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