by Luke Harding
A midlevel Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, flew in from Moscow to meet with Donald Jr. in Trump Tower. Also present were Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist who worked in Soviet counterintelligence. Courtesy of Yury Martyanov/AFP/Getty Images
Mafia boss and racketeer, Vyacheslav Ivankov was a legendary figure in the Soviet and Russian underworld. In 1992 he moved to a new theater of operations: America. The FBI spent three years looking for him. The agency eventually tracked down his hiding place—Trump Tower.
Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, meeting Trump in the Oval Office, in a photo taken by the Russian foreign ministry. Kislyak’s father, Ivan, was a top KGB spy who served in European capitals, including Athens and Paris, where he was a rezident in the 1970s. Courtesy of Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/Getty Images
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly praised Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. The two finally met at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Later that evening, Trump talked to Putin over dinner without his U.S. interpreter. What they discussed is unknown. Courtesy of REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Trump’s future national security adviser, Michael Flynn, sitting next to Putin. The 2015 event was a dinner to celebrate the tenth anniversary of RT, the Kremlin’s propaganda channel. On a previous Moscow visit, Flynn toured the HQ of the GRU, Russia’s military spy agency. Courtesy of AP Images
Lawyer, lobbyist, and adviser to dictators. Paul Manafort joined Trump’s campaign in the spring of 2016. He was on intimate terms with ex-Soviet oligarchs, including Putin’s ally Oleg Deripaska. In July 2017 the FBI raided Manafort’s apartment as part of its collusion probe. Courtesy of AP Images
Carter Page, Trump’s foreign affairs adviser. Page worked in Moscow, where—in the words of one Russian spy—he “got hooked on Gazprom.” The dossier alleges that he held secret meetings with Igor Sechin, Putin’s de facto deputy, and a Kremlin aide. Page denies this. Courtesy of REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
Trump was increasingly vexed by what he called the “Russian thing.” In May 2017 he fired the man who had failed to make it go away—FBI chief James Comey. Comey’s Senate testimony was a riveting piece of political history. His firing came about after Trump asked for “loyalty,” and Comey refused. Courtesy of Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Enter the prosecutor. In the wake of Comey’s firing, former FBI chief Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. His remit: to investigate allegations of “coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller’s heavyweight team didn’t leak. It appeared to be following the money. Courtesy of AP Images
The president’s unfireable son-in-law. In December 2016 Jared Kushner met with Kislyak and asked if it would be possible to set up a secret back channel to Moscow. Kushner held another meeting with Sergei Gorkov, a banker-spy, in Trump Tower. Courtesy of AP Images
In 2008 oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev purchased Trump’s seaside Florida mansion for $95 million, $50 million more than Trump paid for it in 2004. The Russian never lived there and eventually demolished it. During the campaign, his plane was spotted on the tarmac next to Trump’s—a coincidence, Rybolovlev said. Courtesy of REUTERS/Eric Gaillard
Putin’s scowling gatekeeper and the head of Russia’s biggest oil producer, Rosneft. The dossier claims that Sechin offered Page the “brokerage fee” on a privatization deal worth billions, with U.S. sanctions on Moscow dropped in return. Page denies this. Courtesy of Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Russian foreign intelligence ran an undercover spy ring in Manhattan. The FBI busted it. Two Moscow spies had diplomatic immunity, but the third, Evgeny Buryakov, didn’t. In 2015 Buryakov pleaded guilty to espionage and got thirty months in jail. Courtesy of AP Images
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