These are my latest additions to the Bill Moyers & Company overall Timeline relating to Trump and Russia. You can read the entire Timeline here. The Pence Timeline, Comey Firing Timeline, and Kushner Timeline have also been updated to include relevant entries. 

• 1984: David Bogatin, a 38-year-old former Soviet Army pilot and Russian émigré who arrived in America seven years earlier with just $3 in his pocket, pays $6 million for five condominium units in a luxurious new Manhattan high-rise, Trump Tower. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end US real estate as a way to launder money from their criminal enterprises. Three years later, Bogatin—eventually revealed to be a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York—pleads guilty to a tax evasion scheme. According to prosecutors, the scheme involved a network of Russian and Eastern European immigrants acting with Michael Franzese, an admitted captain of the Colombo organized-crime family. (In 1986, Franzese pleads guilty and receives a 10-year sentence for the scheme.) In 2003, Bogatin’s brother, Jacob, is indicted for allegedly running a $150 million stock scam and money laundering scheme with Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of Russian organized crime. [Added July 17, 2017]

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• 1991: In the opening episode of The Apprentice on Jan. 8, 2004, Trump says, “About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt.” [Added July 17, 2017]

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• 2002: Russian-born Felix Sater and his company, Bayrock Group—a Trump Tower tenant—begin working with Trump on a series of real estate development deals, one of which becomes Trump SoHo. Another development partner in Trump SoHo is the Sapir Organization, founded by Tamir Sapir.

Sater has an interesting history. Allegedly, Sater’s father, Mikhael Sheferovsky (aka Michael Sater) was a lieutenant for Russia’s most powerful mobster, Semion Mogilevich. After a 1991 barroom fight in which Felix Sater stabbed a man in the face with the broken stem of a large margarita glass, he received a prison sentence. In 1993, Sater then became part of a stock scheme that allegedly relied on four New York Mafia crime families for protection. He pled guilty and, in return for a reduced sentence, entered into a 1998 cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors pursuing members of organized crime. Reportedly, he also helped the CIA track down and purchase stinger missiles on the black market in Central Asia, thereby keeping them out of terrorists’ hands. In April 2002, Felix Sater is still cooperating with the Justice Department when the US attorney for the eastern district of New York requests a postponement of Sater’s sentencing to September. [Revised July 17, 2017] 

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• Also on March 10, 2017: In the British Virgin Islands, the luxury yacht owned by the Russian oligarch who had purchased Trump’s Palm Beach mansion for $95 million in 2008 is anchored within a few hundred feet of Robert Mercer’s luxury yacht. Mercer has a multimillion investment in Breitbart News and is one of Trump’s biggest financial supporters. The two yachts remain near each other through the weekend. [Added July 17, 2017]

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• Also on June 16, 2017: Trump adds veteran Washington lawyer John Dowd to his legal team. [Added July 17, 2017]

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• During the week of June 19, 2017: According to a July 13, 2017 report by  Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News, Trump lawyers Marc Kasowitz and Alan Garten learn that Donald Trump Jr. had sent and received emails confirming a June 9, 2016 meeting among Don Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. [Added July 17, 2017]

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• Also on June 21, 2017: Jared Kushner submits another revision to his security clearance application, adding Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya—who met with Kushner, Don Jr., and Paul Manafort on June 9, 2016. Two days later, FBI agents question Kushner for the second time about his application. According to later reporting by The New York Times, Kushner has now supplemented his list of foreign contacts three times, adding more than 100 names. [Added July 17, 2017]

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• July 9, 2017: On Fox News, chief of staff Reince Priebus dismisses Don Jr.’s June 9, 2016 meeting with Manafort, Kushner, and a Russian lawyer as “a big nothing burger.” [Added July 17, 2017]

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• Also on July 11, 2017: Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff reports that earlier plans with the Agalarovs to build a Trump Tower in Moscow continued into 2014 and collapsed because the US imposed sanctions on Russia. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• July 12, 2017: Trump tells Reuters that he had learned only recently about the June 9, 2016 meeting among Don Jr., Kushner, Manafort, and a Russian lawyer. “No,” he said, “that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this.” Trump repeats that assertion while speaking with reporters that night on Air Force One en route to Paris. “I only heard about it two or three days ago,” he says. But then he adds, “In fact maybe it was mentioned at some point,” but when asked if he had been told that the meeting was about Hillary Clinton and “dirt” against her he says no. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• Also on July 12, 2017: In a Fox News interview, Vice President Mike Pence’s spokesperson refuses to answer directly whether Pence ever met with any Russians during the presidential campaign. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• Also on July 12, 2017: AP reports that on May 12, 2017—two days before a scheduled start of a major Russian money laundering criminal trial in New York federal court—the Justice Department approved a settlement of the case for less than $6 million. Allegedly, the action involved a more than $230 million fraud scheme. Natalia Veselnitskaya—the Russian lawyer who had met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort on June 9, 2016—had represented the defendant (the owner of a Russian real estate investment firm). Announcing the filing of the complaint in 2013, then-US Attorney Preet Bharara had said, “As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate.” Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee request that the Justice Department provide information about the circumstances surrounding the settlement by July 26, 2017. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• July 13, 2017: The Chicago Tribune reports that on May 14, 2017, Peter W. Smith was found dead in a Rochester, Minnesota hotel room. The GOP operative from Lake Forest, Illinois had died about ten days after an interview with The Wall Street Journal, in which he claimed during the campaign to have connections to Trump adviser Mike Flynn. Smith had told the Journal that, over the Labor Day weekend 2016, he tried to recruit a team of experts to find any emails that were stolen from the private email server that Hillary Clinton used while she was secretary of state. Smith’s Minnesota state death record says that he committed suicide by asphyxiation. The police had recovered a note that included these lines; “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER” – “RECENT BAD TURN IN HEALTH SINCE JANUARY, 2017” and timing related “TO LIFE INSURANCE OF $5 MILLION EXPIRING.” The Wall Street Journal reporter who had interviewed Smith in May tweets:

[Added July 17, 2017]

 

• Also on July 13, 2017: Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff reports that President Trump’s legal team had been informed more than three weeks earlier about the email chain arranging a June 2016 meeting between his son Donald Jr. and a Kremlin-connected lawyer. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• July 14, 2017: NBC News reports, “The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and others on the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist—a former Soviet counterintelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence.” The lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin, confirms to the Associated Press that he attended the meeting. He tells AP that he served in the Soviet military in a unit that was part of counterintelligence, but was never formally trained as a spy. Akhmetshin also says that the Russian lawyer at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, presented the Trump associates with details of what she believed were illicit funds that had been funneled to the Democratic National Committee. And she suggested that making the information public could help the Trump campaign. “This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,” Akhmetshin recalls her saying. He says the attorney brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents, but was unaware of the content of the documents or whether they were provided by the Russian government, and it was unclear whether she left the materials with the Trump associates. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• Also on July 14, 2017: CNN reports that the June 9, 2016 meeting included more than just the six previously reported participants: Kushner, Manafort, Don Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin, and a translator. According to CNN, at least two others—including a representative of the Agalarov family—also attended. [Added July 17, 2017]

 

• Also on July 14, 2017: Jared Kushner’s attorney, Jamie Gorelick, announces that she is no longer representing Kushner on Russia-related inquiries. [Added July 17, 2017]