Here are the latest additions to the Trump-Russia Timeline at BillMoyers.com. More updates are in process and you can see a summary of the latest entires in a separate post appearing next to the introduction to the Trump-Russia Timeline.

Oct. 28, 2015: Trump Signs Letter of Intent for Trump Tower in Moscow 

Trump signs a letter of intent for the use of his name on a planned Trump Tower in Moscow. If completed it would be one of the largest residential projects in real estate history and, according to Felix Sater, the ”the world’s tallest building in Moscow.” A Moscow-based developer, I.C. Expert Investment Co., would have paid Trump a licensing fee. After news of the deal breaks in August 2017, Trump Organization Executive Vice President and attorney Michael Cohen tells The Wall Street Journal that he had discussed the proposal with Trump once before Trump signed it and a second time when he did. [Added Aug. 30, 2017]

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November 2015 – January 2016: Pursuit of Trump Tower in Moscow

A February 2017 article in The New York Times, citing Felix Sater, reports that Trump’s bid for the presidency brings work on a Trump Tower in Moscow to a halt in the Fall of 2015. Emin Agalarov makes a similar statement in a March 2017 interview with Forbes; Agalarov says he and his father had previously signed a letter of intent with their Trump counterparts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. “He ran for president, so we dropped the idea,” Agalarov says. “But if he hadn’t run we would probably be in the construction phase today.”

Later reporting indicates the story might not be so simple.

In July 2017, Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff reports that work with the Agalarovs to build a Trump Tower in Moscow came to a halt because of an economic downturn in Russia that was caused, in part, by sanctions the US and others imposed on Russia in 2014, following its intervention in Ukraine.

In an Aug. 1, 2017 article, Talking Points Memo’s Sam Thielman reports that Sater was still working on a deal for Trump Tower in Moscow in “November-December” 2015. In interviews with Thielman, Sater claims that it didn’t involve the Agalarovs, but he doesn’t elaborate.

On Aug. 27, 2017, The Washington Post reports that, in November 2015, Sater urges Trump to come to Moscow to tout the proposal and suggests that he “could get President Vladimir Putin to say ‘great things’ about Trump.” According to The Post, “Sater also predicted in an email that he and Trump Organization leaders would soon be celebrating — both one of the biggest residential projects in real estate history and Donald Trump’s election as president, according to two of the people with knowledge of the exchange.” The Post also reports that, “Sater wrote to Trump Organization Executive Vice President Michael Cohen ‘something to the effect of, “Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a president?”’”

On Aug. 28, 2017, The New York Times picks up the story, quoting from one of Sater’s Nov. 3, 2015 emails to Cohen: “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected… Buddy our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

Following Sater’s recommendation, in January 2016, Cohen seeks the help of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s personal spokesperson and the Kremlin’s top press aide. According to subsequent reporting in The Washington Post, Cohen writes, “Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower – Moscow project in Moscow City. Without getting into lengthy specifics the communication between our two sides has stalled. As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon.”

Peskov receives Cohen’s email, and later says, “But as far as we don’t respond to business topics, this is not our job, we did not send a response.”

According to The Post, “Trump never went to Moscow as Sater proposed. And although investors and Trump’s company signed a letter of intent, they lacked the land and permits to proceed and the project was abandoned at the end of January 2016, just before the presidential primaries began, several people familiar with the proposal said.”

On Aug. 28, 2017, the Trump Organization issues a statement saying, “To be clear, the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia.”

Cohen likewise issues a statement, saying, “I did not ask or brief Mr. Trump, or any of his family, before I made the decision to terminate further work on the proposal. The Trump Tower Moscow proposal was not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.” In an Aug. 28, 2017 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cohen says he discussed the proposal with Trump only three times: once before Trump signed the Oct. 28, 2015 letter of intent, a second time when Trump signed it, and a third time when work on the deal ended. [Revised Sept. 1, 2017]

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April 3, 2016: Panama Papers Leaked 

A massive leak of more than 11 million papers from the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm reveals a money trail allegedly showing a network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2 billion leading to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and his associates. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s top spokesperson, dismisses the accusations as “another series of fibs.” Beyond Russia, the Panama Papers implicate politicians and public leaders throughout the world and, over the subsequent year, lead to audits, investigations, inquiries, and arrests in at least 79 countries. In February 2017, Panama police arrest the founders of the law firm at the center of the scandal and charge them with money laundering. They deny wrongdoing. [Added Aug. 30, 2017]

April 8, 2016: Putin Convenes Russian Federation Security Council

Since Jan. 15, 2016, Putin has been meeting weekly with the Russian Federation Security Council weekly. As the leak of the Panama Papers approached, the council met more frequently — on March 28, 31 and April 5. The Kremlin’s official summary of the April 8 meeting states, “Participants discussed the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the efforts Russia is undertaking these days to facilitate it. Current domestic and international issues were also discussed with a special focus on the creation of the National Guard.”

Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan — experts on how the Kremlin operates in the digital sphere — believe there was actually more going on. In August 2017, they told The Washington Post that “the meeting of the Russian Security Council on April 8, when Putin urgently gathered only the most trusted officials — most of them with secret services background — could be the meeting when a very sensitive matter was discussed, such as the need for a retaliatory response to the Panama Papers exposés.”

Soldatov and Borogan wrote in a 2017 book that Russian interference in the US election may have been a response to the Panama Papers. “Putin believed the Panama Papers attack was sponsored by Hillary Clinton’s people — this, in a way, provided him with a ‘justification’ for a retaliatory operation,” they told The Post. [Added Aug. 30, 2017]

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Aug. 7, 2017: Trump Complains About Bill to Limit His Power to Fire Mueller

Four days after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) had co-sponsored legislation that would limit Trump’s ability to fire special counsel Mueller, Trump reportedly calls Tillis to complain about the bill and say that he doesn’t want it to pass. According to Politico, in late July, Trump had also called Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) to complain about the then-pending Russian sanctions bill. Corker reportedly told Trump that the legislation would pass both houses of Congress with bipartisan support. “It seems he is just always focused on Russia,” one senior GOP aide tells Politco. [Added Aug. 28, 2017]

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Aug. 9, 2017: Trump Blasts McConnell Over Russia Investigation

During a phone call that became a profane shouting match, Trump reportedly accuses Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) of bungling the health care issue. But according to subsequent reporting by The New York Times citing Republicans briefed on the conversation, Trump is even more upset that McConnell has, in his view, not protected him from investigations of Russia’s election interference. [Added Aug. 28, 2017]

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Aug. 11, 2017: Russian Lobbyist Testifies Before Mueller’s Grand Jury 

Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian lobbyist who, along with Russians Natalie Veselnitskaya and Ike Kaveladze, attended the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, testifies for several hours before special counsel Mueller’s grand jury. [Added Sept. 1, 2017]

Aug. 11, 2017: House Democrats Renew Request to Subpoena Deutsche Bank Documents Relating to Trump

Democrats on the House Committee on Financial Services ask Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) to issue a subpoena to Deutsche Bank. They request that the subpoena seek documents relating to Russian money-laundering and to Deutsche Bank accounts involving Trump and his family. The Democratic committee members note that Rep. Hensarling never answered their March 10, 2017 letter seeking a “thorough, objective, and bipartisan investigation…into the Russian money laundering scheme at Deutsche Bank….” [Added Aug. 28, 2017]

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Aug. 22, 2017: Fusion GPS Co-Founder Testifies About “Steele Dossier”

Glenn Simpson, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and co-founder of the consulting firm Fusion GPS, testifies to Senate Judiciary Committee investigators for more than 10 hours.

Working for a client that it has not yet named, Fusion GPS had hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to compile what became the infamous “Steele dossier” about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. Trump has decried the dossier as fake news, and US intelligence officials have testified that it was not the basis for any US intelligence findings of Russian interference with the 2016 election.

It remains unclear which, if any, of the allegations in the dossier US officials have been able to confirm independently. In a statement following Simpson’s session with the committee, Simpson’s lawyer says, “Fusion GPS is proud of the work it has conducted and stands by it.” [Added Aug. 28, 2017]

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Aug. 25, 2017: Mueller Subpoenas Grand Jury Witnesses in Manafort Probe

NBC News reports that special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed public relations executives who worked with Paul Manafort’s international lobbying effort on behalf Ukraine from 2012 to 2014. According to Manafort’s subsequently amended reports, a pro-Russian political party that ran the country had paid Manafort $17 million for his consulting work during that period. [Added Aug. 28, 2017]

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Aug. 25, 2017: Mueller Investigating Possible Flynn Connection to Clinton Email Project

The Wall Street Journal reports that Mueller is examining the role, if any, that Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn may have played in Peter W. Smith’s effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers during the campaign. Smith was a long-time political operative who had told the Journal in May 2017 that during September 2016 he had tried to assemble a team that would pursue those emails. Smith died ten days after the interview. [Added Aug. 28, 2017]

Aug. 29, 2017: CNN reports that special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Paul Manafort’s former lawyer and Manafort’s current spokesperson. [Added Aug. 30, 2017]

Aug. 30, 2017: Mueller Consulting with NY Attorney General on Manafort

Politico reports that, in recent weeks, teams working with special counsel Mueller and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have been sharing evidence in connection with their investigations of Paul Manafort and his financial transactions. [Added Sept. 1, 2017]

Aug. 30, 2017: More Reports on Manafort Ties to Russian Oligarch

The Wall Street Journal reports on Manafort’s alleged financial dealings with Oleg Derispaka, a Russian oligarch. According to The Journal, the dealings began in 2004 and the two men had a falling out, cutting ties in 2014, but Manafort’s work for Ukraine continued into 2015. According to a court filing on Deripaska’s behalf in May 2017, he “never had any arrangement, whether contractual or otherwise, with Mr. Manafort to advance the interests of the Russian government.” [Added Sept. 1, 2017]

Aug. 30, 2017: Cohen Rebuts “Steele Dossier”

The New York Times reports that Michael Cohen’s lawyer has provided the House Intelligence Committee with an eight-page, point-by-point rebuttal of the allegations in the ‘Steele dossier’ insofar as they pertain to Cohen. “We have not uncovered a single document that would in any way corroborate the dossier’s allegations regarding Mr. Cohen, nor do we believe that any such document exists,” wrote Cohen’s lawyer. “Mr. Cohen vehemently denies the claims made in the dossier about him, which are false and remain wholly unsubstantiated.” [Added Sept. 1, 2017]

I’m grateful that The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell keeps focus on Trump/Russia as Trump does everything he can to distract attention away from his biggest problem. Here’s the link to our discussion on August 28.

Tonight (8/28) on The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, (MSNBC, 10:00 EDT), I’ll be connecting the latest Trump-Russia dots in The Washington Post story on Trump’s pursuit of a Moscow real estate deal into 2016 — months after announcing his presidential bid.

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on Aug. 22, 2017.]

Another Trump cover-up collapses. Like its predecessors, it involves Russia. Also like it’s predecessors, Trump is at the center. People lie for a reason. What was Trump’s reason this time?

Perhaps Trump had hoped that the public would never learn about the three Russian participants at the infamous June 9, 2016 meeting with his top campaign advisers. Maybe he thought that branding the episode as an innocuous discussion about a moribund Russian adoption program would glide him past another scandalous event in the Trump-Russia saga. What he probably sought most was to deflect attention away from what actually occurred on June 9: Putin’s self-interested desire for relief from US sanctions converged with Trump’s self-interested prior Russian business dealings to solidify Trump’s position as the Kremlin’s candidate for president of the United States.

Russian Adoptions?

In 2012, Putin stopped the Russian adoption program in retaliation for US sanctions under the Magnitsky Act. The law originated with Russian attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered a $230 million scheme involving Russian officials stealing tax money and plowing some of it into private assets in Western countries. Shortly after Magnitsky testified against those officials in 2008, the Russians arrested him, put him in prison, and abused him until he died a year later at age 37. Magnitsky’s client in the tax investigation, American financier William Browder, sought justice. His efforts culminated in the law that, among other sanctions, freezes and seizes assets belonging to Russian human rights abusers—including those responsible for Magnitsky’s death.

Repealing the Magnitsky Act has become one of Putin’s top foreign policy objectives. Two of the three Russians in the June 9, 2016 meeting with top Trump campaign advisers have been central players in Putin’s efforts: attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin.

Veselnitskaya’s clients have included state-owned businesses and the successor to the KGB. She was also helping a defendant in the Prevezon case, which alleged money laundering of some of the $230 million that Sergei Magnitsky had uncovered. According to then-US Attorney Preet Bhahara’s 2013 announcement of that civil forfeiture action, the laundering occurred through “pricey Manhattan real estate.”

Rinat Akhmetshin later confirmed to the Associated Press that he had served in a Soviet military unit that was part of counterintelligence (but said he was never formally trained as a spy). He’s now a lobbyist seeking repeal of the Magnitsky Act.

The third Russian in the meeting provided a link to Trump’s prior Russian business interests. Ike Kaveladze is vice president of Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov’s company, Crocus Group. Agalarov and his son, Emin, were instrumental in bringing the 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow. Trump earned almost $20 million for that event. The Agalarovs had also worked on developing a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Another Botched Cover-Up

On July 7, 2017, The New York Times told Donald Trump Jr. that it was about to run the first story on the June 9 meeting. Weeks earlier, Jared Kushner’s attorneys had discovered Don Jr.’s email chain that set up the session, which included Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The subject line read: “Russia-Clinton-private and confidential.”

The initial message—from the publicist for Emin Agalarov—said that Russia’s top prosecutor was offering “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia” as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump…”

Seventeen minutes later, Don Jr. responded: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Long before the Times called, the Trump and Kushner legal teams had been debating the best way to deal with this ticking bomb. Returning from the G-20 summit aboard Air Force One on July 8, Trump and his team knew that the Times story required a decision: transparency or obfuscation? Trump cast the only vote that counted. Transparency lost.

Drip, Drip, Drip

Trump helped draft Don Jr.’s misleading statement that read, in pertinent part:

“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up….”

After Don Jr. issued a second incomplete statement, he finally released his June 2016 email chain. Immediately, his initial statement came under attack as deceptive at best. But in the ultimate irony, Trump praised his son’s transparency:

On July 25, 2017, things became stickier. William Browder released his prepared remarks for the Senate Judiciary Committee. His statement and subsequent appearance on July 27 didn’t receive much coverage because, at 8 a.m. on July 26, Trump tweeted out a transgender military ban that his senior military officers immediately disavowed. In addition to isolating already vulnerable citizens, those tweets sucked all of the oxygen from the day’s news cycle and suffocated Browder’s testimony, which should have made headlines.

Browder connected dots that put the June 9 meeting in a stunning new light. He explained why Putin was so focused on repealing the Magnitsky Act: “Since 2012 it’s emerged that Vladimir Putin was a beneficiary of the stolen $230 million that Sergei Magnitsky exposed.” Browder testified that this worries Putin because “he keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.” According to Browder, the sanctions create another problem for Putin because they “destroy the promise of impunity he’s given to all of his corrupt officials.”

Eroding Defenses

Trump’s latest cover-up ended on July 31, 2017, when The Washington Post’s headline proclaimed: “Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer.” Even press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted that Trump “weighed in” on Don Jr.’s statement before it went out.

The revelation was just another of the presidential lies permeating the Trump-Russia story. For months, Trump and his minions insisted that there had been no contact with Russians during the campaign. They were lying.

Trump’s second defense admitted to such contacts, but asserted there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. A related talking point was that Russia actually wanted Hillary Clinton to win because Putin feared that Trump would be tougher on Russia. Don Jr.’s email chain obliterated those positions.

While trying to explain away Don Jr.’s emails, Trump tried a third defense: anyone would have taken the June 9 meeting. “It’s called opposition research,” Trump said. That defense quickly became counterproductive because accepting help from a foreign adversary is illegal.

Trump and his minions then moved to defenses four and five: The Russians didn’t offer anything helpful, and whatever they did to help Trump hadn’t made a difference. Those “believe me,” “trust me” assertions from a serial liar aren’t working.

We’re now at defense number six: ignore whatever happened. Trump is still a legitimately elected president. But the evaporation of defenses one through five are making that a tough sell.

As the facts seep out, Trump uses every available obstacle—even prevarication from his son’s mouth—to block pathways to the truth. The inference is unavoidable: That truth must be worth hiding.

We’ve added a new feature to accompany the Interactive Trump-Russia Timeline at Billmoyers.com. It identifies by date and title the most recent additions to the Timeline. For this transitional week, I’ve included here the complete text of each new entry in the Trump-Russia Timeline, some of which also apply to the separate Pence Timeline, Kushner Timeline, and Comey Firing Timeline. For future updates, go directly to the “Newest Additions” link at Billmoyers.com

May 14, 1984: Trump Opens His First Atlantic City Casino 

The Trump Organization opens Harrah’s at Trump Tower—the first of three Trump casinos in Atlantic City, NJ by 1990. [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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NEW: April 3, 1987: Australian Concerns About Alleged “Trump Mafia Connections”

In connection with Trump’s request to build a new casino in Sydney, Australia, the New South Wales Police Board issues its confidential report on whether Trump has the required “sound repute, probity and integrity” for the project. A month later, the May 4, 1987 confidential minutes of the New South Wales Cabinet Casino Subcommittee quote portions of the board’s report, including: “Atlantic City would be a dubious model for Sydney and in our judgement, the Trump Mafia connections should exclude the Kern/Trump consortium.” The minutes also quote this conclusion from the police board: “On tests of sound repute, probity and integrity,” Trump’s consortium “would be dangerous.”

The subcommittee minutes also summarize a conclusion from CIBC Australia Ltd., a subsidiary of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which reviewed the financial aspects of Trump’s proposal: “The projected casino revenue estimates are not soundly based and the quantum of the potential overstatement is so material that [the proposal] is not financially viable.” [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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2002: Trump’s Russian Real Estate Dealings Expand 

Efforts to sell Russians apartments in Trump World Tower, Trump’s West Side condominiums and Trump’s building on Columbus Circle expand with presentations in Moscow involving Sotheby’s International Realty and a Russian realty firm.

In addition to buying units in Trump World Tower, Russians and Russian-Americans flood into another Trump-backed project in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. According to Reuters’ investigation, in South Florida alone, members of the Russian elite eventually invest more than $98 million in seven Trump-branded luxury towers. Owners of another one-third of the more than 2000 units are limited liability companies that can hide a true owner’s identity. [Revised Aug. 21, 2017]

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March 21, 2016: Trump Lists Page and Papadopoulos as Foreign Policy Advisers 

In a Washington Post interview, Trump identifies Carter Page as one of his foreign policy advisers. Page had helped open the Moscow office of investment banking firm Merrill Lynch and had advised Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, in which Page is an investor. He blames 2014 US sanctions relating to Russia’s annexation of Crimea for driving down Gazprom’s stock price. Earlier in March 2016, Iowa tea party activist Sam Clovis had recommended Page to the Trump campaign.

In the same interview, Trump says that George Papadopoulos is also a member of his foreign policy team. “He’s an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy,” Trump says. [Revised Aug. 21, 2017]

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March 24, 2016: Papadopoulos Suggests Russia Meeting 

Three days after Trump identifies George Papadopoulos as a member of his foreign policy team, Papadopoulos sends an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: “Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin.” According to later reporting from The Washington Post, he offers to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,” telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity. Some Trump advisers express concern about the legality of meeting with Putin or his representatives. But for the next several months, Papadopoulos sends additional emails about Russia’s desire for such a meeting. [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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June 7, 2016: Trump Promises to Reveal “Things That Have Taken Place With the Clintons” 

After winning the New Jersey primary as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president, Trump includes these lines in his victory speech: “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week [June 13] and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons… Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund – the Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese – all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return. It’s a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens.” [Revised Aug. 21, 2017]

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NEW: Jan. 9, 2017: Ukrainian Hacker Goes Dark

On an an encripted, anonymous part of the internet known as the “dark web,” a Ukrainian hacker known as “Profexer” goes completely dark. Three days earlier, the US intelligence agencies’ report on Russian interference with the US election publicly identified a malware program that Profexer wrote as one tool used with Russian hacking in the United States. Sometime thereafter, Profexer turns himself into the Ukrainian police and reportedly begins cooperating with the FBI. [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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Feb. 8, 2017: Comey Tells Priebus Not To Meddle 

According to a later report in The New York Times, FBI Director Comey has a private meeting at the White House with chief of staff Reince Priebus. He tells Priebus about a Justice Department policy that largely bars discussions between White House officials and the FBI with respect to continuing investigations. The purpose of the policy is to prevent political meddling — or at least the appearance of it — in the bureau’s work, according to the law enforcement official source for the Times report. [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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Aug. 1, 2017: White House Admits Trump “Weighed In” On Don Jr.’s Misleading Statement 

Responding to reports about Trump’s role in drafting his son’s statement concerning the June 9, 2016 meeting with the Russians, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says, “The statement that Don Jr. issued is true. There’s no inaccuracy in the statement. The President weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had.” [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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NEW: Aug. 14, 2017: Pence Parses His Words On Russia

While visiting a Christian mission in Cartagena, Colombia, Pence tells reporters, “During all of my experience on the campaign, I never witnessed any evidence of collusion or any of the allegations, I’m not aware of that ever having occurred… I made it very clear I am not aware of any contacts during the time that I was on the campaign between any officials of the Russian government and officials with the campaign, and I stand by that.” [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

As for Pence’s awareness of any contacts between Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian officials prior to the inauguration, Pence adds, “I think I was very clear what I spoke about on television is precisely what Michael Flynn had told me and I believe the president was right to move him out of the White House.” [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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NEW: Aug. 15, 2017: Trump Tweets Another Russia Distraction

[Added Aug. 21, 2017]

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NEW: Aug. 17, 2017: Rohrbacher Echoes Assange: Russia Didn’t Hack Election

A day after meeting with Julian Assange in London, Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA)—long known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia—issues a press release stating that Assange told him Russia was not behind the leaks of emails during the 2016 election. [Added Aug. 21, 2017]

Here’s the link to my appearance with Bill Moyers on Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word.

(Not included in this clip is Rachel Maddow’s generous reference to our Trump/Russia Timeline as an essential tool for journalists. She offered those comments during the segue from her show to O’Donnell’s.)

On Thursday, August 17, 2017, Bill Moyers and I will appear on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “The Last Word.” (MSNBC; 10:00 EDT) We’ll be discussing the Trump/Russia Timeline, Bill Moyers’ recent interview of me, and the Comey firing video.

Meanwhile, here are this week’s Trump/Russia Timeline updates (with additions to the Kushner Timeline, Pence Timeline and Comey Firing Timeline, as appropriate).

1987: Trump’s Early Real Estate Dealings 

Trump’s efforts to develop business in Russia date to 1987. In 1996, he visits Moscow with his long-time friend Howard Lorber, an American businessman who, according to Trump, has significant investments in Russia.

There, the two men scout potential locations for a major Trump project. “We are actually looking at something in Moscow right now,” Trump tells The New Yorker a few months later. “And it would be skyscrapers and hotels, not casinos… And we’re working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow and the mayor’s people. So far, they’ve been very responsive.”

The same year as that visit—1996—Trump applies for his trademark in Russia. Discussing ambitions for a Trump hotel in 2007, he declares, “We will be in Moscow at some point.” [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

June 15, 2013: The Agalarovs Meet with Trump in Las Vegas 

Russian real estate oligarch Aras Agalarov and his son, Emin, meet with Donald Trump in Las Vegas, where the Trump-owned Miss USA pageant is being held. [Added Aug. 14, 2017]

Fall 2015: Plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow Put on Hold

According to a Feb. 19, 2017 article in The New York Times citing Felix Sater, Trump’s bid for the presidency brings work on a Trump Tower in Moscow to a halt.

However, in July 2017, Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff reports that work with the Agalarovs to build a Trump Tower in Moscow came to a halt because of an economic downturn in Russia that was caused, in part, by sanctions the US and others imposed on Russia in 2014, following its intervention in Ukraine. [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

JUNE 9, 2016: Don Jr., Manafort, Kushner Meet With Russian Lawyer

Natalia Veselnitskaya, the “Russian government attorney” referenced in Goldstone’s earlier emails to Donald Trump Jr., meets at Trump Tower with Don Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner.

Veselnitskaya was formerly married to a former deputy transportation minister of the Moscow region. Her clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company is under investigation in the United States at the time. According to Reuters, from 2005 to 2013, Veselnitskaya represented successfully the Russian FSB’s interests in a legal dispute over ownership of an upscale property in northwest Moscow. The FSB is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB that Vladimir Putin headed before he became Russian president. Veselnitskaya is also one of the principal players in Russia’s ongoing efforts to eliminate US sanctions that the Magnitsky Act imposes.

Another Russian attendee at the June 9 meeting is Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist reported by some to be a former Soviet intelligence officer, though he denies having ties to Russia’s intelligence agency. Akhmetshin also has been pushing repeal of the Magnitsky Act.

A third attendee is a Russian associate of real estate developer Aras Agalarov, Ike Kaveladze — a vice president for Agalarov’s company focusing on real estate and finance. Born in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, he came to the United States in 1991. In 2000, a congressional inquiry led to a Government Accounting Office report that Kaveladze had set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations. According to contemporaneous reporting in The New York Times, “The GAO report said nothing about the sources of the money. In view of past investigations into laundering, this wave was highly likely to have arisen from Russian executives who were seeking to avoid taxes, although some money could be from organized crime… In an interview, Mr. Kaveladze said he had engaged in no wrongdoing. He described the GAO investigation as a ‘witch hunt.’” [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

March 10, 2017: Trump Fires US Attorney Breet Bharara and 45 Other US Attorneys 

Trump fires 46 incumbent US attorneys, leaving in place only Rod Rosenstein of Maryland and Dana Boente of Virginia (who is acting deputy attorney general while Rosenstein’s nomination for that position awaits Senate confirmation).

Trump’s action comes as a surprise to Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the southern district of New York. Shortly after the election, according to Bharara, Trump and Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions had personally asked Bharara to remain in his position and Bharara had agreed.

At the time of his firing, Bharara is supervising, among other major New York-based investigations, a case allegedly involving Russian money laundering through high-end Manhattan real estate. Bharara’s civil forfeiture action against the Russian defendants involves money allegedly from the $230 million scheme that Sergei Magnitsky had uncovered. The trial is set to begin in May. [Added Aug. 14, 2017]

May 12, 2017: DOJ Settles Russian Money Laundering Case

Three days before the scheduled start of a major Russian money laundering criminal trial in New York federal court, the Justice Department approves 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 helped fight the case and reportedly described the settlement as “almost an apology from the government.”

When he announced the filing of the complaint in 2013, then-US Attorney Preet Bharara 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.”

On July 12, 2017, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee request that the Justice Department provide information about the circumstances surrounding the settlement. [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

May 14, 2017: Operative Who Searched for Clinton Emails Found Dead

Peter W. Smith is found dead in a Rochester, Minnesota hotel room. The GOP operative from Lake Forest, Illinois, dies about 10 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 Labor Day weekend 2016, he began trying 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 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:

[Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

May 26, 2017: Senate Intelligence Committee Demands All Russia Documents From Trump Campaign

The Washington Post reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee has demanded that the Trump campaign produce all Russia-related documents, emails and phone records dating to June 2015, when the campaign was launched. Previously, the committee had asked specific individuals associated with the campaign to produce their documents, and it had asked the campaign itself only to preserve them. [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

July 25, 2017: Manafort Meets With Senate Intel Committee 

Paul Manafort meets with Senate Intelligence Committee investigators about his June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and three Russians. Reportedly, Manafort gives investigators notes he’d taken at the meeting. On the same day, the Senate Judiciary Committee issues and then rescinds a subpoena for Manafort’s appearance on July 26. [Added Aug. 14, 2017]

July 25-27, 2017: Browder Testifies on Putin’s Opposition to Magnitsky Act

In prepared remarks released on July 25—prior to his Senate Judiciary Committee appearance set for July 26 (later rescheduled for July 27)—American financier William Browder discusses the case that, he believes, cost his Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky his life in 2009. Browder explains that repealing the Magnitsky Act and preventing it from spreading to other countries are among Putin’s top foreign policy priorities. He says that two of the Russians attending the June 9, 2016, meeting with Trump’s top campaign advisers were connected to Russian efforts seeking repeal of the Magnitsky Act: lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and former Soviet intelligence agent Rinat Akhmetshin. [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

July 26, 2017: FBI Raids Manafort’s Home 

At 6:00 am. FBI agents knock on the door of Paul Manafort’s Alexandria, VA home. In a surprise predawn raid, they execute a search warrant. Working with special counsel Robert Mueller, they depart with various records. [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

July 26, 2017: Trump Tweets a Distraction

[Added Aug. 14, 2017]

Aug. 2, 2017: Trump Denounces New Russian Sanctions, Signs Bill Anyway 

In February, Congress had begun to consider legislation that would limit Trump’s ability unilaterally to ease Russian sanctions. Despite ongoing White House objections and lobbying, the final bill had passed the House of Representatives and the Senate with veto-proof majorities. Signing the bill, Trump issues a statement calling the legislation “significantly flawed” and saying the administration “particularly expects the Congress to refrain from using this flawed bill to hinder our important work with European allies to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, and from using it to hinder our efforts to address any unintended consequences it may have for American businesses, our friends or our allies.” In an accompanying press release, Trump says, “Despite its problems, I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States. We hope there will be cooperation between our two countries on major global issues so that these sanctions will no longer be necessary.” [Revised Aug. 14, 2017]

Aug. 4, 2017: Mueller Seeks White House Documents on Flynn and Turkey as Flynn Revises Disclosure Statement 

The New York Times reports that investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller have asked the White House for documents relating to former national security adviser Mike Flynn and have questioned witnesses about whether he might have secretly received payments from Turkey during the final months of the campaign.

The Times also reports that earlier in the week, Flynn had filed a third version of his required financial disclosure form. The most recent filing added his contract with SCL Group—the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm that worked with the Trump campaign—and increased his reported income from $1.4 million to $1.8 million. [Added Aug. 14, 2017]

Aug. 6, 2017: Conway Calls June 9, 2016 Meeting and Russia Investigation “Nothing” 

On ABC’s This Week, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway calls the June 9, 2016 meeting among Trump’s top advisers Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and the Russians “ridiculous” and “nothing.” She refuses to answer whether Trump will commit to not firing special counsel Robert Mueller. “There’s nothing in this Russia investigation,” she says. [Added Aug. 14, 2017]

Bill Moyers interviewed me for the launch of the new interactive Trump/Russia Timeline at BillMoyers.com.

Here are the links:

Moyers Interview

New Interactive Trump/Russia Timeline

Meanwhile, here are this week’s additions to the Timeline:

• Nov. 16, 2009: Russian attorney Sergei Magnitsky, 37, dies after physical abuse in prison. Prior to his arrest, he had worked on behalf of American financier William Browder. Magnitsky had found that Russian officials had redirected more than $230 million in taxes that Browder’s companies had paid to the Russian government. After testifying against those officials, Russian authorities arrested and imprisoned him on Nov. 24, 2008. After Magnitsky’s death, Browder makes it his personal mission to get justice for Magnitsky. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• Dec. 14, 2012: President Obama signs into law the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. With William Browder’s urging, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) had sponsored the legislation, which the House and Senate then voted overwhelmingly to pass. The Magnitsky Act freezes assets and bans visas both for Russians who had killed Magnitsky in 2009 and for other Russians involved in serious human rights abuses. Putin is furious with the sanctions and retaliates by banning US adoptions of Russian children. In subsequent testimony on July 26, 2017 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Magnitsky’s former client Browder testifies that Putin took the Magnitsky Act personally because “since 2012, it’s emerged that Vladimir Putin was a beneficiary of the stolen $230 million that Sergei Magnitsky exposed.” Browder testifies that this worries Putin because “he keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.” According to Browder, the sanctions also create a problem for Putin because it “destroys the promise of impunity he’s given to all of his corrupt officials.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• June 9, 2016: Natalia Veselnitskaya, the “Russian government attorney” referenced in Goldstone’s earlier emails to Donald Trump Jr., meets at Trump Tower with Don Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. The lawyer was formerly married to a former deputy transportation minister of the Moscow region. Her clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company is under investigation in the United States at the time. She is also one of the principal players in Russia’s ongoing efforts to eliminate US sanctions that the Magnitsky Act imposes.

Another Russian attendee at the June 9 meeting is Rinat Akhmetshin, a lobbyist reported by some to be a former Soviet intelligence officer, though he denies having ties to Russia’s intelligence agency. Akhmetshin also has been pushing repeal of the Magnitsky Act.

A third attendee is a Russian associate of real estate developer Aras Agalarov, Ike Kaveladze—a vice president focusing on real estate and finance for Agalarov’s company. Born in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, he came to the United States in 1991. In 2000, a Congressional inquiry led to a Government Accounting Office report that Kaveladze had set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations. According to contemporaneous reporting in The New York Times, “The GAO report said nothing about the sources of the money. In view of past investigations into laundering, this wave was highly likely to have arisen from Russian executives who were seeking to avoid taxes, although some money could be from organized crime… In an interview, Mr. Kaveladze said he had engaged in no wrongdoing. He described the GAO investigation as a ‘witch hunt.’” [Revised Aug. 7, 2017] 

***

• Nov. 8, 2016: Sergei Krivov, 63, is unresponsive and declared dead at the scene inside the Russian consulate in New York City an hour after voting opens. Russian-born Krivov was duty commander involved with security affairs, according to Russian news reports. At first, Russian consular officials say Krivov fell from the roof. Then, they say he died of a heart attack. The initial police report filed on the day of the incident says Krivov had “an unknown trauma to the head.” The New York City medical examiner later rules that Krivov died from bleeding in the chest area, likely due to a tumor. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• March 2, 2017: Alex Oronov, 69, a Ukrainian émigré businessman in New York, dies. “The cause of his death remains unknown,” USA Today reports in May. He reportedly had organized the January 2017 meeting among Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, and Ukrainian parliament member Andriy Artemenko at the Manhattan Loews Regency Hotel about a peace plan for Ukraine. Oronov had been a business associate and the father-in-law of Michael Cohen’s brother, Bryan. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• March 21, 2017: Nikolai Gorokhov, 53, is near death with “severe head injuries” and remains in a hospital’s intensive care unit. Reportedly, he fell from the fourth floor of his Moscow apartment. Gorokhov is a private Russian lawyer on an anti-corruption crusade and represents the family of Sergei Magnitsky, and has continued work to uncover the tax fraud first identified by Magnitsky. After regaining consciousness, Gorokhov can’t recall what happened to cause his injuries, but he thinks he may have been targeted. Gorokhov is also set to be a key witness in the related federal money-laundering case trial in May. US attorney Preet Bharaha had alleged that some of the $230 million in stolen proceeds from the fraud scheme that Magnitsky uncovered had been used to purchase “pricey Manhattan real estate.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• July 8, 2017: The New York Times prepares to report the story of the June 9, 2016 meeting that Donald Jr. had arranged with Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and a Kremlin-connected lawyer. Returning from Europe aboard Air Force One, a small group of Trump’s advisers huddle in a cabin helping to craft a response for Don Jr. to give the Times. According to the Times report, Trump personally signs off on the following statement for his son: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up… I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.” But according to later reporting by The Washington Post, Trump does more than “sign off” on his son’s false statement. He helps to write it. [Revised Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• July 12, 2017: After The New York Times reports that Trump signed off on Don Jr.’s initial (and misleading) statement about the June 9, 2016 meeting among top Trump campaign advisers and the Russians, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow tells Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos, “The president didn’t sign off on anything. He was coming back from the G-20, the statement that was released on Saturday was released by Donald Trump Jr., and I’m sure in consultation with his lawyers. The president wasn’t involved in that.” Sekulow goes on to say that the Times report is incorrect. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• July 16, 2017: Responding to reports that President Trump was personally involved in drafting Don Jr.’s initial and false statement about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, tells NBC’s Chuck Todd: “I do want to be clear—that the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement. It came from Donald Trump Jr. So that’s what I can tell you because that’s what we know. And Donald Trump Jr. has said the same thing.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• July 25, 2017: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the paper does not release (but becomes public on Aug. 1), editor-in-chief Gerard Baker asks Trump if Robert Mueller’s job is safe. “No,” Trump says, “we’re going to see. I mean, I have no comment yet, because it’s too early. But we’ll see. We’re going to see. Here’s the good news: I was never involved with Russia. There was nobody in the campaign. I’ve got 200 people that will say that they’ve never seen anybody on the campaign… There’s nobody on the campaign that saw anybody from Russia. We had nothing to do with Russia… And if Jeff Sessions didn’t recuse himself, we wouldn’t even be talking about this subject.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• July 26, 2017: American financier William Browder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the case that, he believes, cost his Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky his life in 2009. Browder explains that repealing the Magnitsky Act and preventing it from spreading to other countries are among Putin’s top foreign policy priorities. He says that two of the Russians attending the June 9, 2016 meeting with Trump’s top campaign advisers were connected to Russian efforts seeking repeal of the Magnitsky Act: lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and former Soviet intelligence agent Rinat Akhmetshin. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

***

• July 31, 2017: The Washington Post reports that Trump had personally dictated the misleading statement that his son initially provided to The New York Times about the June 9, 2016 meeting among Trump’s top campaign advisers and the Russians. According to the Post, “The president directed that Trump Jr.’s statement to the Times describe the meeting as unimportant. He wanted the statement to say that the meeting had been initiated by the Russian lawyer and primarily was about her pet issue—the adoption of Russian children.” Responding to the article, Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow says, “Apart from being of no consequence, the [Post’s] characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Aug. 2, 2017: Signing the sanctions bill that had passed Congress with veto-proof majorities, Trump issues a signing statement calling the legislation “significantly flawed” and saying the administration “particularly expects the Congress to refrain from using this flawed bill to hinder our important work with European allies to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, and from using it to hinder our efforts to address any unintended consequences it may have for American businesses, our friends, or our allies.” In an accompanying press release, Trump says, “Despite its problems, I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States. We hope there will be cooperation between our two countries on major global issues so that these sanctions will no longer be necessary.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Also on Aug. 2, 2017: In response to the new US sanctions, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev writes a scathing Facebook post decrying what he describes, according to a translation by NPR, as Trump’s “total weakness” and saying that the package “ends hopes for improving our relations with the new administration.” Medvedev describes the sanctions as a “declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia.” Slamming Trump for signing the act, he says that the “US establishment fully outwitted” him. The fact that Trump signed the bill, Medvedev continues, “changes the power balance in US political circles.” He says the sanctions are “another way to knock Trump down a peg” and predicts: “New steps are to come, and they will ultimately aim to remove him from power.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Aug. 3, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Aug. 3, 2017: Sens. Thom Thillis (R-NC), and Chris Coons (D-DE) introduce legislation that would limit Trump’s ability to fire special counsel Mueller. It would also reduce his incentive to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the purpose of getting someone else in the Justice Department to fire Mueller. Sens. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) also introduce legislation seeking to protect Mueller. As the Senate concludes its business for the August break, senators agree unanimously to hold nine “pro forma sessions,” thereby preventing Trump from making “recess appointments” during members’ absence. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Aug. 3, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reports that special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a Washington grand jury to investigate the Russia probe. [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Aug. 3, 2017: In response to a CNN story that federal investigators are pursuing Trump and his associates’ financial ties to Russia, Trump’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, says, “The president’s outside counsel has not received any requests for documentation or information about this. Any inquiry from the special counsel that goes beyond the mandate specified in the appointment we would object to.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

• Aug. 3, 2017: At a rally in Huntington, West Virginia, Trump tells the crowd, “Most people know there were no Russians in our campaign; there never were.” [Added Aug. 7, 2017]

Another eventful week—and many more to come. 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. 

• Also on July 8, 2017: The New York Times prepares to report the story of the June 9, 2016 meeting that Donald Jr. had arranged with Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and a Kremlin-connected lawyer. Returning from Europe aboard Air Force One, a small group of Trump’s advisers huddle in a cabin helping to craft a response for Don Jr. to give the Times. Trump personally signs off on the following statement for his son: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up… I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.” [Revised July 31, 2017]

***

• July 25, 2017: Trump tweets:

and

 and

 and

 [Added July 31, 2017]

Later in the day, Trump tells The Wall Street Journal, “I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions. When asked about Sessions in the Rose Garden, Trump says, “We will see what happens. Time will tell.” [Added July 31, 2017]

• July 26, 2017: Trump tweets:

and

[Added July 31, 2017] 

• July 27, 2017: Two days after the House of Representative had passed—by a margin of 418-3—a sweeping sanctions bill to limit Trump’s power to remove Russian sanctions, the Senate passes the bill by a margin of 98-2 and sends it to Trump’s desk. The bill has a veto-proof majority, and a White House spokesperson said the following day that Trump intends to sign it. [Added July 31, 2017]

• July 28, 2017: Russia retaliates for the recently passed (but not yet signed) US sanctions bill by seizing two US compounds in Russia and ordering the American diplomatic mission in Russia to reduce its staff by several hundred employees before Sept. 1. A Russian legislator and frequent commentator on international affairs tweets, “There is a high probability that this will not be the end of it.” Two days later, Putin confirms that the US will be forced to cut its staff of roughly 1,200 people by 755. It is unclear if this means any Americans would be expelled from the country. [Added July 31, 2017]

• July 29, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added July 31, 2017]

• July 30, 2017: On ABC News’ This Week, host Martha Raddatz asks Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov about his Nov. 10, 2016 comment that, during the campaign, the Kremlin had continuing communications with Trump’s “immediate entourage.” Ryabkov replies, “You have to go through all the hearings and all the material which is available by now for the Congress and for the general public. You have all the names… If Ambassador Kislyak was not contacting some people on the other side—so to say—he wouldn’t perform his functions as he should. He was not spying and he was not recruiting. If he did so, I would be now a prima ballerina of the Bolshoi ballet, if you know what it means.” Pressed specifically about the June 9, 2016 meeting in which Russians had led Trump’s senior advisers to believe that they could help the Trump campaign with damaging information on Hillary Clinton, he says, “All the information which we provide to anyone can be easily found in open sources. We are not doing anything to the detriment of the domestic developments or internal affairs of any country, the US included.” [Added July 31, 2017]

A busy week. 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.

• 1998: After a string of bankruptcies in Trump’s casino and hotel businesses in the 1990s, Deutsche Bank becomes one of the few major financial institutions willing to lend him money. [Added July 24, 2017] 

***

• During 2012 and 2013: According to later reporting by The New York Times, financial records filed in December 2015 in the secret tax haven of Cyprus show that Trump’s future campaign manager, Paul Manafort, incurs debts totaling as much as $17 million to pro-Russia interests, including a Russian oligarch who later sues Manafort for $19 million over a failed investment in a Ukrainian television business. [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Nov. 8-11, 2013: At the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov—a real estate developer sometimes referred to as the “Trump of Russia”—and his son, Emin, arrange an extravagant party entrance for their guest, Donald Trump: an armored Mercedes stretch limo driving off a freight elevator right into a ballroom with 3,000 bedazzled Russian guests. The Agalarovs had facilitated Trump’s $20 million deal to host the Miss Universe contest in Moscow.

While in Moscow for the pageant, Trump discusses plans for a new Trump project in Russia with the Agalarovs and Alex Sapir (whose family’s company was one of the co-developers of Trump SoHo with Trump and Bayrock/Felix Sater). Publicly, Trump says only, “I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper.”

“The Russian market is attracted to me,” Trump tells Real Estate Weekly. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.”

Also while in Russia, Trump says: “I do have a relationship [with Putin] and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today… I do have a relationship with him… He’s done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s represented.” [Revised July 24, 2017]

• April 27, 2016: At the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, Trump delivers his first major foreign policy address. Prior to Trump’s speech, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attend a small VIP reception at which the two men are photographed together. According to a July 21, 2017 report in The Washington Post, Kislyak tells his superiors in Moscow that he and Sessions discuss campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow. [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on April 27, 2016: At the Mayflower Hotel event, Jared Kushener attends a reception where he meets Russian Ambassador Kislyak. More than a year later, Kushner first discloses the meeting in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 24, 2017. He says, “We shook hands, exchanged brief pleasantries and I thanked them for attending the event and said I hoped they would like candidate Trump’s speech and his ideas for a fresh approach to America’s foreign policy.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 18, 2016: At a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican Convention, Jeff Sessions speaks individually with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. According to a July 21, 2017 report in The Washington Post, Kislyak tells his superiors in Moscow that the two men discuss campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow. [Revised July 24, 2017]

***

• Jan. 30, 2017: Deutsche Bank agrees to pay a $425 million fine to settle New York state charges that from 2011 to 2015, it helped Russian investors launder as much as $10 billion through its branches in Moscow, London and New York. Allegedly, a group of executives arranged stock trades that had no economic purpose, other than disguising what the client was doing. [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• March 2, 2017: Trump says he has “total confidence” in Jeff Sessions and he shouldn’t recuse himself from the Russia investigation. An hour later, Sessions recuses himself “from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.” In a statement issued the previous evening, Sessions had said he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.” [Revised July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 7, 2017: Over dinner with other world leaders at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump has a second private discussion with Putin. Only Trump, Putin, and Putin’s official translator attend, which means that only Russia will have a transcript. The meeting remains undisclosed for more than 10 days—until July 18, 2017, when Ian Bremmer, president of a political risk consulting firm, reveals that he learned about the meeting from other world leaders who were present and found the hour-long conversation disconcerting. Later that day, the White House acknowledges the Trump/Putin discussion. [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 11, 2017: The Russian Business Council hosts what it calls a “farewell reception” for Ambassador Kislyak, who is leaving his post in Washington and returning to Moscow. [Revised July 24, 2017]

***

• July 17, 2017: Trump tweets about his top campaign advisers’ June 9, 2016 meeting with the Russians:

• Also on July 17, 2017: In his daily press briefing, Sean Spicer repeats the debunked claim that at their June 9, 2017 meeting, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and the Russians discussed only the adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act. (The 2012 US law imposed sanctions on specifically identified Russians for human rights abuses and prompted Putin to ban such adoptions by Americans.) “There was nothing, as far as we know, that would lead anyone to believe that there was anything except for a discussion about adoption and the Magnitsky Act,” Spicer says. [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• July 18, 2017: CNN and The Washington Post reveal the identity of the eighth person at a secret June 9, 2016 meeting among Trump’s top campaign advisers and several Russians. In addition to the previously reported attendees—Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Emin Agalarov’s publicist Rob Goldstone, Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, former Soviet counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin, and translator Anatoli Samochornov—Aras Agalarov sent one of his associates, Ike Kaveladze, to the meeting. According to Agalarov’s lawyer, Kaveladze is a vice president focusing on real estate and finance for Agalarov’s company, the Crocus Group.

Kaveladze has an interesting history. Born in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, he came to the United States in 1991. In 2000, a Congressional inquiry led to a Government Accounting Office report that Kaveladze had set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations. According to contemporaneous reporting in The New York Times, “The GAO report said nothing about the sources of the money. In view of past investigations into laundering, this wave was highly likely to have arisen from Russian executives who were seeking to avoid taxes, although some money could be from organized crime…In an interview, Mr. Kaveladze said he had engaged in no wrongdoing. He described the G.A.O. investigation as a ‘witch hunt.’’” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 18, 2017: After revelation of the second, previously undisclosed private discussion between Trump and Putin at the G-20 summit on July 7, Trump tweets:

and

• July 19, 2017: The Trump administration reveals it has ended the covert American program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad—a move that Russia had long sought. [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In an expansive interview with reporters for The New York Times, Trump discusses his most recently disclosed second conversation with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit. “So the meal was going,” Trump says, “and toward dessert I went down just to say hello to Melania, and while I was there I said hello to Putin. Really, pleasantries more than anything else. It was not a long conversation, but it was, you know, could be 15 minutes. Just talked about — things. Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In the Times interview, Trump talks about the June 9, 2016 meeting among his top campaign advisers and several Russians: “As I’ve said — most other people, you know, when they call up and say, ‘By the way, we have information on your opponent,’” I think most politicians — I was just with a lot of people, they said [inaudible], ‘Who wouldn’t have taken a meeting like that?’” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In the Times interview, Trump also talks about the email exchange in which Don Jr. set up the June 9 meeting: “Well, I never saw the email. I never saw the email until, you know——“ When asked if he knew about the meeting at the time, Trump says, “No, I didn’t know anything about the meeting… No, nobody told me. I didn’t know noth—— It’s a very unimportant — sounded like a very unimportant meeting.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In the Times interview, Trump lashes out at Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.” Later, he continues, “What Jeff Sessions did was he recused himself right after, right after he became attorney general. And I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ I would have — then I said, ‘Who’s your deputy?’ So his deputy he hardly knew, and that’s Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein, who is from Baltimore. There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In the Times interview, Trump talks about his meetings with then-FBI Director Comey.

Of the January 6, 2017 meeting, when Comey told Trump about the infamous Steele dossier: “[H]e shared it so that I would think he had it out there” as leverage against Trump.

Of the Feb. 14, 2017 meeting, when Trump hoped Comey could see his way to “letting Flynn go,” Trump said, “He said I said ‘hope’ — ‘I hope you can treat Flynn good’ or something like that. I didn’t say anything. But even if he did — like I said at the news conference on the, you know, Rose Garden — even if I did, that’s not — other people go a step further. I could have ended that whole thing just by saying — they say it can’t be obstruction because you can say: ‘It’s ended. It’s over. Period.’”

“Did you shoo people out of the room when you talked to Comey?” the reporters ask.

“No, no,” Trump answers. “No. That was the other thing. I told people to get out of the room. Why would I do that?”

“Did you actually have a one-on-one with Comey then?” asks the Times reporter.

“Not much,” Trump says. “Not even that I remember. He was sitting, and I don’t remember even talking to him about any of this stuff. He said I asked people to go. Look, you look at his testimony. His testimony is loaded up with lies, O.K.?”

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In the Times interview, Trump talks about the Rosenstein memo used to cover-up the reasons he fired Comey: “Then Rosenstein becomes extremely angry because of Comey’s Wednesday press conference, where he said that he would do the same thing he did a year ago with Hillary Clinton, and Rosenstein became extremely angry at that because, as a prosecutor, he knows that Comey did the wrong thing. Totally wrong thing. And he gives me a letter, O.K., he gives me a letter about Comey. And by the way, that was a tough letter, O.K. Now, perhaps I would have fired Comey anyway, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the letter, O.K. But he gives me a very strong letter, and now he’s involved in the case. Well, that’s a conflict of interest.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 19, 2017: In the Times interview, Trump discusses special counsel Mueller, whom Trump had interviewed for the FBI director job. “The day before! Of course, he was up here, and he wanted the job,” Trump says, “So, now what happens is, he leaves the office. [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein leaves the office. The next day, he is appointed special counsel. I said, what the hell is this all about? Talk about conflicts? But he was interviewing for the job. There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”

Asked if Mueller’s investigation into his and his family’s finances unrelated to Russia would be a breach of Mueller’s charge, Trump answers, “I would say yeah. I would say yes. By the way, I would say, I don’t — I don’t — I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? I don’t make money from Russia. In fact, I put out a letter saying that I don’t make — from one of the most highly respected law firms, accounting firms. I don’t have buildings in Russia. They said I own buildings in Russia. I don’t. They said I made money from Russia. I don’t. It’s not my thing. I don’t, I don’t do that. Over the years, I’ve looked at maybe doing a deal in Russia, but I never did one. Other than I held the Miss Universe pageant there eight, nine years…” Asked what would happen if Mueller went “outside certain parameters” of his charge, Trump says, “I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• July 20, 2017: The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg report that Mueller is looking at possible money laundering by Paul Manafort. Bloomberg adds that the special counsel is also investigating a “broad range of range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates.” They include “Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008.” One of Trump’s lawyers responds that such transactions are, in his view, “well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel.” [Added July 24, 2017]

 ***

• Also on July 20, 2017: The Senate Judiciary Committee reveals that it has pre-approved subpoenas for Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort. According to chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA), if Don Jr. and Manafort do not accept the committee’s invitation to appear the following week, the subpoenas will issue “almost immediately.” Meanwhile, Jared Kushner is also scheduled to appear for a staff interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee the following week. [Added July 24, 2017]

 ***

• Also on July 20, 2017: The New York Times and The Washington Post report that Trump’s lawyers are investigating possible ways to limit or block Mueller’s investigation, including possible conflicts of interest involving members of Mueller’s legal team, as well as the president’s power to pardon associates, family members, and himself. One of Trump’s attorneys responds that the story is “nonsense.” [Added July 24, 2017]

 ***

• July 21, 2017: Reuters reports that from 2005 to 2013, Natalia Veselnitskaya—the Russian lawyer in attendance at the June 9, 2016 meeting that included Kushner, Manafort, and Donald Trump Jr.—represented successfully the Russian FSB’s interests in a legal dispute over ownership of an upscale property in northwest Moscow. The FSB is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB that Vladimir Putin headed before he became Russian president. [Added July 24, 2017]

 ***

• Also on July 21, 2017: The Washington Post breaks the story that US intelligence intercepts of Russian Ambassador Kislyak’s reports to Moscow of his conversations with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) in April and July 2016 are at odds with Sessions’ repeated denials about the content of those discussions. The intercepts purportedly reveal that Sessions and Kislyak “had ‘substantive’ discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.” A Justice Department spokesperson responds that Sessions “never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election.” She does not deny that Mr. Sessions discussed campaign or policy issues more generally with Mr. Kislyak. [Added July 24, 2017]

 ***

• July 22, 2017: Trump tweets:

and

and

• July 23, 2017: Making the Sunday morning talk show rounds, one of Trump’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow, and Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci deny that Trump is considering a pardon for anyone. Scaramucci also says that he spoke with Trump about whether Russia had hacked the election and Trump had told him, “Maybe they did it. Maybe they didn’t do it.” [Added July 24, 2017]

***

• Also on July 23, 2017: Trump tweets:

***

• July 24, 2017: Trump tweets:

***

• July 24, 2017: Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in closed session, Kushner describes his three previously disclosed contacts with Russian officials prior to the inauguration, as well as a fourth previously undisclosed meeting with Russian Ambassador Kislyak on April 27, 2016 at the Mayflower Hotel. Kushner says that he doesn’t recall either of the two calls with Kislyak between April and November 2016 that Reuters had previously reported, and he is “highly skeptical those calls took place.” He says he attended the June 9, 2016 meeting with Don Jr., Manafort, and several Russians only “10 minutes or so,” and when he got there, “they were talking about the issue of a ban on US adoptions of Russian children.” Kushner acknowledges his post-election meeting with Mike Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak at Trump Tower at which Kushner says he asked if Kislyak had “an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they could be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.” But Kushner denies that he was suggesting a “secret back-channel.” Finally, Kushner acknowledges a Dec. 13, 2016 meeting with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov who, Kushner believed at the time, had “a direct line to the Russian President who could give insight into how Putin was viewing the new administration and best ways to work together.” Kushner says that his ongoing revisions to his security clearance form SF-86 were the result of a “prematurely submitted” original application.

Kushner’s prepared remarks conclude: “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing my SF-86 form, above and beyond what is required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.” [Added July 24, 2017]

The Trump/Russia Timeline is #1.

From Politico:

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]

***

• 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]

***

• 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] 

***

• 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]

***

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

***

• 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]

***

• 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]

***

• 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]

***

• 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]

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on July 12, 2017]

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway (JD, George Washington, ’92) has a new assignment. She has to explain away a smoking gun that Donald Trump Jr. has aimed at the 2016 election. For months, she and everyone else in the White House vehemently denied that the Trump campaign had any contacts with Russians about the election. With a tweet on July 11, 2017, Don Jr. destroyed that talking point forever.

Call the Question

On December 18, 2016, CBS News’ John Dickerson had asked Conway directly: “Did anyone involved in the Trump campaign have any contact with Russians trying to meddle with the election?”

“Absolutely not,” she replied. “And I discussed that with the president-elect just last night. Those conversations never happened. I hear people saying it like it’s a fact on television. That is just not only inaccurate and false, but it’s dangerous. And—and it does undermine our democracy.”

Conway was resolute, indignant, and wrong. Those conversations did happen. People are saying it’s a fact because it is. From June 3-8, 2016, Don Jr. received and wrote emails that prove it. But when Conway talks about undermining democracy, she knows whereof she speaks.

Dodging Bullets

Don Jr.’s Russia troubles began on Saturday, July 8, 2017, when The New York Times told him it was going run a story about a June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower involving him, Jared Kushner, then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties. He responded with the first of his conflicting statements about that meeting. The participants discussed a program about the “adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago,” Don Jr. asserted. (Putin had suspended the program in retaliation for a 2012 American law punishing Russians thought to be responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax attorney who had uncovered a $230 million fraud scheme involving Putin allies.) “It was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up,” he wrote of the June 9 session.

That was iteration number one. On Sunday, July 9, the Times informed Don Jr. that five White House advisers contradicted his statement. In truth, the Russian lawyer with whom three of Trump’s top officials met on June 9 had promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton. The Times story prompted Don Jr. to issue a new statement: “After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

Then came Tuesday, July 11. The Times told Don Jr. that it now had the content of his June 3-8 email exchanges with Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who first contacted Don Jr. to request the meeting on behalf of his client—the son of a wealthy real estate developer and Putin ally sometimes referred to as the “Trump of Russia.” The emails said that Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort met with a “Russian government attorney” based on the promise of “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful” to Trump. The Trump group thought it would receive “very high level and sensitive information [that] is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

To get ahead of the imminent Times story, Don Jr. released his email exchange with Goldstone, along with his third statement on the June 9 meeting. With a newfound desire to be “totally transparent,” he said that he thought the Russian lawyer was going to give him “Political Opposition Research” on Clinton, as if accepting any election assistance from a foreign government is somehow legal, much less acceptable.

“Don’t Facts Matter?”

Cue Kellyanne Conway. Even before her infamous post-inauguration one-liner about “alternative facts,” Conway was a leading promoter of Trump’s disinformation program. Representing a super PAC supporting Ted Cruz (R-TX), Conway on February 9, 2016 criticized Trump for insulting people, saying: “[D]o I want somebody who hurls personal insults or who goes and talks about philosophical differences?” But only six weeks after joining Trump’s campaign, she proclaimed, “He doesn’t hurl insults.”

On Aug. 24, 2016, just three days after Conway and former Fox News chief Roger Ailes attended Trump’s debate prep session, she told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Ailes was “not a formal or informal adviser to the Trump campaign… He has no formal or informal role.”

On Sept. 16, 2016, when Trump retreated from his five-year lie about President Obama’s birthplace and floated a new falsehood—that Hillary Clinton had started the “birther” controversy—Conway backed him up on Sunday morning talk shows. “This started with Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” she said. “No question.” Of course, PolitiFact—along with FactCheck.org and The Washington Post Fact-Checker—reported that it had “debunked this zombie claim multiple times.”

On Nov. 6, 2016, CNN’s Anderson Cooper finally asked Conway: “Don’t facts matter?”

The answer was no.

On January 5, 2017, leaders of the U.S. intelligence community testified unanimously before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia had used hacking and leaks to influence the presidential election. John McCain called the cyberattack an “act of war.” But the next morning, Conway appeared on CNN, asserting that “conclusive evidence” of Russian election interference still didn’t exist. “The Russians didn’t want him elected,” she declared.

On February 2, 2017, Conway said Trump’s travel ban would prevent more events like the “Bowling Green Massacre”—which never happened.

On May 9, 2017—shortly after Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey—she led the charge in pushing the absurd White House cover-up that Comey’s pre-election statements about the Clinton email investigation led to his firing. Then Trump himself contradicted Conway’s story.

After that, she remained quiet for a few weeks. That is, until she returned to twist words for the newest and, perhaps, greatest scandal in American political history.

Conway’s Conundrum

Now that Don Jr. has revealed the falsity of Conway’s December 18, 2016 assurances that no one involved in the Trump campaign had any contact with Russians trying to meddle with the election, how will she respond? The new revelations about the June 9 meeting should be a breaking point. It doesn’t require Conway’s legal degree to realize that accepting help from an enemy state to win an American election undermines democracy.

But so far, the Russian assault on our republic hasn’t seemed to faze her. On Monday morning, July 10, she hit the airwaves to defend her boss’s son. After ABC’s George Stephanopoulos replayed Conway’s December 16 denial of any contacts between Trump campaign members and Russian election meddlers, he asked, “Who misled you, and why did Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort allow those public denials to stand for so many months?”

Conway ducked the first question and responded to the second with a non-answer: Some disclosure forms had been amended to include certain meetings. And everyone should believe her when she says, “No information was received that was meaningful or helpful and no action was taken.” Similarly, in a longer session with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, she displayed mastery of her subtle approach to attacking democracy’s central core, which is an informed electorate.

Long ago, Conway left the world in which facts, truth, and clarity matter. The future of the republic now depends on the answer to this question: How much of the country has she taken with her?

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.

• Fall 2015: As Felix Sater works on a plan for a Trump Tower in Moscow, Trump’s bid for the presidency brings the project to a halt, according to a Feb. 19, 2017 article in The New York Times citing Sater. [Added July 11, 2017]

***

• June 3, 2016: Rob Goldstone, a music publicist, sends Donald Trump Jr. an email stating that one of his clients, Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, had “something very interesting” he wanted to pass along to Donald Jr.: “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump—helped along by Aras and Emin.” (Aras Agalarov—a Putin ally and wealthy real estate developer sometimes referred to as the “Trump of Russia”—had helped sponsor the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. In a later interview with Forbes in March 2017, Emin Agalarov says that he and his father had previously signed a letter of intent with their Trump counterparts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. “He ran for president, so we dropped the idea,” Agalarov said of Trump and the project. “But if he hadn’t run we would probably be in the construction phase today.”) [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on June 3, 3016: Responding to Goldstone’s email, Donald Jr. says, “[I]f it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Donald Jr. suggests they talk early during the week of June 6, when he’s back from the road. [Added July 11, 2017]

• June 7, 2016: Rob Goldstone sends Donald Jr. a follow-up email: “Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and the Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow this Thursday. I believe you are aware of the meeting – and so wondered if 3pm or later on Thursday works for you? I assume it would be at your office.” Confirming the date and time, Donald Jr. says that then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner will also attend. The following day, they move the meeting to 4pm because the “Russian attorney is in court until 3….” [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on June 7, 2016: After winning the New Jersey primary as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president, Trump includes this line in his victory speech: “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week [June 13] and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• June 9, 2016: Natalia Veselnitskaya, the “Russian government attorney” referenced in Goldstone’s earlier emails to Donald Jr., meets at Trump Tower with Donald Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner. The lawyer was formerly married to a former deputy transportation minister of the Moscow region. Her clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company is under investigation in the United States at the time. [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on June 9, 2016: Trump tweets:

[Added July 11, 2017]

***

• July 6, 2017: En route to the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany where he will meet privately with Vladimir Putin, Trump stops in Poland to deliver a speech. At a news conference NBC News’ Hallie Jackson asks: “Mr. President, can you once and for all, yes or no, definitively say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election?” Trump answers, “Well, I think it was Russia, and I think it could have been other people in other countries.” He then excoriates President Obama for doing “nothing” in the face of the Obama administration’s conclusion that Russian meddling was underway. “The reason is, he thought Hillary was going to win,” Trump continues. Pressed again on whether he agrees with the “definitive” conclusion of his own intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the election, Trump says, “I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries…. Nobody really knows for sure. I remember when I was sitting back listening about Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. How everybody was 100 percent sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Guess what—that led to one big mess. They were wrong.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on July 6, 2017: The Financial Times reports that Felix Sater has agreed to cooperate in an international investigation of a Kazakh family’s real estate dealings. The head of the family—Viktor Khrapunov, a former Kazakh minister now exiled in Switzerland—is reportedly under investigation for allegations that he embezzled government funds and hid the cash in other countries throughout the world, including the US. Deeds and banking records obtained by the Financial Times show that in April 2013, members of the Khrapunov family purchased three apartments in Trump SoHo for a grand total price of $3.1 million from a holding company in which Trump held a stake. [Added July 11, 2017]

• July 7, 2017: For the first time since the 2016 election, Trump meets Vladimir Putin. The only other attendees to their private, two-and-a-half hour session are Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and two interpreters. [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on July 7, 2017: In an off-camera interview with the press after the Trump/Putin meeting, Tillerson says that Trump opened the session by “raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election…. The President pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.” Responding to a later question about whether Trump “was unequivocal in his view that Russia did interfere with the election,” Tillerson says, “The Russians have asked for proof and evidence. I’ll leave that to the intelligence community to address the answer to that question. And again, I think the President, at this point, he pressed him and then felt like at this point let’s talk about how do we go forward.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on July 7, 2017: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov offers a different version of the Trump/Putin meeting, saying, “President Trump said he’s heard Putin’s very clear statements that this is not true and that the Russian government didn’t interfere in the elections and that he accepts these statements. That’s all.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• July 8, 2012: At a press conference concluding the G-20 summit, Putin responds to questions about whether Russian meddling in the 2016 election was a subject of their private meeting. “[Trump] was really interested in some details. I, as far as I could, answered all this in detail,” Putin says through a translator at the press conference, which a Russian state-owned news channel broadcasted. “He asked me, I answered. He asked clarifying questions, I explained. He appeared to me satisfied with these answers.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on July 8, 2017: The New York Times first reports the story of the June 9, 2016 meeting that Donald Jr. had arranged with Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and a Kremlin-connected lawyer. In response, Donald Jr. issues this statement: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up… I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• July 9, 2017: As The New York Times prepares to report that the Russian lawyer with whom Donald Jr., Kushner, and Manafort met on June 9, 2016 was supposedly going to be offering them damaging information on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. issues a new statement changing his story from less than 24 hours earlier: “I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign. I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016. After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information. She then changed subjects and began discussing the adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting. I interrupted and advised her that my father was not an elected official, but rather a private citizen, and that her comments and concerns were better addressed if and when he held public office. The meeting lasted approximately 20 to 30 minutes. As it ended, my acquaintance apologized for taking up our time. That was the end of it and there was no further contact or follow-up of any kind. My father knew nothing of the meeting or these events.” [Added July 11, 2017]

• July 10, 2017: Donald Trump Jr. tweets:

[Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on July 10, 2017: Donald Trump Jr. confirms that he has hired a criminal defense attorney to represent him in connection with the Trump/Russia probe. [Added July 11, 2017]

• Also on July 10, 2017: The New York Times reports on the email from Rob Goldstone to Donald Jr. preceding the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties. [Added July 11, 2017]

• July 11, 2017: Donald Jr. posts his June 3-8, 2016 email exchanges with Rob Goldstone that culminate in the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with the person Goldstone described as a “Russian government attorney.” In his accompanying statement, Donald Jr. says that he knew Emin from the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. “Emin and his father have a very highly respected company in Moscow,” he continues. “The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton I thought was Political Opposition Research…To put this in context, this was before the current Russian fever was in vogue.” [Added July 11, 2017]

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. 

• 2002: Russian-born Felix H. 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. After a 1991 barroom fight in which Felix Sater stabbed a man in the face with the broken stem of a wine glass, he received a prison sentence. In 1993, Sater became part of a stock scheme that allegedly relied on four 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. Sater is still cooperating with the Justice Department in April 2002, when the US attorney for the eastern district of New York requests a postponement of Sater’s sentencing to September. [Revised July 3, 2017]

***

• Dec. 19-20, 2007: Two days after a December 17, 2007 article in The New York Times about Felix Sater’s criminal past, a lawyer deposing Trump in his libel suit against journalist Timothy O’Brien — author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald — asks, “[W]hat kind of interaction did you have with Mr. Sater prior to the article appearing?” Trump answers, “Not that much, not very much….I would say that my interaction with Felix Sater was, you know, not—was very little.” (p. 411) Discussing Bayrock’s unsuccessful development efforts for Trump in Russia, Trump says, “This was going to be a hotel in Moscow. And I really can say the same things for all of the sites…a hotel in Moscow, a hotel in Kiev, a hotel in Poland, et cetera,…. Bayrock knew the people, knew the investors, and in some cases I believe they were friends of Mr. Arif. And this was going to be Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, et cetera, Poland, Warsaw.” (p. 586) Trump is referring to the Bayrock Principal, Tevfik Arif. And a few minutes later, Trump says Arif “did bring people up from Russia…And I believe he brought the people from Moscow up to meet me.” (pp. 589-590) [Added July 3, 2017]

***

• Nov. 16, 2011: Answering deposition questions in a case involving a Fort Lauderdale project, Trump says he has only “limited involvement” with Bayrock Group, which was a Trump tenant “for a period of time.” (pp. 10-11) Trump testifies that he spoke with Felix Sater “for a period of time” when he was an executive with Bayrock. (p. 18) [Added July 3, 2017]

***

• July 2016: According to POLITCO, Felix Sater visits Trump Tower on business that he described as “confidential.” Sater declines to answer whether he’s had recent contact with the Trump Organization or Trump’s children. “I don’t see the relevance of that,” Sater says. When POLITICO asks the Trump campaign about Sater, Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks says, “We are not aware of a contribution or visit to Trump Tower.” Trump Organization General Counsel Alan Garten says that he has no knowledge of Sater’s visit to Trump Tower, that Sater was not advising the Trump Organization, and that the Trump Organization was not seeking business in Russia. [Added July 3, 2017]

***

• Labor Day weekend 2016: According to a June 29, 2017 article in The Wall Street Journal and a July 1, 2017 follow-up piece, wealthy GOP operative Peter W. Smith sets out to get his hands on any emails that were stolen from the private email server that Hillary Clinton used while she was secretary of state. Smith assembles a team of technology experts, lawyers, and a Russian-speaking investigator in Europe to help him find the emails. They identify five groups of hackers, two of which are Russian. In recruiting experts, Smith claims to be in contact with Trump adviser Mike Flynn and Flynn’s son. With one potential collaborator, he shares a packet of opposition research articles with a cover sheet listing Trump campaign officials Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and Sam Clovis. Responding to the 2017 articles in The Wall Street Journal about Smith’s effort, a Trump campaign official says that Smith didn’t work for the campaign, and if Flynn coordinated with Smith, it would have been in his capacity as a private individual. Bannon says that he’s never heard of Smith. Conway says she knew Smith from Republican politics, but never met with him during the campaign. About 10 days after his May 2017 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Smith dies at the age of 81. (Added July 3, 2017)

***

• June 26, 2017: Jared Kushner’s lawyers confirm that he has added a prominent criminal defense trial lawyer, Abbe Lowell, to his legal team. [Added July 3, 2017]
• June 27, 2017: Paul Manafort registers retroactively as a foreign agent. Between 2012 and 2014 he received more than $17 million from the pro-Russia political party (“Party of Regions”) that dominated Ukraine before its leader, then-President Viktor F. Yanukovych, fled to Moscow amid a popular uprising in 2014. As part of the filing, Manafort discloses that he met in 2013 with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, an outspoken California Republican known for advocating closer ties between the U.S. and the Kremlin. [Added July 3, 2017]

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. 

• Early August 2016: According to a subsequent report in The Washington Post, the CIA informs President Obama that based on intelligence sources within the Russian government, Putin had given Russian officials specific objectives for the ongoing cyberattack on the US election: defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump. Upon receiving the news, Obama directs the entire intelligence community to provide him with as much information as soon as possible. CIA Director John Brennan convenes a secret task force composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, NSA and FBI. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Also on Aug. 15, 2016: Concerned about additional intelligence reports about Russia’s cyberattack efforts, the Obama administration seeks bipartisan support from the states to designate election systems as “critical infrastructure” that would entitle them to priority in shoring up defenses against such attacks. The reaction from the states ranges “from neutral to negative,” according to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Early September 2016: Stung by unsuccessful efforts to enlist the states’ bipartisan support for shoring up the nation’s election system, senior members of the Obama administration meet with 12 key congressional leaders to seek their help. The response devolves into partisan wrangling, with Democrats wanting to alert the public about Russia’s efforts and Republicans dissenting. According to a later report in The Washington Post, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voices skepticism about whether the underlying intelligence truly supports the White House’s claims about Russian interference. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Sept. 22, 2016: Frustrated that the White House won’t inform the public about Russian cyberattacks on the election, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA) issue a statement that they had learned from intelligence briefings that Russia was directing a campaign to undermine the election. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• October 2016: Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalizes a $285 million loan with Deutsche Bank as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square. In total, the refinancing deal reportedly results in Kushner’s company receiving $74 million more than it had paid for the property in 2015, when Kushner had negotiated the purchase with Lev Leviev. According to a 2007 New York Times report, Leviev—a Uzbek-born Israeli citizen who is one of the world’s wealthiest men—kept a framed photo of Vladimir Putin on his office shelf and described Putin as a “true friend,” who has helped him work with an influential Jewish organization in Russia. At the time of the October 2016 refinancing with Kushner’s company, Deutsche Bank was negotiating to settle New York state regulators’ charges that it had aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. Eventually, the state cases were settled in December and January. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Also on March 10, 2017: Senior Democratic members of the House Committee on Financial Services write to the Committee’s chairman requesting “a formal assessment of the Justice Department’s investigation into Deutsche Bank’s Russian money-laundering scheme,” including a review of Attorney General Session’s role in conducting the investigation.” The letter cites the bank’s recent payment of more than $600 million to settle claims that its inadequate controls “failed to prevent a group of corrupt traders from improperly and secretly transferring more than $10 billion out of Russia.” The letter also expresses concern that Deutsche Bank “is one of the Trump’s top creditors with an estimated $360 million in outstanding loans to his companies.” [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Also on March 31, 2017: Jared Kushner submits his financial disclosure form to the Office of Government Ethics. It reports that he holds jointly with his mother a $25 million personal line of credit from Deutsche Bank. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Also on May 23, 2017: Senior Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee ask Deutsche Bank to provide information about the bank’s internal reviews relating to: 1) alleged Russian money laundering, and 2) personal accounts of Trump and his family. Citing US privacy laws, the bank refuses. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• Also on June 9, 2017: The House Intelligence Committee sends two letters relating to its investigation. One requests that the FBI produce any notes or memoranda of Comey’s conversations with Trump. The second asks White House counsel Don McGahn to inform the Committee whether any White House recordings or memoranda of Comey’s conversations with Trump have ever existed and, to the extent they still exist, produce them by June 23. [Added June 26, 2017]

***

• June 20, 2017: White House press secretary Sean Spicer says he doesn’t know if Trump believes that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. [Added June 26, 2017]
• June 21, 2017: Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Department of Homeland Security’s acting director of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Cyber Division says that individuals connected to the Russian government tried to hack election-related computer systems in 21 states. A week earlier, Bloomberg had reported that Russian hackers had tried to penetrate voting systems in 39 states. [Added June 26, 2017]
• Also on June 21, 2017: The New York Times reports that the White House has been lobbying the House of Representatives to weaken the Senate bill that would limit Trump’s power to curtail Russian sanctions. The bipartisan legislation had passed the Senate a week earlier, and would allow Congress to thwart any effort by the White House to curtail those sanctions without congressional approval. On June 20, the Treasury Department issued sanctions directed against more than three dozen Russian individuals and organizations that had participated in the country’s incursion into Ukraine. [Added June 26, 2017]
• June 22, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added June 26, 2017]

• June 23, 2017: In an interview on Fox & Friends, Trump says that special counsel Robert Mueller is “very, very good friends with Comey, which is very bothersome… Look, there has been no obstruction. There has been no collusion. There has been leaking by Comey.” Asked about Mueller’s legal team, Trump says, “I can say that the people that have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters. Some of them worked for Hillary Clinton. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous if you want to know the truth.” [Added June 22, 2017]
• Also on June 23, 2017: In a two-sentence response to the House Intelligence Committee’s prior request for any and all records memorializing conversations between Trump and James Comey, the White House refers to and quotes from Trump’s June 22, 2017 tweets (above) and provides no other information. [Added June 26, 2017]
• Also June 23, 2017: The New York Times reports that federal investigators and the New York state attorney general are looking into Paul Manafort’s real estate dealings in recent years. [Added June 26, 2017]
• Also on June 23, 2017: Trump tweets:

• June 24, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added June 26, 2017]

• June 25, 2017: Interviewing Kellyanne Conway, ABC News’ This Week, George Stephanopoulos says, “The president said he did not tape James Comey, but I am confused by the top part of that (tweet). Does the president have any evidence at all that his personal conversations were somehow taped? And has he asked the intelligence agencies for that evidence?” When Conway doesn’t answer those questions directly, Stephanopoulos persists, “Has the president asked the intelligence agencies if they have any tapes of his conversations? Does he know if they have that? Does he have any evidence to back up that suggestion that he put out in the tweet?” Conway answers, “I’m not going to comment on his conversations with his intelligence community… I mean, what are we talking about here with this never ending Russian discussion?” [Added June 26, 2017]
• June 26, 2017: Trump tweets:

and

[Added June 26, 2017]

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on June 22, 2017]

Eventually, Trump is likely to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump’s repeated statements about the Russia “hoax” — along with his apparent attempts to influence the FBI’s investigation — warrant a close look at the process by which he could do so. Equally important are the limited ways to stop him. Whether by design, inadvertence or a combination of both, Trump and his minions — including Newt Gingrich and Trump’s lawyers — have been laying the groundwork for what could become America’s defining moment.

The Rules and the Players

To stop the investigation, Trump’s cleanest path requires that one of his loyalists occupy a Senate-confirmed position in the Justice Department’s chain of command. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal, the power to end the inquiry has now landed in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s lap. But Sessions’ recusal also gave Rosenstein the authority to appoint a special counsel. When he tapped Robert Mueller for the job, it was a game-changer.

Under the Justice Department’s special counsel regulations, Trump can’t fire Mueller directly. Only the attorney general can pull the trigger for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest or for other good cause, including violation of departmental policies.” For now, that determination rests with Rosenstein. If he drops out, next in line are Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand and US Attorney Dana Boente. After that, things get murky, because the Senate has not confirmed any other Justice Department official. That’s important because without Senate confirmation, even temporary advancement to departmental leadership is problematic.

Step 1: Clearing the Board

As the FBI’s Russia investigation intensified, so would have Trump’s desire for DOJ loyalists whom he could direct to end it. That might explain Trump’s curious about-face involving Manhattan’s US Attorney Preet Bharara. In November, Trump had personally asked Bharara to remain on the job during his administration. But on March 10 — a week after Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation — Trump made a stunning reversal: He fired Bharara, along with every remaining US attorney in the country, except for Rod Rosenstein and Dana Boente. Overnight, the Justice Department was without any Senate-confirmed officials, except for the three who now remain: Sessions, Rosenstein and Boente.

Step 2: Removing Rosenstein

After Trump cleared the board, Rosenstein became a problem for the president, starting with his appointment of special counsel Mueller. Then Rosenstein testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 that he would not fire Mueller without the necessary “good cause” — and that he hadn’t seen any yet. After that performance, Trump couldn’t count on Rosenstein to fire Mueller, and the process for moving Rosenstein out began swiftly. Once reports surfaced that Mueller was investigating the possibility that Trump had obstructed justice by firing FBI Director Comey, it took only a tweet to put Rosenstein in the hot seat:

Then Trump’s personal attorney followed up on the Sunday morning talk show circuit — Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Meet the Press — reviving the false story that Rosenstein’s May 9 memo led Trump to fire Comey. Bottom line: If Mueller’s investigation includes the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing, Rosenstein will likely become a witness and may feel compelled to recuse himself from supervising Mueller.

Step 3: But Trump Can’t Count on Brand or Bent

If Rosenstein drops out, Rachel Brand takes the stage. The Senate confirmed her as associate attorney general on May 18. A longtime Republican, she worked on Elizabeth Dole’s presidential campaign and in the office of legal policy for President George W. Bush’s Justice Department. But Brand’s solid Republican credentials are irrelevant to her personal and professional integrity. Benjamin Wittes, a friend in whom then-FBI Director James Comey confided some of his concerns about Trump, tweeted on June 16:

If Wittes’ assessment is correct, Brand would balk at executing an unlawful Trump order. At a minimum, Trump’s advisers gaming out the “fire Mueller” scenario have to assume that she would not fall in line.

Next up, Dana Boente, would be no sure thing for Trump, either. Regarded as tough but evenhanded, he’s a career prosecutor who has spent 33 years in the Justice Department.

Step 4: Find Allies

For three months after he fired every incumbent US attorney, Trump didn’t nominate any replacements. But on June 12 — the same day Trump’s longtime friend and chief executive of Newsmax Media, Chris Ruddy, visited the White House and then said on the PBS NewsHour that Trump was “considering, perhaps, terminating the special counsel” — Trump announced his first wave of nominees:

• Alabama (Southern District): Richard W. Moore
• Alabama (Northern District): Jay E. Town
• Alabama (Middle District): Louis V. Franklin Sr.
• District of Columbia: Jessie K. Liu
• Ohio (Northern District): Justin E. Herdman
• Oklahoma (Eastern District): Brian J. Kuester
• Tennessee (Western District): Michael Dunavant
• Utah: John W. Huber

Once confirmed, each of these US attorneys becomes eligible for the Justice Department’s line of succession. The next step would be for Trump to issue another executive order. (It would be his third one resetting the departmental lineup.) He could list new US attorneys based on their fealty to him. When the time came to fire Mueller without satisfying the “cause” requirements of the governing regulations, Trump could proceed down that list until he got compliance.

Step 5: Move ‘Em Through the Senate

Regardless of Trump’s underlying motivations, the prior sequence of events raises the stakes in the otherwise routine task of confirming a president’s selections for US attorney. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but three nominees hail from Jeff Sessions’ home state of Alabama. And Trump’s Ohio pick comes from White House counsel Don McGahn’s former law firm, Jones Day — which has supplied a dozen lawyers to the Trump administration. All eight nominees merit close scrutiny.

What Can Stop Trump?

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) could halt the confirmation hearing on Trump’s Ohio nominee by using the Senate’s traditional “blue slip” process to express disapproval. But except for the District of Columbia, which has only “shadow senators” who can’t vote, all other Trump nominees are from states with two Republican senators (Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah). Unless they break ranks, there’s no “blue slip” obstacle to Senate hearings on those nominees.

In the upcoming confirmation hearings, senators should ask each candidate a critical question that transcends party politics: Will you defy a presidential order to fire Robert Mueller?

The answer will reveal everything the country needs to know about the nominee’s respect for democracy and the rule of law. To assist concerned citizens who want to prod members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to do the right thing, here’s a list with links to individual contact information:

Republicans

• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Michael Lee (R-UT)
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)
• Ben Sasse (R-NE)
• Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)
• John Kennedy (R-LA)

Democrats

• Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
• Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
• Richard Durbin (D-IL)
• Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
• Al Franken (D-MN)
• Christopher Coons (D-DE)
• Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
• Mazie Hirono (D-HI)

It’s possible that Trump won’t fire Mueller and precipitate a constitutional crisis. But that would require unprecedented Trump behavior: placing the country ahead of his personal self-interest.

Firing Mueller will mark a new low in Trump’s scorched-earth attack on established norms and the rule of law. When Mueller files suit to keep his job, it will become the most important litigation in American history. Every patriot should pray that he wins.

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.

• April to December 2016: Russia’s patent office grants 10-year extensions for six unused Trump trademarks that are set to expire in 2016. Trump had originally acquired the trademarks for hotel and branding deals that never materialized—including “Trump Tower” in 1996 and four more hotel-related trademarks in 2006, when Felix Sater and Bayrock Group were scouting potential deals. Russia officially registered four of the extension approvals on Nov. 8—Election Day in the US. [Added June 19, 2017]

*** 

• June 11, 2017: The New York Times reports that in recent days, White House aides had asked Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, if it was also time for them to hire personal lawyers. Kasowitz, according to a Times source, said it was not yet necessary. [Added June 19, 2017]
• June 12, 2017: After visiting the White House, Trump’s longtime friend and chief executive of Newsmax Media, Chris Ruddy, says on the PBS Newhour that Trump “is considering, perhaps, terminating the special counsel,” Robert Mueller. When asked about the report, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders says, “While the president has the right to, he has no intention to do so.” [Added June 19, 2017]
• June 13, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added June 19, 2017]

• Also on June 13, 2017: Testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein says he would need “good cause” to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and he hasn’t seen any yet. [Added June 19, 2017]
• Also on June 13, 2017: Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee about earlier news reports that he had met in April 2016 with Russian Ambassador Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel, Attorney General Jeff Sessions says, “If any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian ambassador during that reception, I do not remember it.” When asked for details about his September 2016 meeting with Kislyak, Sessions can’t recall them. Sessions acknowledges that after Trump met privately with then-FBI Director Comey on Feb. 14, 2017, Comey told Sessions the next day never to leave him alone with Trump again. When asked about his conversations with Trump about Comey prior to Comey’s firing on May 9, Sessions refers back to Rosenstein’s memo. Beyond that, Sessions admits that Trump has not invoked executive privilege to block Sessions from answering, but Sessions refuses to answer anyway. [Added June 19, 2017]
• June 14, 2017: The Washington Post reports that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice. [Added June 19, 2017]
• June 15, 2017: Trump tweets:

and

and

and

[Added June 19, 2017]

• June 15, 2017: Vice President Pence hires an outside attorney to deal with issues arising from the Trump/Russia investigation. [Added June 19, 2017]
• Also on June 15, 2017: The Washington Post reports that, “according to US officials familiar with the matter,” special counsel Mueller is investigating the finances and business dealings of Jared Kushner. [Added June 19, 2017]
• Also on June 15, 2017: Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein issues a press release cautioning Americans against reliance on stories based on “anonymous ‘officials’” and “anonymous allegations.” [Added June 19, 2017]
• June 16, 2017: Trump tweets:

and

and

[Added June 19, 2017]

• Also on June 16, 2017: ABC News reports that Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein has acknowledged to colleagues that he may have to recuse himself from the Trump/Russia investigation. Reportedly, he informed Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand—whom the Senate had confirmed on May 18—that she would then assume supervisory responsibility for special counsel Mueller’s investigation. [Added June 19, 2017]
• Also on June 16, 2017: House investigators reportedly want to interview Brad Parscale, digital director of Trump’s campaign. Investigators were digging into Jared Kushner’s role overseeing data operations for the campaign. [Added June 19, 2017]
• June 18, 2017: Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, one of Trump’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, counters Trump’s tweet about “being investigated.” Sekulow says, “There is not an investigation of the president of the United States, period.” He asserts a similar position on Fox News Sunday and CNN’s State of the Union. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sekulow says, “The fact of the matter is the president has not been and is not under investigation.” Later in the interview, he says, “There has been no notification from the special counsel’s office that the president is under investigation.” When asked if the special counsel had an obligation to notify Trump if he were under investigation, Sekulow responds, “I can’t imagine a scenario where the president would not be aware of it.” Referring to the president’s power to fire the FBI director, Sekulow adds, “The President cannot be investigated, or certainly cannot be found liable for engaging in an activity he clearly has power to do under the constitution.” [Added June 19, 2017]
• Also on June 18, 2017: In response to reports that Jared Kushner is seeking to supplement his legal team with experienced criminal defense lawyers, his lead attorney, Jamie Gorelick, says, “After the appointment of our former partner Robert Mueller as special counsel, we advised Mr. Kushner to obtain the independent advice of a lawyer with appropriate experience as to whether he should continue with us as his counsel.” [Added June 19, 2017]

This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on June 14, 2017

The legal principles are straightforward. Anyone who corruptly endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede a federal investigation or judicial process commits a felony. And no person is above the law—not even the president. The simplicity of those notions has become lost.

Legal commentators’ competing views on whether Trump has obstructed justice haven’t helped. Rather than ascribe nefarious motives to either side of the debate, attentive citizens might consider this possibility: The experts are looking at the same problem from two different legal perspectives.

One perspective emphasizes the forest, where effective jury trial lawyers dwell rhetorically. The best of the lot are great storytellers. They chronicle facts in a compelling narrative, starting with the opening statement: “The story of this case begins on…” That gives jurors a way to think about the evidence as they hear it throughout the trial. Closing arguments become a final opportunity to reinforce the story with evidence.

Another perspective focuses on trees. In criminal cases, for example, a judicial ruling that a confession is inadmissible can gut the prosecution’s entire effort. A suppression hearing before a judge requires dissecting a particular episode—how the police interrogated the accused. But the larger question—whether a defendant is guilty of the underlying crime—is irrelevant to that exercise.

The two perspectives revealed themselves in the now infamous Senate Intelligence Committee hearing at which former FBI Director James Comey testified.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA, JD, Harvard, ’80) opened with his view of the forest:

“We’re here because a foreign adversary attacked us right here at home, plain and simple, not by guns or missiles, but by foreign operatives seeking to hijack our most important democratic process—our presidential election.”

Warner then set forth his brief summary:

• Trump and his staff denied that the Russians were ever involved in the attack, and then falsely claimed that no one from Trump’s team was ever in touch with any Russian: “We know that’s just not the truth,” he said.
• Candidate Trump expressed “an odd and unexplained affection for the Russian dictator, while calling for the hacking of his opponent.”
• The FBI was ultimately responsible for conducting the Russia investigation. But “the president himself appears to have been engaged in an effort to influence, or at least co-opt, the director of the FBI,” starting with a request for Comey’s personal loyalty on Jan. 27.
• On Feb. 14, the day after Trump fired NSA Mike Flynn, the president asked the attorney general to leave the Oval Office so he could express privately his “hope” that Comey could see his way clear “to letting Flynn go.” On March 30 and April 11, Trump asked Comey to “lift the cloud” of the Russian investigation.
• After Comey’s refusals, Trump fired him for stated reasons that
  “didn’t pass any smell test.” The cover-up lasted about 24 hours—until Trump “made very clear that he was thinking about Russia when he decided to fire Director Comey.” Then reports surfaced that the day after firing Comey, Trump even told Russia’s ambassador and foreign minister that Comey—the nation’s top law enforcement officer—was a “nut job” whose departure relieved “great pressure” relating to Russia.

The Forest

“This isn’t happening in isolation,” Warner concluded. “At the same time the president was engaged in these efforts with Director Comey, he was also, at least allegedly, asking senior leaders of the intelligence community to downplay the Russia investigation or to intervene with the director.”

A Tree

Republicans on the committee went after trees, starting with a single word—“hope”—in a single conversation between Trump and Comey the day after Flynn’s termination: “I hope you can let this go.”

“I took it as a direction,” Comey said to the committee, believing that Trump wanted him to drop the FBI’s investigation of Flynn. “I mean, the president of the United States, with me alone, saying, ‘I hope this—’ I took it as this is what he wants me to do.”

Fastening Trump’s fate to that word, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) (JD, Idaho, ’68) tackled Comey as a criminal defense lawyer would. “You may have taken it as a direction,” Risch said, “but it’s not what he said.” Risch then volunteered that no one had ever been prosecuted based on saying, “I hope.” (Although Comey couldn’t think of an example at the time, when Collin McDonald robbed several banks in 2003, he received a longer sentence for obstructing justice because he told his girlfriend, “I hope and pray to God you didn’t say anything about that weapon.” There are plenty of other examples.)

Similarly, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, JD, St. Mary’s Univ. ’77, LLM, UVA, ‘95), who was on the short list to replace Comey as FBI director, followed Risch’s line. “When you say ‘I hope you can see your way to letting this go,’ that’s not an order,” Cornyn told reporters.

Another Tree

Likewise, some commentators would exonerate Trump on a purely legal issue: The president’s power as head of the executive branch allows him to fire the FBI director for any reason. Generally speaking, that’s true, as Comey acknowledged. But applied too broadly in a constitutional republic that is a nation of laws—not individuals—it’s dubious.

Even President Richard Nixon’s most stalwart defenders conceded that a president was not above the law. In 1974, a unanimous Supreme Court rejected his assertion of unlimited power with respect to federal criminal investigations involving him or his associates and the Watergate scandal. Subsequent articles of impeachment described his obstruction of justice in ways that could echo for Trump—“interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by…the Federal Bureau Investigation” and “endeavoring to misuse” the CIA by asking it to block the FBI probe.

Former US Attorney Preet Bharara illustrated the perils of focusing on Trump’s “executive branch omnipotence” tree. “[If] Michael Flynn offered a million dollars to Donald Trump and said, ‘I’m going to give you this million dollars and I’m giving it to you because I want you to fire Jim Comey,’ and then Donald Trump fired Jim Comey, which everyone agrees he has the absolute authorization and authority to do, that would be an open and shut federal criminal case,” Bharara said. “It’s a quid pro quo and he could be charged—the president of the United States. So this argument that you keep hearing on the TV shows that the mere fact that the president can fire an official at will doesn’t solve the problem.”

If Trump committed what would be a felony by any other citizen, such acts would, at a minimum, become a powerful basis for impeachment. And once out of office, the specter of criminal prosecution would move from theoretical to real. That’s why Richard Nixon accepted a pardon from President Ford.

The issue isn’t whether a president has enormous discretion to run the executive branch. The question is where the lawful limit of that discretion lies. That’s why the Trump/Russia and Comey Firing Timelines provide important context within which to evaluate Trump’s actions. As the saga unfolds, don’t believe those asserting that the facts prove Trump is already in the clear. Don’t let anyone sell you the dangerous proposition that the president is above the law.

And don’t let shiny objects in the trees distract your view of the forest.

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.

• Also on Jan. 6, 2017: FBI Director Comey meets Trump for the first time at a meeting with the intelligence community to brief him on the investigation into Russian interference with the election. At the end of the meeting, Comey remains alone to brief Trump on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled, referred to as the “Steele dossier.” During that meeting, Comey says that the FBI does not have an open counter-intelligence case on him personally. Comey prepares a memo to document his conversation with Trump. [Added June 12, 2017]

***

• Also on Jan. 27, 2017: At lunchtime, Trump calls FBI Director Comey and invites him to dinner that evening. In a one-on-one White House dinner in the Green Room, Trump asks Comey if he would like to stay on as director, which strikes Comey as odd because Trump had told him in two earlier conversations that he wanted Comey to remain. Comey says that he intends to serve out his full ten-year term. He also says that he’s not “reliable” in the way politicians use that word, but that Trump could always count on him to tell the truth. A few moments later, Trump says, “I need loyalty; I expect loyalty.” An awkward silence follows. The conversation moves to other subjects, including Comey’s explanation that the FBI must remain independent of the White House. At the end of the dinner, Trump repeats, “I need loyalty.” Comey responds, “You will get honesty from me.” Trump replies, “That’s what I want, honest loyalty.” To end the awkward conversation, Coney says, “You will get that from me.” Afterward, Comey writes a detailed memo about the dinner and describes it to the FBI’s senior leadership team on the condition that they not disclose it while he remains director. [Revised June 12, 2017]

***

• Feb. 14, 2017: The New York Times corroborates the Russian deputy foreign minister’s admission on Nov. 10. Based on information from four current and former American officials, The Times reports, “Members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior intelligence officials in the year before the election.” (On June 8, 2017, former FBI Director James Comey characterizes the Times story as, “in the main, not true,” without specifying its inaccuracies.) Meanwhile, advisers to Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterate his earlier position: Sessions sees no need to recuse himself from the ongoing Justice Department investigations into Trump/Russia connections. [Revised June 12, 2017]

• Also on Feb. 14, 2017: At the conclusion of an Oval Office meeting that includes Vice President Pence, Attorney General Sessions, and FBI Director Comey, Trump asks everyone except Comey to leave. The last person to leave is Jared Kushner. When Comey and Trump are alone, Trump says, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.” In a June 8 statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey recalls that Trump began by saying Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled Pence. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not specify.” After discussing the subject of classified information leaks, Trump returns to the topic of Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeats that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled Pence. He then says, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Comey replies only that “he is a good guy.” Comey understands the Trump to be requesting that the FBI drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. He writes up a memorandum of his conversation and discusses the matter with the FBI’s senior leadership. [Revised June 12, 2017]

***

• Also on Feb. 15, 2017: FBI Director Comey asks Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prevent any further direct communication between Trump and him. He tells Sessions that what had just occurred—that he, the Attorney General had been asked to leave so that the President could be alone with the FBI director—was inappropriate and should never happen. Sessions doesn’t answer. [Added June 12, 2017]

 ***

• Within days of March 20, 2017: Less than a week after FBI Director Comey’s testimony, Trump personally calls the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, and the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Mike Rogers, and asks them to deny publicly the existence of any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia prior to the election. A senior intelligence official later tells The Washington Post that Trump’s goal is to “muddy the waters” about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats are ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel. A NSA official reportedly documents Rogers’ conversation with Trump in a contemporaneous memo. Coats and Rogers deem Trump’s request inappropriate and refuse. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, 2017, Rogers refuses in open session to answer questions about his conversations with Trump. But Rogers goes on to assert that he does not recall ever feeling “pressured” to interfere with any ongoing investigation. Coats adopts Rogers’ response, as do fellow testifying witnesses Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. [Revised June 12, 2017]

***

• Also on March 22, 2017: As a briefing from several government agencies concludes in the Oval Office, Trump asks everyone to leave, except recently confirmed Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump then complains to them about FBI Director Comey’s Trump/Russia investigation and asks Coats to intervene and get Comey to back off. Coats discusses the matter with other officials and decides that Trump’s request is inappropriate. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, 2017, Coats refuses in open session to discuss his conversations with Trump. [Added June 12, 2017]

***

• Also on March 30, 2017: In the morning, according to Comey’s June 8 statement, Trump calls Comey at the FBI, asking what Comey can do to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation overhanging the presidency. Trump asks Comey to “get out” the fact that Trump personally is not a subject of the FBI investigation. According to Comey, Trump says that “he had nothing to do with Russia” and “had not been involved with hookers in Russia,” referring to allegations in the “Steele dossier.” Trump “went on to say that if there were some ‘satellite’ associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out…” [Added June 12, 2017]

***

• April 11, 2017: In the morning, according to Comey’s June 8 statement, Trump calls Comey to ask what he’d done to “get out” the fact that he wasn’t personally being investigated. Comey replies that he’d sent Trump’s request to the Acting Attorney General, but had not heard back. Trump says that “the cloud” was getting in the way of his ability to do his job. Comey replies that White House counsel should contact the Department of Justice leadership to make the request. Trump says he would do that and adds, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.” Comey does not reply or ask him what Trump means by “that thing.” Comey says only that the way to handle it was to have the White House counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. Trump says that was what he would do and the call ends. [Added June 12, 2017]

***

• Also on April 25, 2017: The Senate confirms Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general. Because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from matters relating to the 2016 presidential election, including the Trump/Russia investigation, Rosenstein becomes the top Justice Department official supervising FBI Director Comey on that investigation. FBI Director Comey later testifies (at the 1:18 mark) that he explains to Rosenstein “his serious concern about the way in which the president is interacting, especially with the FBI….” [Revised June 12, 2017]

***

• Between May 13 and May 15, 2017: After seeing Trump’s “tapes” tweet, Comey remembers that he has contemporaneous memos of his conversations with Trump. He gives them to a friend at Columbia Law School and asks his friend to provide them to the press. [Added June 12, 2017]

***

• June 8, 2017: FBI Director Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He expands on prepared remarks detailing his conversations with Trump on Jan. 27 (“loyalty dinner”), Feb. 14 (“let Flynn go”), March 30 (“lift the cloud”), and April 11 (“get out the word”). Asked why Trump fired him, Comey says, “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.” On the subject of whether Trump recorded their conversations, Comey says, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” Later, he continues, “It never occurred to me before the president’s tweet. I’m not being facetious. I hope there are, and I’ll consent to the release of them … All I can do is hope. The president knows if he taped me, and if he did, my feelings aren’t hurt. Release all the tapes. I’m good with it.” [Added June 12, 2017]

• Also on June 8, 2017: Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, issues a statement saying that Trump “feels completely vindicated” by Comey’s testimony. Shortly thereafter, reports circulate that Trump’s legal team is planning to file a complaint with the Justice Department inspector general against Comey for “leaking” memos of his conversations with Trump. [Added June 12, 2017]

• June 9, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added June 12, 2017]

• June 9, 2017: Trump accuses Comey of lying under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee and agrees “100 percent” to provide his version of events under oath. He refuses to answer whether he has tapes of his conversations with Comey. [Added June 12, 2017]

• June 11, 2017: Trump tweets:

[Added June 12, 2017]

[This post first appeared on Bill Moyers & Company on June 7, 2017.]

Jared Kushner (JD/MBA, NYU, ’07) has a law degree from one of the finest universities in the country. He understands the threat that Trump’s words and deeds pose to democracy and the rule of law, but he has been in close proximity to Trump scandals that threaten both. He is a man of few public words, but his policy portfolio for Trump is enormous. He is uniquely positioned to keep Trump from running amok, but he has joined the ranks of Trump’s enablers.

Kushner is also the administration’s Forrest Gump. When Trump met with business leaders on Jan. 23, Kushner attended. On Jan. 29, 2017 — three days after Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had told White House counsel Don McGahn that national security adviser Mike Flynn could be subject to Russian blackmail — Kushner was sitting in the Oval Office with Trump and Flynn. When Trump conferred with government cyber-security experts on Jan. 31, Kushner was with him. And on May 8, 2017, when Trump confided to a small group of advisers that he was going to fire FBI Director James Comey, Kushner was among the trusted few.

Our Kushner timeline, below, taps entries from our overall Trump-Russia timeline and adds others that are unique to him. As the facts unfold, this timeline will be updated. Eventually, the public will learn the full story of Jared Kushner’s role in the controversies enveloping the Trump White House — and to what extent he shares responsibility for them. Like many of the lawyers surrounding and enabling Trump, Kushner has retained a personal attorney to help him navigate the troubled waters engulfing the White House.

While reviewing the Kushner timeline and considering the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, recall Yates’ meeting with McGahn in late January. Regardless of whether Flynn’s actions were illegal, he was “compromised” and subject to Russian blackmail because the Russians knew more about what he’d done with them than the American people did. Robert Mueller, the Justice Department’s special counsel investigating the Trump-Russia affair, is charged with finding criminal actions. But sometimes even lawful conduct beyond the purview of any special counsel can present a clear and present danger to the nation’s vital interests.

Kushner, Conflicts, and China

June 16, 2015: Trump announces that he is running for president. His 34-year-old son-in-law, Jared Kushner, runs a real estate empire that his father created and ran until New Jersey’s then-federal prosecutor Chris Christie put Charles Kushner in prison. The Kushner Companies’ flagship building is a Manhattan skyscraper (666 Fifth Avenue) that it bought at the height of the real estate market in 2007 and that promptly plummeted in value. To stave off default, the company sold off pieces, but it’s still in trouble. The building has a 70 percent occupancy rate, revenue covers only two-thirds of its debt obligations and a $1.2 billion mortgage comes due in 2019. Kushner Companies is reportedly trying to assemble a $7 billion financing package to convert the building into condos.

Around June 2016: As Trump secures the Republican nomination for president, a Chinese financial giant, Anbang Insurance Group, begins talks with Kushner Companies about investing in the redevelopment of 666 Fifth Avenue.

Nov. 8, 2016: Election Day.

Nov. 16, 2016: Jared Kushner and a group of executives dine at the Waldorf Astoria with the chairman of China’s Anbang Insurance Group.

Nov. 28, 2016: As speculation grows that Kushner will become a top Trump White House adviser, reports surface that business conflicts of interest could pose problems for him. Among them is a Kushner project in New Jersey that attracted tens of millions of dollars from Chinese investors by marketing a controversial US immigration program (EB-5), which opens a speedy path to citizenship for investors who put more than $500,000 in projects located in economically disadvantaged “targeted employment areas.” The program has become controversial because gerrymandering of census tracts has allowed otherwise ineligible real estate developments to benefit from tenuous geographic connections to poor neighborhoods.

Dec. 2, 2016: Trump accepts a call from Taiwan’s president, thereby offending China’s president by violating America’s longstanding “one China” policy.

Jan. 31, 2017: A Kushner Companies spokesperson announces that Jared Kushner has sold his interest in 666 Fifth Avenue to a family trust of which he, Ivanka and their children are not beneficiaries.

Feb. 9, 2017: Jared Kushner reportedly orchestrates a fence-mending phone call between Trump and China’s president, during which Trump reaffirms the US “one China” policy that his earlier conduct had placed in doubt.

March 13, 2017: Bloomberg reports that the Kushner family may receive as much as $400 million from Chinese investor Anbang Insurance Group’s investment in 666 Fifth Avenue. On March 29, Anbang backs out of the deal.

May 5, 2017: Trump signs a bill extending the controversial EB-5 immigrant program. Concerns about “gerrymandering” that facilitates abuses of the program persist.

May 6, 2012: Jared Kushner’s sister, Nicole Meyer, touts Jared’s proximity to Trump, as well as the EB-5 citizenship program, as selling points to potential Chinese investors in Kushner Companies’ One Journal Square development in New Jersey. The project appears to benefit from the type of gerrymandering that generates criticism of the EB-5 program.

Kushner and Russia

April through November 2016: Mike Flynn and other advisers to the Trump campaign have at least 18 phone calls and emails with Russian officials, including six contacts involving Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. According to a later report by Reuters, Jared Kushner has at least two phone calls with Kislyak.

June 2016: Jared Kushner assumes control of all data-driven Trump campaign efforts, turning a nondescript building outside San Antonio, Texas into a 100-person data hub. Among the firms he retains is Cambridge Analytica, which reportedly has created “profiles” consisting of several thousand data points for 220 million Americans. Cambridge Analytica’s financial backers include hedge fund tycoon Robert Mercer, who also has a $10 million investment in Breitbart News, which, at the time, is run by Steve Bannon.

December 2016: At Kislyak’s request, Kushner meets secretly with Sergey Gorkov, chief of Russia’s state-owned bank VEB. US intelligence reportedly views Gorkov as a “Putin crony” and a graduate of a “finishing school” for spies. In 2010, VEB had been involved in a financial transaction that assisted the struggling Trump International Hotel and Tower project in Toronto. Since 2014, VEB has been subject to US sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine. In December 2016, Kushner is still looking for more than $1 billion from investors to refinance Kushner Companies’ debt on its troubled 666 Fifth Avenue building. The public remains unaware of the Kushner/Gorkov meeting until March 2017, when The New York Times breaks the story. The White House characterizes it as a routine diplomatic encounter that went nowhere, but VEB says it was part of the bank’s ongoing business strategy. For months thereafter, the White House refuses to disclose the date of the meeting. On June 1, 2017, The Washington Post reports the results of its independent investigation: On Dec. 13, 2016, a private plane associated with VEB (and on which its executives travel) flew from Moscow to Newark airport outside New York City. The following day, the plane then flew to Japan, where Putin met with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Dec. 15.

Late December 2016: Steve Bannon joins Flynn and Kushner for a secret meeting with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who made an undisclosed visit to New York later in December.

Dec. 29, 2016: On the same day President Obama announces sanctions against Russia in retaliation for its interference in the 2016 election, national security adviser-designate Lt. Gen. Flynn places five phone calls to the Russian ambassador.

Dec. 30, 2016: After Putin makes a surprise announcement that Russia would not retaliate for the new sanctions, Trump tweets:

On or around Jan. 11, 2017: Erik Prince — the founder of the Blackwater private security firm, $250,000 donor to the Trump campaign, and brother of Trump’s nomination for secretary of education Betsy DeVos — meets secretly in the Seychelles Islands with a Russian close to Putin. Russia’s goal is to establish a back-channel line of communication with the Trump administration. The meeting had been arranged by the United Arab Emirates, and came soon after a meeting between the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner in December.

Jan. 15, 2017: Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, Vice President Pence says Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador on the same day President Obama announced new sanctions was “strictly coincidental,” explaining: “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure on Russia…. What I can confirm, having to spoken with [Flynn] about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.” Host John Dickerson asks Pence, “Just to button up one question, did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence replies, “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”

Jan. 18, 2017: On his application for national security clearance, Jared Kushner omits his December meetings with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and the chief of the Russian bank VEB.

During the week following the Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration: Trump administration officials are considering an executive order to lift unilaterally the US sanctions against Russia. Removing the sanctions also would have expanded greatly the Russian bank VEB’s ability to do business in the US, and allowed Americans to borrow from and provide financing to the bank. Five months later, Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff breaks the rest of the story: “Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.” State Department officials are so alarmed that they urge congressional leaders to pass legislation that would lock the sanctions in place. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) become involved.

Jan. 23, 2017: At Sean Spicer’s first press briefing, Spicer says that none of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador touched on the Dec. 29 sanctions. That got the attention of FBI Director James Comey. According to The Wall Street Journal, Comey convinced acting Attorney General Sally Yates to delay informing the White House immediately about the discrepancy between Spicer’s characterization of Flynn’s calls and US intelligence intercepts showing that the two had, in fact, discussed sanctions. Comey reportedly asked Yates to wait a bit longer so that the FBI could develop more information and speak with Flynn himself. The FBI interviews Flynn shortly thereafter.

Jan. 24, 2017: According to a subsequent article in The Washington Post, Flynn reportedly denies to FBI agents that he had discussed US sanctions against Russia in his December 2016 calls with the Russian ambassador.

Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informs White House Counsel Don McGahn that, based on recent public statements of White House officials including Vice President Mike Pence, Flynn had lied to Pence and others about his late-December conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. According to Sean Spicer, Trump and a small group of White House advisers were “immediately informed of the situation.”

Jan. 27, 2017: McGahn asks Yates to return to the White House for another discussion about Flynn. He asks Yates, “Why does it matter to the Department of Justice if one White House official lies to another?” Yates explains that Flynn’s lies make him vulnerable to Russian blackmail because the Russians know that Flynn lied and could probably prove it.

Also on Jan. 27, 2017: In a one-on-one White House dinner that Trump had requested, he asks FBI Director Comey for a pledge of personal loyalty. Comey, who was uneasy about even accepting the dinner invitation, responds that he can’t do that, but he can pledge honesty. Afterward, Comey describes the dinner to several people on the condition that they not disclose it while he remains director of the FBI.

Jan. 29, 2017: TIME photographs Trump at his desk in the Oval Office. Sitting across from him are Kushner and Flynn, about whom Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House earlier that week. The caption indicates that Trump is speaking on the phone with King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

Feb. 7, 2017: Sens. Cardin and Graham introduce bipartisan legislation that would bar Trump from granting sanctions relief to Russia without congressional involvement.

Feb. 8, 2017: Flynn tells reporters at The Washington Post he did not discuss US sanctions in his December conversation with the Russian ambassador.

Feb. 9, 2017: Through a spokesman, Flynn changes his position: “While [Flynn] had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

Feb. 10, 2017: Trump tells reporters he was unaware of reports surrounding Flynn’s December conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Feb. 13, 2017: The Washington Post breaks another story: Then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned the White House in late January that Flynn had mischaracterized his December conversation with the Russian ambassador, and that it made him vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Later that evening, Flynn resigns.

Feb. 14, 2017: In a private Oval Office meeting, Trump asks FBI Director Comey to halt the investigation of former national security adviser Mike Flynn. According to Comey’s contemporaneous memorandum, Trump says, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” According to the memo, Trump tells Comey that Flynn had done nothing wrong. Comey does not say anything to Trump about halting the investigation, replying only: “I agree he is a good guy.”

March 2, 2017: The New York Times reports, and the White House confirms, a previously undisclosed meeting involving Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner and Russian Ambassador Kislyak. According to The Times, “Michael T. Flynn, then Donald J. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to ‘establish a line of communication’ between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.”

March 27, 2017: The New York Times reports the previously undisclosed December meeting between Kushner and Sergey Gorkov, head of the Russian bank VEB. On May 29, 2017, the White House says that Kushner met the banker “in his capacity as a transition official.” The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to question Kushner about both of Kushner’s December meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov.

April 6, 2017: The New York Times reports that Jared Kushner’s application for national security clearance had failed to disclose his December meetings at Trump Tower with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and the CEO of the Russian bank, VEB. In a statement, Kushner’s attorney says that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the FBI: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts.”

May 15, 2017: Trump meets in the Oval Office with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who had arranged the January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles Islands between Erik Prince and a Russian close to Putin.

May 18, 2017: TIME reports that congressional investigators are reviewing whether Cambridge Analytica or Breitbart News played any role in working with Russian efforts to help Trump win the election.

May 19, 2017: The Washington Post reports that federal investigators in the Trump/Russia matter have identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest. On May 25, news reports identify the official as Jared Kushner.

May 26, 2017: The Washington Post reports on Kushner’s Dec. 1 or 2 meeting with Russian Ambassador Kislyak at which, according to Kislyak, Kushner requested a secret and secure communication channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. In mid-December, an anonymous letter had tipped off The Post to what Kushner had supposedly said at the meeting. Former US intelligence officials described the idea of a back channel using a hostile foreign power’s facilities as “disturbing” and “dangerous.”

Also on May 26, 2017: The Washington Post reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee has demanded that the Trump campaign produce all Russia-related documents, emails and phone records dating to June 2015, when the campaign was launched.

May 27, 2017: Reuters reports that Jared Kushner had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak during and after the presidential campaign. Two were phone calls between April and November. His attorney says that Kushner “has no recollection of the calls as described” and asks Reuters for the dates that they allegedly occurred.

May 28, 2017: In three Sunday morning talk show appearances, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says that if Kushner was trying to a create a back channel to communicate with the Russian government, it was a “good thing.” Veteran diplomatic and intelligence experts remain unconvinced.

May 31, 2017: The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is moving toward returning two suspected espionage compounds to Russia. When President Obama issued new sanctions on Dec. 29, he said that the compounds — located in New York and Maryland — were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and had given Russia 24 hours to vacate them.

Also on May 31, 2017: Sergey Gorkov, head of Russian bank VEB, refuses to comment in response to reporters’ questions about his December 2016 meeting with Jared Kushner.

Kushner and the Comey Cover-up

May 8, 2017: Trump informs a small group of his closest advisers, including Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner and White House counsel Don McGahn, that he plans to fire FBI Director James Comey. According to The New York Times, McGahn counsels Trump to delay dismissing Comey; Kushner urges him to proceed. 

Also on May 8, 2017: Trump follows Kushner’s advice and, according to ABC News, Kushner, White House counsel Don McGahn, Vice President Pence and chief of staff Reince Priebus begin to prepare talking points about Comey’s planned firing. Meanwhile, Trump summons Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to the White House, where he instructs them provide a written justification for removing Comey. Before Rosenstein prepares the requested memo, he knows Trump intends to fire Comey.

To be continued…

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 and Comey Firing Timeline have also been updated to include relevant entries.

• December 2016: At Kislyak’s request, Kushner meets secretly with Sergey Gorkov, chief of Russia’s state-owned bank VEB. US intelligence reportedly views Gorkov as a “Putin crony” and a graduate of a “finishing school” for spies. In 2010, VEB had been involved in a financial transaction that assisted the struggling Trump International Hotel and Tower project in Toronto. Since 2014, VEB has been subject to US sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine. In December 2016, Kushner is still looking for more than $1 billion from investors to refinance Kushner Companies’ debt on its troubled 666 Fifth Avenue building. The public remains unaware of the Kushner/Gorkov meeting until March 2017, when The New York Times breaks the story. The White House characterizes it as a routine diplomatic encounter that went nowhere, but VEB says it was part of the bank’s ongoing business strategy. For months thereafter, the White House refuses to disclose the date of the meeting. On June 1, 2017, The Washington Post reports the results of its independent investigation: On Dec. 13, 2016, a private plane associated with VEB (and on which its executives travel) flew from Moscow to Newark airport outside New York City. The following day, the plane then flew to Japan, where Putin met with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Dec. 15. [Revised June 5, 2017] 

***

• During the week following the Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration: Trump administration officials are considering an executive order to lift unilaterally the US sanctions against Russia. Removing the sanctions also would have expanded greatly the Russian bank VEB’s ability to do business in the US, and allowed Americans to borrow from and provide financing to the bank. Five months later, Michael Isikoff breaks the story: “Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.” State Department officials are so alarmed that they urge congressional leaders to pass legislation that would lock the sanctions in place. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) become involved. [Added June 5, 2017]

***

• Feb. 7, 2017: Sens. Cardin and Graham introduce bipartisan legislation that would bar Trump from granting sanctions relief to Russia without congressional involvement. [Added June 5, 2017] 

***

• March 27, 2017: The New York Times reports on the previously undisclosed December meeting between Kushner and Sergey Gorkov, head of the Russian bank VEB. On May 29, 2917, the White House says that Kushner met the banker “in his capacity as a transition official.” The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to question Kushner about both of Kushner’s December meetings with Kislyak and Gorkov. [Added June 5, 2017]

***

• May 31, 2017: The House Intelligence Committee approves the issuance of subpoenas to Mike Flynn, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, and the businesses that each of them runs. Separately, several news outlets report that House Committee Chairman Nunes, who had recused himself from the committee’s Trump/Russia investigation, issued subpoenas to former Obama administration officials on the issue of “unmasking” – revealing the names of persons referenced in intelligence reports. [Added June 5, 2017]
• Also on May 31, 2017: The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is moving toward returning two suspected espionage compounds to Russia. When President Obama had issued new sanctions on Dec. 29, he had said that the compounds—located in New York and Maryland—were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and had given Russia 24 hours to vacate them. [Added June 5, 2017]
• Also on May 31, 2017: Sergey Gorkov, head of Russian bank VEB, refuses to comment in response to reporters’ questions about his December 2016 meeting with Jared Kushner. [Added June 5, 2017]
• June 1, 2017: Putin tells reporters that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers might have been involved in cyberattacks that interfered with the US election. “We’re not doing this on the state level,” Putin says. [Added June 5, 2017]
• June 2, 2017: Special counsel Robert Mueller assumes control over a federal grand jury criminal investigation of Mike Flynn’s ties to Turkey, as well as the criminal investigation involving Paul Manafort. [Added June 5, 2017]

[This post first appeared at Bill Moyers & Company on May 31, 2017.]

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (JD, Harvard, ’89) could have said no to a dangerous president, but he didn’t. Instead, he penned a two-and-a-half-page memo that the White House used to cover up Trump’s real reasons for firing FBI Director James Comey. As the cover-up imploded, Rosenstein became enveloped in the resulting firestorm. Since then, he has worsened his predicament.

By Rosenstein’s own account, the process of preparing his memo for the president involved none of the careful analysis that a lawyer typically would perform when advising a client about such a sensitive situation. Only once in history has a president fired an FBI director. And that was after the Justice Department produced a 161-page report documenting Director William Sessions’ improper use of government funds. The termination process was systematic, thorough, and took months.

At the outset, an attorney tries to learn relevant facts. But Rosenstein admits, “My memorandum is not a survey of FBI morale or performance.” Even the most minimal due diligence would have undermined one of his principal conclusions. If Rosenstein had asked, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe would have told him that Comey enjoyed “broad support within the FBI and still does to this day…. The majority, the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey.”

An attorney then relies on the facts and the law to build a case. But Rosenstein acknowledges, “My memorandum is not a legal brief;… My memorandum is not a finding of official misconduct;… My memorandum is not a statement of reasons to justify a for-cause termination.” He understates the deficiencies. His memo reads like a college term paper reciting personal views and reporting results from a quick online search. It relies on previously published statements by former government officials criticizing Comey’s pre-election statements about the FBI’s Hillary Clinton investigation. And even they didn’t say Comey should be fired. Except as a public relations device, Rosenstein’s memo was meaningless.

So why did he write it?

The Interview

Rosenstein is a 27-year veteran of the Justice Department. In 2007, President George W. Bush nominated him for a federal appellate judgeship that he didn’t get. Shortly after the 2016 election, Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions (R-AL) interviewed him for the second-highest position in Trump’s Justice Department. For a seasoned prosecutor, Rosenstein’s admission about that encounter is remarkable.

“In one of my first meetings with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions last winter,” Rosenstein told Congress a week after the cover-up collapsed, “we discussed the need for new leadership at the FBI.”

His offhand remark glossed over an obvious question: As between Sessions (JD, Alabama, ’73) and Rosenstein, who raised that subject? The answer would have led to another question: Why? At the time, some dots were ripe for Rosenstein to connect, if he’d wanted to see them. Trump was deriding the conclusion of US intelligence that had Russia had interfered in the election to help him win. As dark investigative clouds hovered on the horizon, he regarded any ongoing investigation as the perpetuation of a “hoax.” He wanted it all to end.

Whatever test Sessions applied in that early meeting about new FBI leadership, Rosenstein passed with flying colors. On Jan. 31, the White House announced its intent to nominate him as deputy attorney general.

The Survivor

After admitting to lies about contact with Russia during the campaign, Sessions recused himself from the Trump/Russia investigation on March 2. As soon as the Senate confirmed Rosenstein — a prospect that seemed certain — the Trump/Russia investigation would land in his lap. Maybe Rosenstein didn’t realize it, but with Sessions’ recusal, Rosenstein became Trump’s new safety net, up to and including terminating Comey as FBI director.

Before long, it looked like Trump might need it. On March 20, Comey testified that since July 2016, the FBI had an ongoing investigation into Russian interference with the election, including “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

A week later, according to Comey’s friend Benjamin Wittes, Comey expressed his reservations about Rosenstein becoming his new boss. While lunching with Wittes on March 27, Comey reportedly said, “Rod is a survivor. So I have concerns.”

The Survivor in Peril

Two weeks after Sessions had presided at Rosenstein’s April 26 swearing-in ceremony, both men were in the Oval Office with Trump. Rosenstein later described the meeting: “On May 8, I learned that President Trump intended to remove Director Comey and sought my advice and input. Notwithstanding my personal affection for Director Comey, I thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader. I wrote a brief memorandum to the attorney general summarizing my longstanding concerns about Director Comey’s public statements concerning the Secretary Clinton email investigation.”

Stated simply, Trump was firing Comey and he wanted a supporting memo from Rosenstein. Twenty-four hours later, he had it. It takes a failure of judgment, imagination or both not to have anticipated what would come next.

• May 9, 2017: Relying on Rosenstein’s memo and Sessions’ concurrence, Trump fired Comey. Later that evening amid bushes on the White House grounds, press secretary Sean Spicer said the impetus had come from Rosenstein. “No one from the White House,” Spicer said. “That was a DOJ decision.” On CNN, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway echoed that position, embellishing it with excerpts from the Rosenstein memo that she read aloud.

• May 10, 2017: Vice President Mike Pence said repeatedly that Comey’s firing occurred because Rosenstein had recommended it. The deputy attorney general “came to work, sat down and made the recommendation that for the FBI to be able to do its job that it would need new leadership. He brought that recommendation to the president. The attorney general concurred with that recommendation.”

• Later on May 10, 2017: Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had been thinking about firing Comey “since the day he was elected,” but reiterated the position that Rosenstein was “absolutely” the impetus for the firing. Trump had merely asked him to put his concerns in writing.

Before the day ended, Rosenstein had spoken by phone with White House counsel Don McGahn. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rosenstein insisted the White House correct the public misimpression that he had initiated Comey’s firing. The White House complied, releasing a new timeline of the events and reciting that the impetus for removing Comey came from Trump, not Rosenstein.

Survivor in Distress

The White House’s pivot didn’t get Rosenstein off the hook. The day after firing Comey, Russia’s Ambassador Kislyak and Foreign Minister Lavrov met with Trump, who boasted, “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

The next day, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt, “Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey, knowing there was no good time to do it.” But then Trump added this: “And in fact, when I decided to do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story….”

As the cover-up disintegrated, Rosenstein’s job interview with then-Sen. Sessions began to look like an earlier bookend to its troubling counterpart. When Rosenstein confirmed the “need for new leadership at the FBI,” he had boarded Trump’s train bound for Comey’s dismissal. The only question was when it would arrive.

Perhaps Rosenstein felt a chill when he read The New York Times on May 11, reporting on their private dinner on Jan. 27 when Trump sought Comey’s personal loyalty. Likewise, the days following May 18 couldn’t have been pleasant for Rosenstein after Benjamin Wittes’ views hit the national airwaves. After Trump’s loyalty request of Comey, Wittes thought that Comey was wondering what Trump had asked of Rosenstein — and what Rosenstein might have agreed to give him.

So far, Rod Rosenstein seems unfazed by the destruction of his reputation and his unfortunate place in history. Based on his fervent defense to Congress of the May 9 memo, he strapped himself to the mast of Trump’s battered ship and he plans to stay there. Any other course would require him to acknowledge the magnitude of his original Trump sin last winter.

Survivor’s Delusions

Those who think Rosenstein redeemed himself by appointing Robert Mueller as special counsel should think again. Mueller is an excellent choice, but a special counsel investigates possible crimes. As David Frum explains, it’s not a mechanism for identifying all potential threats to American democracy that may arise from Trump’s various relationships with Russia. If such threats fail to reach the threshold of criminal wrongdoing, a special counsel is supposed to look away and the public may never know. And remember, Mueller reports to Rosenstein, so Trump’s Justice Department safety net may still be intact. That’s why only an independent bipartisan commission can unearth and disclose the whole truth about the Trump/Russia controversy.

Rosenstein now faces limited options: resign, remain in office as a diminished leader with questionable judgment and uncertain integrity, or wait for Trump to fire him. The second and third options are not mutually exclusive.

The New York Times wonders whether Rosenstein “allowed himself to be drawn into a highly politicized firing, either as a willing participant or an unwitting accomplice.” There’s another possibility: The survivor overestimated his ability to withstand assaults from people like Trump and Sessions. Now, like many attorneys who refused to stand up to Trump when they should have, Rosenstein may soon need a lawyer, too.

These are my latest additions to the Bill Moyers & Company overall Timeline relating to Trump and Russia. You can read the entire Timeline here.

• September 2008: Donald Trump Jr. tells a real estate conference: “And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. There’s indeed a lot of money coming for new-builds and resale reflecting a trend in the Russian economy and, of course, the weak dollar versus the ruble.” [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• April through November 2016: Mike Flynn and other advisers to the Trump campaign have at least 18 phone calls and emails with Russian officials, including six contacts involving Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. According to a later report by Reuters, Jared Kushner has at least two phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• During the summer of 2016: American spies are intercepting conversations involving senior Russian intelligence and political officials. Russians discuss using Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn—both of whom had prior contacts with Russia—to shape Trump’s opinions on Russia. Former CIA Director John Brennan notices suspicious contacts between Russian government officials and associates of Trump’s campaign. Brennan believes that the American election is under attack and worries that Trump’s campaign might be aiding the effort. Brennan refers his concerns to the FBI, which has jurisdiction to pursue an investigation. [Revised May 30, 2017]

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• June 2016: Jared Kushner assumes control of all data-driven Trump campaign efforts, turning a nondescript building outside San Antonio, Texas into a 100-person data hub. Among the firms he retains is Cambridge Analytica, which reportedly has created “profiles” consisting of several thousand data points for 220 million Americans. Cambridge Analytica’s financial backers include hedge fund tycoon Robert Mercer, who also has a $10 million investment in Breitbart News, which, at the time, is run by Steve Bannon. [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• Aug. 12, 2016: Florida GOP consultant Aaron Nevins reaches out to hacker Guccifer 2.0, who had invited journalists to send questions via Twitter direct messages relating to information that Guccifer 2.0 had hacked from the DNC and the DCCC. Under his pseudonymous blog, Nevins begins posting links to Guuccifer 2.0, along with highlights of the material. Nevins tells Guccifer 2.0 that releasing fresher data would have more impact and that the hacker should “feel free to send any Florida-based information.” [Added May 30, 2017]

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• Aug. 22, 2016: Responding to Florida GOP consultant Aaron Nevins’ August 12 request, Guccifer 2.0 uploads almost 2.5 gigabytes of stolen documents—including the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote strategy for Florida—to Nevins’ drop box. Guccifer 2.0 then sends Roger Stone a link to Nevis’ blog. Nevins continues posting hacked documents through the end of August, culminating in the September 8, 2016 release of the DCCC’s “Democrats Turnout Model” for Florida. [Added May 30, 2017]

*** 

• Winter 2016: According to US Attorney Rod Rosenstein, during one of his first interviews with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to become deputy attorney general in the Trump administration, they discuss “the need for new leadership at the FBI.” [Added May 30, 2017]

***

• Dec. 1 or 2, 2016: Unbeknownst to the press covering Trump Tower, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak visits Trump Tower visit to meet with Kushner and Trump’s NSA-designate Mike Flynn. According to a later report in The Washington Post, Kislyak reports to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner makes a surprising suggestion: use Russia’s diplomatic facilities in the US for a secret and secure communications channel between Trump and the Kremlin prior to the inauguration. According to the Post, Kushner wanted to use the Russian embassy so that American officials could not monitor the discussions. Later that month, an anonymous letter tipped off The Washington Post to what Kushner had supposedly said at the meeting. [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• Late December 2016: At Kislyak’s request, Kushner meets with the chief of Russia’s state-owned bank, VEB. Since 2014, the bank has been subject to US sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine. VEB also had been involved in a 2010 transaction relating to the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto. US intelligence reportedly views VEB’s chief as a “Putin crony” and a graduate of a “finishing school” for spies. [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• On or around Jan. 11, 2017: Erik Prince — the founder of the Blackwater private security firm, $250,000 donor to the Trump campaign, and brother of Trump’s nomination for secretary of education Betsy DeVos — meets secretly in the Seychelles Islands with a Russian close to Putin. Russia’s goal is to establish a back-channel line of communication with the Trump administration. The meeting had been arranged by the United Arab Emirates, and came soon after a meeting between the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner in December. [Revised May 30, 2017]

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• Jan. 18, 2017: On his application for national security clearance, Jared Kushner omits his December meetings with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and the chief of the Russian bank, VEB. [Added May 30, 2017]

***

• Jan. 29, 2017: Time photographs Trump at his desk in the Oval Office. Sitting across from him are Flynn and Kushner, about whom Acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House about earlier that week. The caption indicates that Trump is speaking on the phone with King Salman of Saudi Arabia. [Added May 30, 2017]

***

• Also on March 2, 2017: The New York Times reports, and the White House confirms, a previously undisclosed Dec. 1 or 2 meeting involving Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Russian Ambassador Kislyak. According to the Times, “Michael T. Flynn, then Donald J. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to ‘establish a line of communication’ between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.” [Added May 30, 2017]

***

• Also on April 6, 2017: The New York Times reports that Jared Kushner’s application for national security clearance had failed to disclose his December meetings at Trump Tower with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and the CEO of the Russian bank, VEB. In a statement, Kushner’s attorney says that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the FBI: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts.” [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• May 8, 2017: Trump informs a small group of his closest advisers, including Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner and White House counsel Don McGahn, that he plans to fire FBI Director James Comey. According to The New York Times, McGahn counsels Trump to delay dismissing Comey; Kushner urges him to proceed. [Revised May 30, 2017] 
• Also on May 8, 2017: Trump follows Kushner’s advice and, according to ABC News, Kushner, White House counsel Don McGahn, Vice President Pence, and chief of staff Reince Priebus begin to prepare talking points about Comey’s planned firing. Meanwhile, Trump summons Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to the White House, where he instructs them provide a written justification for removing Comey. Before Rosenstein prepares the requested memo, he knows that Trump intends to fire Comey. [Revised May 30, 2017]

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• Also on May 18, 2017: Time reports that congressional investigators are reviewing whether Cambridge Analytica or Brietbart News played any role in working with Russian efforts to help Trump win the election. [Added May 30, 2017]

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• Also on May 19, 2017: The Washington Post reports that federal investigators in the Trump/Russia matter have identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest. On May 25, news reports identify the official as Jared Kushner. [Revised May 30, 2017]

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• May 24, 2017: In response to media reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ application for national security clearance had failed to disclose his contacts with Russian officials, Sessions says he was “instructed not to list meetings with foreign dignitaries and their staff connected with his Senate activities.” [Added May 30, 2017]

***

• May 26, 2017: The Washington Post reports on Kushner’s Dec. 1 or 2 meeting with Russian Ambassador Kislyak at which, according to Kislyak, Kushner requested a secret and secure communication channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. On Dec. 12, 2016, an anonymous letter had tipped the Post to what Kushner had supposedly said at the meeting. Former US intelligence officials described the idea of a back channel using a hostile foreign power’s facilities is disturbing and dangerous. [Added May 30, 2017]

• Also on May 26, 2017: The Washington Post reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee had demanded that the Trump campaign produce all Russia-related documents dating to June 2015. [Added May 30, 2017]

• Also on May 26, 2017: Reuters reports that Jared Kushner had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak during and after the presidential campaign. Two were phone calls between April and November. His attorney says that Kushner “has no recollection of the calls as described” and asks Reuters for the dates that they allegedly occurred. [Added May 30, 2017]

• May 28, 2017: In three Sunday morning talk show appearances, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly says that if Kushner was trying to a create a backchannel to communicate with the Russian government, it was a “good thing.” Veteran diplomatic and intelligence experts remain unconvinced. [Added May 30, 2017]

These are my latest additions to the Bill Moyers & Company overall Timeline relating to Trump and Russia. You can read the entire Timeline here. 

***

• Mid-January 2016: Flynn applies for a five-year renewal of his security clearance.[Added May 25, 2017]
• Feb. 11, 2016: According to a May 22, 2017 letter from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), investigators meet with Flynn to discuss his security clearance application. When asked about his Moscow appearance, Flynn reportedly says, “I didn’t take any money from Russia, if that’s what you’re asking me.” [Added May 25, 2017]

***

• March 14, 2016: Investigators issue a report on Flynn’s security clearance application. According to the summary in Rep. Cummings’ May 22 letter, Flynn told investigators that he was paid by “U.S. companies” when he traveled to Moscow in December 2015. The report also says that Flynn told investigators he had not received any benefit from a foreign country. [Added to Pence Timeline May 25, 2017]

***

• July 15, 2016: Trump tweets:

[Added May 25, 2017]

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• Aug. 4, 2016: CIA Director John Brennan warns the director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) not to meddle in the election. [Added May 25, 2017]

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• Nov. 11, 2016: Vice President-elect Pence replaces Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) as chair of Trump’s transition team. [Added May 25, 2017]

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• Nov. 28, 2016: Trump’s transition team acknowledges receipt of Cummings’ Nov. 18 letter regarding Mike Flynn. [Added May 25, 2017]

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• Also on Jan. 15, 2017: Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, Vice President Pence says Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador on the same day President Obama announced new sanctions was “strictly coincidental,” explaining: “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure on Russia…. What I can confirm, having to spoken with [Flynn] about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.” Host John Dickerson asks Pence, “Just to button up one question, did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence replies, “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.” [Revised May 30, 2017]

***

• Also on Jan. 15, 2017: On Fox News Sunday, Pence denies contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign. Responding to Chris Wallace, Pence says, “All the contact by the Trump campaign and associates were with the American people.” On a third try, Wallace asks if Pence had ever asked Donald Trump if there were any contacts in the campaign between Trump or his associates and Russians. Pence answers, “Of course not.” [Added May 25, 2017]

***

• Feb. 19, 2017: NBC’s Chuck Todd questions Reince Priebus about Flynn’s firing. The White House line was that Trump had fired Flynn because he’d lied to Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russians about U.S. sanctions. But that left an awkward gap of more than two weeks during which Trump apparently knew about Flynn’s deception before firing him. “Why did more than a week go by before the VP was informed of this issue?” Todd asks. “Well, I think he was always aware of the issue as to whether or not he talked about sanctions,” Priebus answers. Later, Todd asks about the more than two-week delay between Yates’ disclosure of Flynn’s deception and Trump’s decision to fire him. “Waiting that long, do you regret that it looks like that the vice president is essentially not in the loop?” Todd asks. “No,” Priebus replies, “the vice president’s in the loop on everything, Chuck.” [Added May 25, 2017]

***

• Within days of March 20, 2017: Less than a week after FBI Director Comey’s testimony, Trump personally calls the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, and the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Mike Rogers, and asks them to deny publicly the existence of any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia prior to the election. A senior intelligence official says Trump’s goal is to “muddy the waters” about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats are ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel. Coats and Rogers deem Trump’s request inappropriate and refuse. [Added May 25, 2017]

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• Also on April 25, 2017: Flynn reportedly receives a message from Trump to “stay strong.” When the story appears on May 18, the White House declines to comment. [Added May 25, 2017]

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• May 22, 2017: Rather than produce documents in response to a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mike Flynn invokes his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Paul Manafort and Roger Stone produced some documents in response to the committee’s request. [Added May 25, 2017]

***

• May 23, 2017: Former CIA Director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee that during the summer of 2016, he noticed suspicious contacts between Russian government officials and associates of Trump’s campaign. Brennan says that he knew the US election was under Russian attack and feared that the Trump campaign might be aiding the effort. [Added May 25, 2017]

[This post first appeared at Bill Moyers & Company on May 26, 2017.]

The Trump White House has produced what appear to be at least three cover-ups. They relate to:

1) former-national security adviser Mike Flynn’s questionable activities relating to Turkey;

2) Flynn’s role in the Trump/Russia controversy; and

3) the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Each is a piece of the larger picture depicted in our overall Trump-Russia timeline. But the complexity of the entire situation can render even the summary timeline overwhelming.

So as we continue to update our overall Trump-Russia timeline, we’re also putting together timelines that track key players and events. Our timeline of the Comey firing is the first example. By isolating the pertinent portions of relevant entries that share a common thread, important players have fewer places to hide. Facts, truth, and clarity are Trump’s adversaries.

This Pence edition of the timeline focuses on the vice president: What did he know, when did he know it, and at what points did his public statements diverge from what he knew or reasonably should have known? (The final phrase creates legal responsibility for presumed knowledge, even if the speaker in question denies it.)

Ultimately, the facts will produce answers, and we’ll be updating the Pence timeline, too.

Pre-Pence Primer on Flynn

• Late summer 2015: A member of Trump’s campaign staff calls retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn to ask if he’s willing to meet with Trump. Flynn agrees.
• Dec. 10, 2015: At the 10th anniversary gala of Russia’s state-owned television propaganda network, RT, Flynn sits at Putin’s table. For his appearance on the network, he nets $33,500 of the $45,000 paid to his speakers’ bureau. For all of 2015, Flynn receives more than $65,000 from companies linked to Russia.
• Mid-January 2016: Flynn applies for a five-year renewal of his security clearance.
• Nov. 11, 2016: According to a May 22, 2017 letter from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), investigators meet with Flynn to discuss his security clearance application. When asked about his Moscow appearance, Flynn reportedly says, “I didn’t take any money from Russia, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
• March 14, 2016: Investigators issue a report on Flynn’s security clearance application. According to the summary in Rep. Cummings’ May 22 letter, Flynn told investigators he was paid by “US companies” when he traveled to Moscow in December 2015. The report also says that Flynn told investigators he had not received any benefit from a foreign country

Cover-up #1: Pence, Flynn, and Turkey

• July 15, 2016: Trump tweets:

• August 2016: The consulting firm headed by Trump’s national security adviser Mike Flynn begins to perform lobbying work for a company owned by a close adviser to Turkey’s President Erdogan.
• Nov. 8, 2016: Trump and Pence win the election.
• Nov. 10, 2016: During their first meeting after the election, President Obama warns Trump about appointing Mike Flynn to a top national security post. In 2014, Obama had removed Flynn as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
• Nov. 11, 2016: Vice President-elect Pence replaces Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) as chair of Trump’s transition team.
• Nov. 14, 2016: Reporters ask Mike Flynn’s business associate Robert Kelley if Turkish interests had retained their consulting firm from August through Election Day because of Flynn’s close relationship with Trump. “I hope so,” Kelley says. The subject of Flynn’s lobbying activities for Turkey comes up again periodically in news reports throughout November and December.
• Nov. 18, 2016: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sends Trump transition team chair (and Vice President-elect) Mike Pence a letter expressing concerns about national security adviser-designate Mike Flynn’s conflicts of interest. Specifically, Cummings worries about Flynn’s work for an entity affiliated with the government of Turkey, as well as a paid trip to Moscow in December 2015 during which Flynn was “highly critical of the United States.”
• Nov. 28, 2016: Trump’s transition team acknowledges receipt of Cummings’ Nov. 18 letter regarding Mike Flynn.
• Jan. 4, 2017: National security adviser-designate Mike Flynn tells the transition team’s chief counsel Donald F. McGahn II that he is under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey. Flynn’s lawyer followed up, but did not get a call back until Jan. 6.
• Jan. 10, 2017: President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, informs Trump of the military plan to retake the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa with the help of Syrian Kurdish forces. Obama’s team informed Trump because execution of the plan would not occur until after the inauguration. Turkey has long opposed US forces partnering with Kurdish forces in the region. Trump national security adviser-designate Flynn tells Rice to hold off on approving the mission.
• March 7, 2017: Former national security adviser Mike Flynn files registration documents confirming that between August 2016 and Election Day, he’d earned $530,000 for lobbying work on behalf of a company owned by a Turkish businessman. Flynn acknowledges that his work as a foreign agent could have benefitted the Turkish government.
• March 9, 2017: Responding to questions about Mike Flynn’s lobbying activities for Turkish interests during the campaign and thereafter, Vice President Mike Pence tells Fox News’ Bret Baier twice that he’d just learned of it: “Well, let me say, hearing that story today was the first I’d heard of it. And I fully support the decision that President Trump made to ask for Gen. Flynn’s resignation.” BAIER: “You’re disappointed by the story?” PENCE: “The first I heard of it, and I think it is, uh, it is an affirmation of the president’s decision to ask Gen. Flynn to resign.” Asked whether Trump knew about Flynn’s activities on behalf of Turkish interests, Sean Spicer says, “I don’t believe that that was known.”
• March 22, 2017: In a joint letter to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee request information and documents relating to payments that former national security adviser Mike Flynn received from entities affiliated with foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey.
• May 9, 2017: Over Turkey’s objections, the Pentagon announces that the US will partner with Kurds to retake the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. On Jan. 10, the Obama administration had presented President-elect Trump with a plan to partner with the Kurds against ISIS, but his then-national security adviser-designate Mike Flynn had killed it.

Cover-up #2: Pence, Flynn and Russia

• April through November 2016: Mike Flynn and other advisers to the Trump campaign have at least 18 phone calls and emails with Russian officials, including six contacts involving Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
• Late November 2016: In a meeting that includes senior Trump transition national security team members, national security adviser-designate Mike Flynn reveals he has scheduled a conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. In attendance is Marshall Billingslea, a member of the team who had been a senior Pentagon official for President George W. Bush. He warns Flynn that any such communications carry risks because US intelligence agencies are almost certainly monitoring Kislyak’s conversations. After the meeting, Billingsea asks national security officials in the Obama White House for a copy of the classified CIA profile of Kislyak.
• Dec. 29, 2016: On the same day President Obama announces sanctions against Russia in retaliation for its interference in the 2016 election, national security adviser-designate Flynn places five phone calls to the Russian ambassador.
• Dec. 30, 2016: After Putin makes a surprise announcement that Russia would not retaliate for the new sanctions, Trump tweets:

• Jan. 15, 2017: Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, Vice President Pence says Flynn’s call to the Russian ambassador on the same day President Obama announced new sanctions was “strictly coincidental,” explaining: “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure on Russia…. What I can confirm, having to spoken with [Flynn] about it, is that those conversations that happened to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.” Dickerson also asks Pence, “Just to button up one question, did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence replies, “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”
• Also on Jan. 15, 2017: On Fox News Sunday, Pence denies contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign. Responding to Chris Wallace, Pence says, “All the contact by the Trump campaign and associates were with the American people.” On a third try, Wallace asks if Pence had ever asked Donald Trump if there were any contacts in the campaign between Trump or his associates and Russians, Pence answers, “Of course not.”
• Jan. 20, 2017: Trump and Pence are inaugurated.
• Jan. 22, 2017: Flynn is sworn in as national security adviser, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.
• Jan. 23, 2017: At Sean Spicer’s first press briefing, Spicer says none of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador touched on the Dec. 29 sanctions. That got the attention of FBI Director James Comey. According to The Wall Street Journal, Comey convinced acting Attorney General Sally Yates to delay informing the White House immediately about the discrepancy between Spicer’s characterization of Flynn’s calls and US intelligence intercepts showing that the two had, in fact, discussed sanctions. Comey reportedly asked Yates to wait a bit longer so that the FBI could develop more information and speak with Flynn himself. The FBI interviews Flynn shortly thereafter.
• Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informs White House Counsel Don McGahn that, based on recent public statements of White House officials including Vice President Mike Pence, Flynn had lied to Pence and others about his late-December conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. According to Sean Spicer, Trump and a small group of White House advisers were “immediately informed of the situation.”
• Jan. 27, 2017: McGahn asks Yates to return to the White House for another discussion about Flynn. He asks Yates, “Why does it matter to the Department of Justice if one White House official lies to another?” Yates explains that Flynn’s lies make him vulnerable to Russian blackmail because the Russians know that Flynn lied and could probably prove it.
• Feb. 8, 2017: Flynn tells reporters at The Washington Post he did not discuss US sanctions in his December conversation with the Russian ambassador.
• Feb. 9, 2017: Through a spokesman, Flynn changes his position: “While [Flynn] had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”
• Feb. 10, 2017: Trump tells reporters he was unaware of reports surrounding Flynn’s December conversations with the Russian ambassador.
• Feb. 13, 2017: The Washington Post breaks another story: Then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had warned the White House in late January that Flynn had mischaracterized his December conversation with the Russian ambassador, and that it made him vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Later that evening, Flynn resigns.
• Feb. 19, 2017: NBC’s Chuck Todd questions Reince Priebus about Flynn’s firing. The White House line was that Trump had fired Flynn because he’d lied to Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russians about US sanctions. But that left an awkward gap of more than two weeks during which Trump apparently knew about Flynn’s deception before firing him. “Why did more than a week go by before the vice president was informed of this issue?” Todd asks. “Well, I think he was always aware of the issue as to whether or not he talked about sanctions,” Priebus answers. Later, Todd asks about the more than two-week delay between Yates’ disclosure of Flynn’s deception and Trump’s decision to fire him. “Waiting that long, do you regret that it looks like that the vice president is essentially not in the loop?” Todd asks. “No,” Priebus replies, “the vice president’s in the loop on everything, Chuck.”
• March 30, 2017: The Wall Street Journal reports that Mike Flynn is seeking immunity from prosecution in return for testifying before congressional intelligence committees. The next day, his lawyer confirms, “Gen. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should circumstances permit.”
• March 31, 2017: Trump tweets:

• April 19, 2017: The White House refuses the March 22 bipartisan request from the House Oversight Committee for more information and documents relating to payments that former national security adviser Mike Flynn received from entities affiliated with the Russian and Turkish governments.
• April 25, 2017: Flynn reportedly receives a message from Trump to “stay strong.” When the story appears on May 18, the White House does not respond to a request for comment.
• April 28, 2017: The chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee send letters to several former Trump campaign advisers, including Carter Page, Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Among other requests, the letters ask for a “list of all meetings between you and any Russian official or representative of Russian business interests which took place between June 16, 2015 and Jan. 20, 2017.” The letters also request information about any such meetings of which they are aware, as well as all documents relating to Trump campaign communications with Russian officials or business representatives. The committee also seeks information about any financial and real estate transactions related to Russia from June 15, 2015 through Trump’s inauguration.
• May 11, 2017: The Senate Intelligence Committee sends Mike Flynn a subpoena for documents that he’d refused to produce voluntarily in response to the committee’s April 28 letter request.
• May 19, 2017: Vice President Pence faces added scrutiny on what he knew about Flynn’s connections to Turkey and Russia — and when he knew it. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee post a Nov. 18, 2017 letter from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) to Pence, who at the time was vice president-elect and chair of the presidential transition team. The letter expressed concerns about national security adviser-designate Flynn’s ties to those countries. In response to the posting, Pence’s spokesperson states, “The vice president stands by his comments in March upon first hearing the news regarding Gen. Flynn’s ties to Turkey and fully supports the President’s decision to ask for General Flynn’s resignation.” A White House aide adds, “I’m not sure we saw the letter.” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee then post the formal Nov. 28, 2016 transition team message acknowledging receipt of Cummings’ letter.
• May 22, 2017: Rather than produce documents in response to a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mike Flynn invokes his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Cover-up #3: The Comey Firing

• May 8, 2017: Trump tells a few close aides, including Vice President Pence and White House counsel Don McGahn, that Comey has to go. According to ABC News, Pence, McGahn, chief of staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Jared Kushner are members of a small group that begins to prepare talking points about Comey’s firing. Trump summons Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to the White House, where he instructs them provide a written justification for removing Comey. Before Rosenstein prepares the requested memo, he knows that Trump intends to fire Comey.
• May 9, 2017: Citing the May 9 recommendations of Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, Trump fires FBI Director Comey, ostensibly because of his inappropriate statements about the Clinton email investigation prior to the 2016 election. Trump, Sessions and Rosenstein write that terminating Comey is necessary to restore trust, confidence and integrity in the FBI. In his termination letter to Comey, Trump also says he “greatly appreciates you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”
• May 10, 2017: Pence says repeatedly that Comey’s firing occurred because Sessions and Rosenstein recommended it: The deputy attorney general “came to work, sat down and made the recommendation for the FBI to be able to do its job that it would need new leadership. He brought that recommendation to the president. The attorney general concurred with that recommendation.”
• Also on May 10, 2017: Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump had been thinking about firing Comey “since the day he was elected,” but reiterates Pence’s position that Sessions and Rosenstein were “absolutely” the impetus for the firing.
• Also on May 10, 2017: The Washington Post and The New York Times report that Trump had been the impetus for Comey’s firing, not Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.
• Also on May 10, 2017: Rod Rosenstein speaks by phone with White House counsel Don McGahn. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rosenstein insists that the White House correct the misimpression that Rosenstein initiated the process leading to Comey’s firing. He suggests that he can’t work in an environment where facts aren’t reported accurately.
• Also on May 10, 2017: The White House releases a new timeline of the events relating to Comey’s firing. It recites that the impetus for removing Comey had come from Trump, not the deputy attorney general. But the White House acknowledges that Trump met with Sessions and Rosenstein on May 8 to discuss “reasons for removing the director” and that the attorney general and his deputy sent their written recommendations to Trump on May 9.
• Also on May 10, 2017: House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) asks the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate Comey’s firing.
• Also on May 10, 2017: During an Oval Office meeting with Russia’s Ambassador Kislyak, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and their aides, Trump discusses the Comey firing. “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump says. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Then he adds, “I’m not under investigation.”
• May 11, 2017: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies that James Comey enjoyed “broad support within the FBI and still does to this day…. The majority, the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey.”
• Also on May 11, 2017: Trump tells NBC’s Lester Holt that he had already decided to fire Comey before his meeting with Sessions and Rosenstein: “Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey, knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story….” Trump also says that on three different occasions — once in person and twice over the phone — he’d asked Comey if he was under investigation for alleged ties to Russia, and Comey told him he wasn’t.