AFTER A BRIEF STINT AS A FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER FOR GOP CANDIDATE Ben Carson, who had also been desperate to fill his roster, Papadopoulos found his way aboard the Trump campaign after an interview with Clovis, who had also brought in Page. The campaign cochairman saw an eager volunteer and gave him a fateful bit of advice on how to ingratiate himself with the candidate. Clovis told his latest recruit on March 6 that one of the campaign’s central foreign policy goals was to improve relations with Russia. Papadopoulos had made significant if indirect contact with the Kremlin in a matter of weeks.
While traveling in Italy on March 14, Trump’s “excellent guy” met Joseph Mifsud, an academic from Malta with mysterious ties to senior officials in Russia. Mifsud took little interest in the lowly think tank researcher until he noticed Papadopoulos’s name in press coverage of Trump’s Washington Post meeting. Mifsud quickly set up a meeting in London, where he introduced the fledgling Trump aide to a woman from St. Petersburg, Olga Polonskaya, who he falsely claimed was Putin’s niece.
Papadopoulos reported to Clovis that he had made rapid progress on arranging “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump.” “Great work,” Clovis replied, though he noted that the idea would have to be discussed more widely among senior officials in the campaign.
Papadopoulos and Mifsud remained in touch frequently over the next month by email and Skype. On April 18, Mifsud connected the young Trump aide to Ivan Timofeev, the program director of the Russian International Affairs Council, a government-backed think tank. Timofeev had substantial ties to the Kremlin, serving as program director of the Valdai Club, an annual foreign policy conference in Russia attended by Putin. According to U.S. prosecutors, Timofeev also served as an undeclared proxy for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A few days later, on April 26, Mifsud relayed tantalizing information to Papadopoulos. Having just returned from the Valdai event, Mifsud said that he had learned that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, in the form of thousands of emails. It was three months before the first batch of DNC files would be dumped online.
FLYNN HAD MET TRUMP FOR THE FIRST TIME BACK IN AUGUST 2015, a year after his DIA ouster. The retired general said he had received a call from Trump’s team and agreed to a meeting at Trump Tower. The conversation was scheduled for thirty minutes but went for ninety.
“I was very impressed. Very serious guy. Good listener,” Flynn recalled. “I got the impression this was not a guy who was worried about Donald Trump, but a guy worried about the country.” Trump’s positions on a range of issues—support for the use of torture, suspicion of European allies—were in complete opposition to Flynn’s previous statements on those subjects. But the men shared hard-line views of Islam, an unusual affinity for Russia, and a deep resentment of the current president, both feeling he had disrespected them.
“I found him to be in line with what I believed,” Flynn said.
Flynn had interactions with several GOP candidates, and for a time served as an informal adviser to Carly Fiorina. But as he moved more visibly into the Trump camp, Flynn got a remarkable offer from RT: an invitation to a gala in Moscow celebrating the network’s tenth anniversary. Flynn would be paid $45,000—money he would later fail to disclose on federal forms—and would be seated at a VIP table next to Putin, though he would later say he didn’t know about that arrangement in advance.
Before the trip, Flynn had stopped by his former agency, the DIA, for a courtesy classified briefing on Russia. Agency officials said Flynn did not disclose the nature and purpose of his Moscow visit, and that when photos surfaced of Flynn wearing a black tie and seated next to Putin, his successor at DIA, Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, was so furious that he imposed new restrictions on sharing information with former agency executives. On the morning of the December 10 event, Flynn sat for an extended interview with Sophie Shevardnadze, a prominent correspondent for RT and the granddaughter of the former Soviet foreign minister. Flynn seemed uncomfortable in that setting, onstage before a Russian audience, asking at one point, “Why am I here? I’m sort of in the lair.”
In many of his media appearances, Flynn had a tendency to fault U.S. leaders for lacking an adequate understanding of global problems without being able to articulate a coherent position or prescription himself. Even so, his words to Shevardnadze must have sounded encouraging to the Kremlin. “The U.S. can’t sit there and say, ‘Russia, you’re bad,’” Flynn declared. The two countries need to “stop being like two bullies in a playground. Quit acting immature with each other.” Later, he added, “My wish is that we figure out a way strategically to work together.”
While in Moscow, Flynn also sought meetings with U.S. officials, including the CIA’s station chief, the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the country. Out of courtesy, the station chief agreed, only to find himself being lectured by Flynn on how the United States was mishandling its relationship with Russia and needed to “ease back,” according to a U.S. official briefed on the exchange. When Flynn pressed for a follow-up meeting the next day, the CIA officer became concerned that Flynn had met with Russian officials and had more unwanted advice to impart or, worse, information he wanted to collect. The station chief said no.
THOUGH THE CAMPAIGN WAS GAINING A PRO-RUSSIA ELEMENT, NO one seemed more enamored of Moscow than the candidate himself. At a Trump rally in San Jose on June 2, 2016, he bristled at mounting criticism of his affection for Russia, mocking those, including many in his own party, who had begun calling on him to disavow his praise for Putin.
“Then Putin said, ‘Donald Trump is a genius, he’s going to be the next great leader of the United States,’” Trump said. (Putin, when asked about Trump in December, had actually called him “colorful” and “talented” while saying “it’s not our affair to determine his worthiness.”) “No, no, think of it,” Trump continued. “They wanted me to disavow what he said. How dare you call me a genius. How dare you call me a genius, Vladimir. Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia? Wouldn’t that be good?”
One day after Trump’s San Jose appearance, his son Donald Trump Jr. received an email offering “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” The message came from Rob Goldstone, a music publicist with ties to the Trump family as well as to a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov, whose father, Aras, had made billions in construction contracts under Putin. The elder Agalarov had partnered with Trump to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013.
Goldstone’s email had some garbled information. He claimed that the older Agalarov had gotten the information on Clinton after meeting “the crown prosecutor of Russia,” although there is no such position in Russia. He added that “this is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. neither tripped over the odd reference to the crown prosecutor nor the remarkably explicit offer of campaign assistance from the Kremlin. “Thanks Rob I appreciate that,” he replied. “I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first.”
America’s main adversary for nearly a century was offering damaging information, almost certainly obtained through illicit means, to subvert the U.S. process for selecting a president. There are many ways that Trump Jr. might have responded. He could have ignored the email, directed it to the campaign’s lawyers, or placed a call to the FBI. But he did none of those things. Instead, he wrote back with unambiguous enthusiasm. “If it’s what you say I love it,” he said, “especially later in the summer.”