When it comes to Trump and Russia...
"Possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia."
...it's easy to feel numb to the details.
"George Papadopoulos."
"Roger Stone."
"Cohen has been..."
"Paul Manafort."
"Don Jr."
And every time we hear Trump respond:
But no matter how many times Trump says this, here's what we can't lose track of:
We now have evidence of three major connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.
We know that people working for Trump were willing to work with Russia to help him.
And it's possible they broke the law to do so.
Here's how we know.
FBI special counsel Robert Mueller has tied several top Trump officials to Russia.
So let's try to organize them.
We can do so with three specific categories.
The first is a category we'll call "shady connections."
Years before Trump's 2016 run, his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had several problematic
connections with Russia.
He had worked for Ukraine's pro-Russian political faction, making tens of millions of dollars.
He owed $10 million to a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska.
And then during the 2016 campaign, he allegedly gave polling data to a man named Konstantin Kilimnik,
who has ties to Russian intelligence.
Manafort left the campaign in August 2016.
And he is now in prison for laundering 30 million dollars and hiding it from the US government.
We can call the second category the "Russian intel."
During the campaign, several Trump staffers, including his son, worked with Russians to
get dirt on top Democrats.
Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, attended a
meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya, who promised
"documents and information" from the Russian government that would reveal dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, hackers working for the Russian government stole emails from the Clinton campaign
and other top Democrats.
Trump's foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos heard about these emails and tried to arrange
a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Eventually, the hackers gave the emails to Wikileaks.
And Trump's campaign advisor, Roger Stone, reached out to Wikileaks to find out more
about the hacked emails.
Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about the emails and was sentenced to 14 days in prison.
Stone lied to Congress about the emails, and was arrested.
The third and final category is the "Moscow deal."
While Trump was complimenting Putin on the campaign trail...
"If our country got along with Russia, that would be a great thing."
"Well he called me a genius.
I'm going to disavow it.
Are you crazy?"
"And I hope he likes me."
… Trump was also negotiating a real estate deal in Moscow.
And the person who negotiated the deal for Trump was his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
But here's the important detail: Cohen needed someone to help grease the wheels.
So he emailed Putin's press secretary: Dmitry Peskov.
The deal didn't end up going through.
But if it had, it would've made Trump a lot of money, which is why Cohen kept Trump
updated on these negotiations.
But now, Cohen is also going to prison for, among things, lying to Congress about Russia.
So when we zoom out, we can see the three major connections the Trump campaign had to
Russia — while Trump was running for president.
His top campaign official had close ties to people who worked for or with the Russian
government.
Several members of his campaign, including his son, were open to receiving dirt from
people — who worked for the Russian government — to improve Trump's chances at winning
the election.
All the while, Trump's personal lawyer was trying to close a lucrative deal for Trump
in Russia, with the help of a top Putin official.
We don't know how much President Trump knew about each of these conversations — or whether
any of them crossed the line into outright criminality.
But even from what we see here, we can see that Russia, and ultimately Putin, was willing
to help Trump make more money — and win the White House.
And the people working for Trump were open to Russia's help.
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