At least 6 people close to Trump almost certainly knew about offers from Russians of dirt on Clinton

By Philip Bump
June 18 at 11:56 AM

On Sunday, The Washington Post reported on a previously unknown point of contact between the 2016 Donald Trump campaign and a Russian offering negative information about Hillary Clinton. That new report, involving a Trump campaign staff member and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, means that at least six members of Trump’s broader team knew about offers of dirt from Russians during that campaign — and, depending on how that information was shared, as many as 10 may have, including Trump.

In March, we looked at the various ways in which members of Trump’s extended teams had been approached by agents of the Russian government during the campaign. It was a complicated web at that point — a web that has since grown only more intricate. In the graphic below, the gray box indicates the connections between Russians (top) and Trump’s team (bottom), arrayed relative to when they occurred in 2016. Individuals at the top and the bottom are arrayed in relative proximity to Trump and the Russian government.



Let’s walk through the connections between the Trump team and Russian agents and actors in chronological order.

Some important context: By March 2016, both Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email and the Democratic National Committee’s network had been compromised by hackers believed to be working for Russian intelligence agencies. Reports suggest that the first access of the DNC’s network occurred in summer 2015, the hack of Podesta’s account in mid-March and the DNC network was compromised again in April. By April, then, Russians had a cache of information stolen from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Mifsud-Papadopoulos. That same month, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was told by a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud that the Russians had dirt on Clinton in the form of emails. Mifsud, Papadopoulos later admitted to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was interested in Papadopoulos once Papadopoulos revealed his connection to Trump. After Mifsud told Papadopoulos about the dirt, Papadopoulos shared that with an Australian diplomat — who eventually informed the FBI and kicked off the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

Papadopoulos sent an email to Trump adviser Stephen Miller the day after Mifsud reached out to him, telling Miller he had some “interesting messages” coming in from Moscow. It is not clear whether the offer from Mifsud was conveyed to Miller at a later point.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/06/18/at-least-six-people-close-to-trump-almost-certainly-knew-about-offers-from-russians-of-dirt-on-clinton