By Tatiana Mouravieff, Year 12
Sure, you have all heard about the Trump-Putin affair but do you actually know what happened? If the answer is no, neither does the world, completely. But here is what we know so far:
The inquiry, started by the former director of the FBI Robert Mueller, focuses on alleged collusions between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Moscow. While Mueller’s team is quietly going about one of the most delicate political inquiries in US history, Trump denies any ties with Russia and says it’s a “witch hunt”.
Trump’s campaign was accused of getting help from Russian agents to win the 2016 US election. US intelligence agencies concluded in 2016 that Russia helped Hillary Clinton lose with a campaign of cyber-attacks and fake news stories.
Contact between the two countries were in form of face-to-face interactions, phone calls or electronic messages. Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Michael Cohen all had contact with Russians.
Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with the Russians in June 2016 lured by the promise of dirt on Clinton.
It all started when George Papadopoulos, former foreign policy adviser, told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. A few weeks later, WikiLeaks started publishing emails that had been stolen off the democrat’s server. This was linked to what Papadopoulos had said in May. The FBI opened an investigation about Russia’s attempt to hack the presidential campaign.
In May 2017, Mueller was appointed to take over the FBI investigation because a week before, James Comey, former FBI director, had been fired by Trump. He was leading this investigation and we think that Trump wanted to stop this investigation. If this is ever proved, it would be obstruction of justice and could lead to Trump’s impeachment.
Mueller had to investigate Russia, look into Trump team collusion and prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.
192 criminal charges have been placed on 36 people and entities, 7 people have pleaded guilty to lying about the nature and extent of their contact with the Russians.
The first casualty was Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, being accused of accepting millions of dollars in cash for representing Russian interests in Ukraine and US. Manafort has denied all allegations and in 2018 he was found guilty of 8 counts of financial fraud and tax evasion crimes. Later that year, he was found guilty of two remaining charges and agreed to cooperate with the investigation in exchange of spending less time in jail.
In October 2017, the US intelligence community services unanimously confirmed that Russia had interfered with the elections. In January, Buzzfeed published a dossier with an allegation that “Mr. Trump had been recorded by Russian security services consorting with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel” (BBC).
The most damaging scandal surfaced in February when the US media reported that “Mr. Flynn had discussed the potential lifting of Obama’s Russia sanctions with the Russia ambassador Sergei Kislyak before Mr. Trump took the reins of government”. (BBC). He resigned his job as Trump’s national security adviser after 23 days on the job.
On July 9th, the first confirmed private meeting between a Russian national and a member of Trump’s inner circle surfaced. Trump’s son said to have met a Russian lawyer who had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. He said he had discussed this meeting with his father but refused to provide details about the conversations.
In September, news of Cambridge Analytica became public: Facebook had made politically charged advertising to some American voters. The social network said they believed it was paid by Russians. The adverts did not support a specific candidate but posted information on hot topics such as immigration.
The “Trump Tower Moscow” was a series of proposals by the Trump Organization to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. This project became interesting to the public when in November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to Congress about the issue. He had lied that it had stopped in January 2016 but it was actually shut down in June 2016. During the negotiations he spoke to the representative of the Kremlin press office. For reasons that are still unclear, the Trump Organization have lied about it.
We do not know when Mueller will stop his investigation as he has not said much since he was appointed leader of the case.
